Game 162: Rays (Wacha) at Yankees (Taillon) 3:05 pm

You've got it exactly Rizz. It's easy to forget that baseball was a hugely popular sport long before the first professional league was formed in 1871. It was widely played by town teams by the 1850s and was moving toward play for pay by the Civil War Era. It was essentially unchallenged as our most popular sport for well over a century.

Golf took off big time just before World War I -- the touring British duo of Harry Vardon and Ted Ray drew enormous crowds, and their defeat by the young American amateur Francis Ouimet in the 1913 US Open really set it up for the 1920s surge led by Bobby Jones and the rise of professionalism led by Walter Hagen.

Absolutely, boxing and horse racing had a following that is difficult to imagine now. Major races were routinely broadcast on radio. Even as a kid in the 1950s and 1960s, I remember live radio broadcasts of horse races from local tracks. Casino gambling was the major factor in decimating the allure of the track, although huge amounts of money are still generated in the equine industry, albeit with less public following.

It's hard to imagine that NBA championship games were sometimes shown on tape delay well into the 1970s. And that in the 1950s, two of the most-watched sports shows were the Wednesday and Friday night fights. Every week.

Spot on with college football. It exploded in the 1920s -- it had been growing steadily for 25 years before that -- and has never really receded. The big change is that it was vastly more popular than pro football until at least the late fifties, and more likely until the Super Bowl Era starting in the late sixties. When my father was growing up in Philly in the 1930s and early 1940s, football at Penn and Temple and Villanova drew far more interest than the Eagles, who were more like an afterthought.

Jeez, this is turning into an essay. Sorry. I'm out.

I love reading your essays pipps! Excellent perspective!

One of my all time favorite people:  Kenny Singleton.  I still remember a particular Monday Night Baseball with Howard Cosell:  ABC asked each team to designate a player to read off their respective lineups.  I don’t recall who was chosen for the other team, but Singleton read the lineup for The Birds of Baltimore (Cosell’s refrain for the Orioles).  Afterward, Cosell remarked excitedly, “That young man has a job in broadcasting some day!  What a voice!”  

Just came back from the gym and turned it on. What did I miss?

LETS GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!