Sports Archives

March 4, 2012

Notre Dame vs CHS Basketball

About the only thing that was different about this Notre Dame vs Central High School basketball game was that it was the first game that I can recall was delayed because of a lost contact lens.

The Feb. 1, 1967 Missourian photo caption said,“Basketball wasn’t the only action on the floor at the Central High gymnasium Tuesday night. Tim Bucek, Notre Dame player, lost one of his contact lenses. Action stopped while players, coaches and fans from both teams got down on hands and knees to search for the tiny eyepiece. Finally, someone looked at Tim and saw the bit of glass clinging to his jersey. Play resumed while he returned to the dressing room to insert the lens before going back in the game.”

Pep Band Tigered up

The Central Pep Band dressed a little spiffier in 1967 than it did in this photo from 1963.

Routine basketball action

I really didn’t like shooting basketball, even though it was easier than shooting football. In later years, when I had faster lenses and faster film, I’d shoot available light (when I was in a gym that had light available) and concentrate on mid-court action where the pictures were more interesting than armpit shots.

One of the problems with shooting with a single direct flash was that the photos had no modeling in the players’ faces because the light was coming from straight on. You also tended to get a “soot and whitewash” effect, where objects closer to the camera were overexposed and objects further back went to black.

All white faces on the court

Cape schools had long been intergrated by 1967 and the teams had a mixture of races on them, so I’m surprised to see all white faces on the court in these shots.

I just pulled out my 1965 Girardot. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see all white faces. The only black player pictured on the 1965 varsity and junior varsity teams was standout Sylvester Johnson, who was also on the 1964 football varsity along with Albert Estes and Charles Duncan. I remember Clyde Benson broke the tennis color barrier.

Photo gallery of basketball game

Who won the game? Well, Bob Evans wasn’t exactly kind in his story. “As of Tuesday night, it is a proven fact that the favorite food of a Bulldog is Tiger. This was shown when a talented Notre Dame ball club defeated cross-town rival Central, 86-63 in area basketball. This was the third defeat of the season for the Tigers in games with the Bulldogs and the fifth in a row over a two-year period.”

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery. For the record, the players weren’t imitating zebras in some of these photos. For some reason or another, my Nikon film scanner picked up some noise that I didn’t bother to spot out.

October 28, 2011

Cardinals and Marlins – What a Difference

When Brother-in-Law Don Riley and I went to the Cardinals – Marlins Spring Training Opening Day in Jupiter, Fla., on a sunny February day, we wouldn’t have predicted that one team would end up the World Champs and the other would be in last place in their division.

(In case you’ve been sleeping, it was the St. Louis Cardinals who won big in the seventh game in one of the most exciting series I can recall watching.)

Click on the photos to make them larger. Maybe you can spot David Freese, I couldn’t.

LaRussa’s autograph

I wonder if this kid held onto the ball Tony LaRussa signed for him and if he got to stay up late to watch the Series. I hope so.

Number, Ball, Face, Action

That’s the basic formula for a good sports photo: you should have the player’s number, his face, the ball and the action. Some of these photos from an unknown baseball game at Capaha park sometime in March 1966 (maybe) have at least some of the pieces of the puzzle. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

That’s easier said than done. Some shooters are better at it than others. I hired a kid named Allen Eyestone fresh out of Kansas who was one of the best sports photographers I’ve ever worked with. He had an uncanny ability to be just where the action was and to shoot images that were tack-sharp. Some of the guys went to sneaking up behind him and touching him with magnets to see if he was some form of robot.

How do you call what you can’t see?

There were nights in Southern Ohio when the fog would come rolling down into the valleys so thick you couldn’t see from one side of the football field to the other. I don’t know how the officials could call a game they couldn’t see. You couldn’t use flash because the light would bounce off the fog and all you’d have would be a bright blob. When the game was over, you’d drive back home with the door open so you could guide yourself by the line painted down the center of the road. Those were the nights you were happy to bring back ANYTHING.

Push, push, push that film

Shooting on fields so dark that the players should have had candles stuck on their helmets got me to experimenting with “pushing” film – using exotic films that I developed in the photographic equivalent of jet fuel to eke out as much speed as possible. In a day when the fastest normal film was 400 ASA, I would push mine to 3,600. Sometimes it would be grainy or contrasty, but it was the difference between a technically flawed photo or none. Sometimes it was pretty darned good.

This last shot has the ball (stuck deep in his mitt), the player’s face, the action (caught in mid-air) and almost his number. I like the line of cars parked in the background and the kid running along the fence with what look like a tire in his hand.

May 11, 2011September 18, 2011

How to Improve Your Golf Swing

Actually, I have no idea. I just used that title to catch the attention of search engines.

In fact, golf was always my least favorite sport after Dad put me to work one summer cutting weeds along the roadside. He issued me a thing with a long wooden handle and a sharp curved blade that looked like something the Grim Reaper uses to harvest souls and sent me out into the hot summer sun to make grass out of weeds.

The first time I picked up a golf club, I noticed the similarity between swinging a club and a sythe. I did not want to relive that experience in any form, so I scratched golf off my life list.

The guys above are the Central High School golf team. I recognize most of them as being Class of 65, but a whippersnapper or two from ’66 might have snuck in.

J. Fred Waltz is second from left

James Fred Waltz – he was always known as J. Fred as far as I recall – is second from the left in both photos. I mention him because he tracked me down and took me out to lunch at a secret, undisclosed location the last time I was in Cape.

Al Spradling was supposed to come along, but he came up with a convenient excuse to ditch us at the last minute.

Waltz, Palmer, Snead, Trevino

Here’s what Mr. Waltz looks like today.

Not only did I not like to play golf, I hated covering it. Fortunately, golf wasn’t a big sport in Missouri, Ohio or North Carolina. Unfortunately, it WAS a big sport in Florida, where golf courses outnumber graveyards.

The first couple of years down here, I shot all the biggies at PGA National, Doral and other cathedrals of grass and sand traps. I disliked all of the hoity-toity pretentiousness that went with the sport.

Sam Snead was the worst

The worst guy to shoot was Sam Snead. He hated photographers and always blamed us if he made a bad shot. He reamed me out in front of the whole world one day for – in his eyes – shooting before he completed his swing. When I processed my film, I saw that he had clearly hit the ball before my shutter fired, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if I’d have shown up the next day with photographic evidence.

I never could figure out why golfers need absolute silence when a baseball pitcher can throw a rock 90 miles per hour at some batter’s head with 50,000 people screaming in his ear.

Arnold Palmer wasn’t bad, but my favorite was Lee Trevino. Here was a man who didn’t take himself or the sport too seriously. He played a relaxed game like he was having fun, joking with the gallery and never saying an unkind word to anyone.

Category: Sports