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RIP Biff Pocoroba

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by TheSportsPredictor, May 26, 2020.

  1. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    When I first signed on for cable in the mid-80s, I mentioned I was looking forward to watching a lot more baseball now that I had WTBS. Was told, "yeah, but you have to watch them play the Braves."
     
  2. Corky Ramirez up on 94th St.

    Corky Ramirez up on 94th St. Well-Known Member

    Damn. That was a favorite in my card-collecting days as a kid in the 80s, just as I'm sure it was for many of us here. In addition to that, Tim Blackwell and Don Stanhouse (mostly because their mustaches rivaled my father's).

    I had an Uncle Biff growing up, but his real name was Ralph Sabatino. Not sure where the Biff came from.
     
    Liut likes this.
  3. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    The best part of the fights was Bob Horner coming out of the dugout with his broken wrist in a cast to take on Champ Summers.

    And I was working the desk at a PM paper in the Atlanta area (OK, it was the infamous Marietta Daily Journal) the morning after the July 4 all-night game. I started watching the game but went to bed when the rain delay started. I got to the office at 5 a.m. and the writer we had covering the game was in there typing furiously.

    I said, "I guess the game ran so late you got a little sleep before coming in to write, huh?"

    He said, "Hell no, the game just ended at 4 and I came right over here."

    I said, "You've got to be kidding." He said, "No, really. It went 19 innings and Rick Camp hit a homer to tie it in the 18th."

    "Now I KNOW you're kidding," I said.

    Then I got on the AP wire and I found out he wasn't kidding at all.

    And, of course, they shot off the fireworks after the game, which led to startled area residents calling the police to report everything from a gun battle to an enemy invasion.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2020
  4. Tarheel316

    Tarheel316 Well-Known Member

    Rick Camp hitting a home run. That was crazy.
     
  5. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    Ah, the teams of my youth growing up in the ATL. When you're young and the home team draws 5,000 per game, you don't mind -- you feel like you've got the run of the place. It was then a blast when the Braves were good in '82-'83 and Tommy Lasorda was public enemy No. 1, then back to really bad in the mid-80s. When they started stacking up division titles when I was high school, I lost interest because I was so unimpressed at the bandwagon fans.

    And yes, WTBS was so great. I can still hear Skip, Ernie, The Professor and even the pre-Yankees John Sterling.
     
  6. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    Sterling made me cringe even then.
     
    matt_garth likes this.
  7. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    And when they played the Cubs, you could have the mindblowing exercise of switching between WGN and WTBS. Pick your Caray.
     
    Liut likes this.
  8. Twirling Time

    Twirling Time Well-Known Member

    I grew up in the St. Louis market and looked forward to when the Cardinals would play the Braves or Cubs so I could watch on TV. Very few games back then were on TV other than NBC’s Game of the Week, Monday Night Baseball on ABC or playoff games. (Too bad we didn’t get WWOR; otherwise I would have been treated to up to 48 games on cable.)
     
    Liut likes this.
  9. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    The Phillies had a lot of their home games on TV in the 1980s, but the holy cable trinity of WOR, WGN and TBS were always a nice extra treat when they'd play those teams.
    Of course, my dad preferred the Phillies announcers so he'd turn down the sound on the TV and listen to Harry Kalas and Andy Musser on the radio.
     
    cyclingwriter2 and Liut like this.
  10. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    I covered a game once where I was your guy in the office.
    It was a college baseball game that was supposed to start at 7:30. Being game four of four that day, it naturally didn't start until after 9. And then it went 14 or 15 innings on top of it. It didn't end until about 2:30.
    We were an afternoon paper at the time, and I was scheduled to pull the desk shift that started at 6:30 a.m. I was on vacation the following week, so the plan was to cover the Thursday night game, work the next morning, and be done for the week around noon Friday. By the time it was obvious the game would not be ending in a timely fashion it was around midnight and I couldn't in good conscious call the SE to tell him he needed to get his ass up to the paper a few hours later and add a long shift to an already long week ahead.
    So I sucked it up. Got home from the game around 3:15, banged out my story, got a shower and headed into the office a little early so I wouldn't be tempted to lay down for a "quick nap" that turned into a disaster. Finally got back home around noon and crashed for the rest of the day.
     
    Liut and da man like this.
  11. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    Ha! You were me, too!
     
    Liut and Batman like this.
  12. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    That's one of my favorite stories from this place. Thanks for sharing that again.

    The closest I came to something like that was one December night when all our schools were in out of town tournaments, none staffed. I was solo on the desk. At 10 or so, we had no calls (we were a pm), so called one of our best coaches for call ins. He missed the game sitting out a suspension, but said he'd have his assistant call. He did, followed by about a half dozen or so more, plus me calling the off-duty writer to change plans for the next night, and all of a sudden I'm redoing the whole page at midnight. Next thing I remember is hearing the morning news clerk, who came in around 3 or 4, wondering why I was still there.
     
    da man likes this.
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