Odds & Sods For Saturday, September 13th

Item The First: I mentioned Monte Moore, the radio announcer for the Kansas City Athletics when I was a kid there in the Sixties, and later the voice of the Oakland A’s after they moved. In looking him up to make sure I had his name spelled correctly and so forth, I remembered a fragment about one of his partners, a “color” announcer. It would have been about 1964 or 1965, the guy’s first name might have been David. If I remember correctly, he was killed during the off-season, possibly in a car accident.

As I said, it’s just a fragment of a memory from nearly fifty years ago, but I went to see if I could find any online information that matches that and I came up empty. (See, the internet is not omnipotent. Or it is and I’m just not asking the correct questions.) I found a lot of great old trivia about the KC A’s, and that brought up many more memories that I had that I didn’t see mentioned – but nothing about the loss of one of the radio guys.

If anyone of you should happen to know or remember anything about that (I know, it’s a wild shot in the dark) please let me know in the comments. Let’s see if the massed neurons of the WLTSTF family can do better than Google. Sort of like Ken Jennings taking on the IBM “Watson” system on Jeopardy!

Item The Second: It should be noted that in the Sycamore Canyon Beach panorama yesterday, The Long Suffering Wife can be seen enjoying the ocean breezes. I’ll let you go hunting for her if you wish — she’s in red and white. (Go Angels!)

Item The Third: I don’t know which was funnier the other night, seeing the stories and videos about the two deer tying up traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge for forty-five minutes, or seeing five minutes later that there was already a Twitter account for “Golden Gate Deer.”

Item The Fourth: Who used the phrase “Far Out!” any more? I mean, except for people doing their best impersonations of George Carlin’s early days as the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman. I don’t think even hipsters use that phrase. (What DO hipsters say, other than putting down anything that everyone else likes?) The volunteer duuuude who called up for the Red Cross last week to get me back in to donate blood (this was my donation #51 with the American Red Cross, whoo hoo!) used that phrase at least three times. It really sticks out in a conversation these days.

I wanted to respond to him with “Farm house, man!” but thought that might be a bit too esoteric, 1970s, Southern Vermont-ish for him. Punk kid doesn’t even know what “SKs” are, or how to properly use “wicked” in a sentence.

Item The Fifth: One thing I started noticing a lot at the Wings Over Camarillo air show was people wearing LA Kings branded shirts, hats, and other gear. You have to understand, LA has always had a rabidly passionate core group of Kings’ fans, and I’m proud to count myself among them going back for forty years now. But it’s always been a teeny, tiny, minuscule group compared to the legions of fans for the Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, UCLA Bruins, USC Trojans, Clippers, and even the Galaxy. There were folks jumping on the bandwagon when Gretzky came in 1988, and most (not all) of them jumped off when the Kings didn’t immediately win the Stanley Cup.

A lot of them jumped back on when the Kings won their first Stanley Cup in 2012. But unlike the Gretzky years, success wasn’t a one-time thing. The Kings made a deep drive into the playoffs in 2013. And then we won it again in 2014. At that point there were tons of folks catching hockey fever and there are signs that it’s still happening. At the airshow, I saw many more folks wearing Kings gear than I saw Dodgers or Angels or Lakers gear. I’m also seeing an awful lot of bumper stickers and “Kings – Stanley Cup Champions” window decals on cars.

This may become a hockey town yet!