Enjoy The First Day Of April - As March Madness Extends Into April

 I used to try to put something clever up on April 1.  My favorite was Palin Announces Conversion, with this image I put together back in 2010:

In 2019 I vowed not to do any April Fool's Day posts until after Trump was out of the White House.  But even now there's still nothing one can write that can compete with what Fox News offers every day.  

On the other hand, common decency never seemed so powerful.  The only aggression in the White House these days seems to be coming from the President's dogs.  

Maybe next year I'll be ready again.  The snow is starting to evaporate.  There's even an area in the backyard, under the trees, where it looks like there's soil showing.  Enjoy flowers poking out of the ground.  We still have a ways for that to be happening here.  

I'd also note that UCLA beat Michigan Monday to move to the Final Four.  

I was at the LA Sports Arena on December 28, 1963 when UCLA beat then Number 3 ranked Michigan at the LA Classic.  UCLA had won all its games up to then, but hadn't really played any important teams.  And UCLA was not seen as a basketball power before that season.  There wasn't even a basketball arena on campus.  They even played some of their home games that season at Santa Monica City College.  Michigan was the test to see if their seven game winning streak was just a fluke.

But the game began with an early display of John Wooden's full court press, and in the first three or four minutes, UCLA was ahead 16 to nothing.  The victory was all that much sweeter because among us was a Michigan fan who had no doubt, before the game, who would win.  

That was UCLA's first National Championship of their dynasty period.  They had 30 wins in a row.  Every game was a nail biter - could they keep their winning streak alive.  Their tallest starting players that year were Fred Slaughter and Keith Erickson at 6'5".  Stars Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazard were 6'1" and 6'3" respectively.  Lew Alcindor (later to become Karim Abdul Jabbar) was still playing high school ball in New York.  

Most of this is still very vivid in my brain all these years later, but I did check Wikipedia to be sure of some of the details. I also found an article on the game in the January 6, 1964 Sports Illustrated, but it didn't tell me what I wanted to know - whether the Bruins got their opening 16 points in two minutes or four.

But what struck me was that the article was written by long-time NPR sports commentator Frank Deford.  Deford died at age 78 in 2017.  So that means he was probably only 24 when he wrote that story at Sports Illustrated.  

I had no idea what all I was going to discover tonight writing this post.  I must say that being at UCLA at the start of their dynasty, and then a couple of years later watching the Freshman team (with Lew Alcindor) beat the national champion varsity team at the beginning of the season spoiled me.  There was never going to be anything better than those years.  

Goodbye Rafer Johnson

One more hero in my life moves on.  The picture below was taken two and a half years before I'd enter UCLA as a freshman.  The legacy of Johnson and C.K. Yang and their great sportsmanship (Is there a non-sexist term?) was one of many attractions UCLA held.  At that time, California students who graduated in the top 12.5% of their high school class, were automatically admitted.  Tuition my first semester was something like $68.  And we lived a 30 minute bike ride from campus so my parents were pleased they wouldn't have to pay room and board.  

From LA Times

The Photo Description:  "Rafer Johnson puts on a weightlifting demonstration for Boy Scouts at UCLA in July 1960 as his track teammate C.K. Yang kneels and smiles.  A little more than a month later, Johnson would edge Yang for the decathlon gold medal at the Rome Olympics."

From LA Times:

"He was something special at UCLA

‘Greatest of all Bruins,’ Johnson remained a regular at many events.

By Ben Bolch

Sixty years after he edged a UCLA training partner on weary legs in one of the most dramatic finishes in Olympic history, Rafer Johnson ’s presence continued to blaze on campus like an inextinguishable flame.

He was a regular at track meets and basketball games and gymnastics meets even as his health declined, always graciously accepting requests to pose for photos with anyone who asked. He was also a confidant to longtime athletic director Dan Guerrero, serving as a special advisor who offered wisdom and guidance that no pricey consultant could match.

Johnson’s legacy as a decathlon champion and humanitarian, not to mention his trusted friendship, made it especially meaningful for Guerrero to be part of dedicating the Betsy and Rafer Johnson Track last year at UCLA’s Drake Stadium.

“It’s not a stretch for me to say that Rafer was the greatest of all Bruins,” Guerrero said Wednesday upon learning of Johnson’s death at his home in Sherman Oaks at age 86.

“When you think about it, apart from his athletic prowess, which placed him in history among the most heralded of all athletes, he passionately and selflessly and humbly dedicated his life to better people and our society whether it was through his work with Special Olympics, mentoring young students or his commitment to civil rights. He was a giant, there was no question about that, and while this description is probably thrown around rather capriciously, in this case it’s true. . ."

 Here's a second article they have titled:  Appreciation: Rafer Johnson was more than a great athlete; he was a great man

And if you can't get into the LA Times, here's the Wikipedia entry on Rafer Johnson.

*I'd note that Wikipedia says that C.K. Yang died January 20, 2007 at age 73 in Los Angeles.  

Renaming LA Memorial Coliseum To United Airlines And Dealing With Statues For Disgraced Causes

[In this post, perhaps more than most, I'm stepping into my brain and tracing events in my life that affect how I think about this topic.  Be prepared to meander.http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2010/06/meandering.html]

From an LA Times article 

The University of Southern California’s $69-million sale of naming rights for Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is being criticized as dishonoring the historic stadium’s dedication as a memorial to soldiers who fought and died in World War I just a few years before it opened.

(USC took over control of the Coliseum in a 98 year lease in 2013.  More details here.)

I personally became concerned about selling naming rights back around 1965 when UCLA built a new basketball stadium on campus and named it Pauley Pavillion, for the oil mogul who paid for naming rights instead of for John Wooden who had recently worked miracles with his Bruin basketball team.

When I was growing up, stadiums and other public places weren't plastered with billboards.  You could watch sporting events without being bombarded by corporate logos.  In fact, corporate branded T-shirts and other such swag were actually given away to people.  It was part of companies' advertising budget.

Since then, companies have somehow convinced people they should become human billboards for their products, but the billboards, not the companies, should pay for the opportunity.  But that's another blog post.

The Coliseum naming gave me an idea.  Why not let corporations or even individuals, buy the naming rights to all the offensive statues still standing in the US.  In most cases, there are few if any  people still living who knew the statues' models or would recognize their faces.  You could have the "[Insert Name Of Corporation] Horse and Rider."  Instead of spending money to tear the statues down, cities and towns can make money from them.

But my favorite option, one I came up with as a UCLA student, is to have plaques next to buildings and statues that tell the reader all the shady things the donor had done to make the money being used now to name the building.  And offending statues, whether built to commemorate defenders of slavery or killers of Native Americans, or polluters of the air and water, or the swindlers of the poor, could have the deeds listed that make the statues embarrassing today.  If we erase history, it's hard to learn from it.

My understanding of this was broadened as a sixth grade teacher in Los Angeles.  My students were all black and we figured out a way to work with each other so they learned something and I felt reasonably productive.  One day I was was reading from one of my favorite childhood books, The Story of Doctor Doolitle.  I had my own copy with me in class.  We were a few chapters in and I was reading out loud to class.  Dr. Doolitle and Polynesia were in Africa when the good doctor used a racist term for the native peoples.  Whoops.  I didn't remember Dr. Doolittle as a racist, but it was clear now it was part of his culture.  I stopped in mid-sentence and told the students it was time for our next activity.  What I SHOULD HAVE DONE was explain why I was stopping and then had an authentic conversation with them about racism.  They would have understood.   They were angry with me because the Dr. Doolittle book disappeared.

I should also note that I went to day care, K-12 schooling, college, and graduate school in Los Angeles.  When I saw the LA Coliseum on television during the 1980 Olympics in LA, I realized that it was one of the landmarks of my life.  I spent time at the Coliseum all the while I was growing up.  It was the setting for a diverse array of activities from rodeos and boy scout jamborees, from early LA Dodger games before Dodger stadium was built, to UCLA football games.  And it was just south of campus when I was a grad student at USC.  So there is a personal connection to that structure that is important to who I am.  And last December when we visited the Tutankhamun exhibit at Exposition Park, we walked over to the Coliseum ticket office that was surrounded by wooden barriers during the Coliseum's reconstruction.  But I do have this list of rules that I certainly don't remember from my childhood visits.

I, of course, am a supporter of keeping the old name.  My alma mater, USC, has become one the best fund raising universities in the world in the last decades.  That money credo has improved the academics, but it has also made money more important that ethics and other human values - like respecting history.   (For those who have missed it - USC, who now manages the Coliseum, has been wracked with scandals in its medical school as well as other programs, most recently the admissions scandals.)  So, the idea of changing the name of the Coliseum for $69 million is not even a decision.  It's a given.  It's been their modus operandi for a long time.  For a price, we'll do anything including looking the other way.

Is there a point to all this?  Yes.  Remembering good things, like the Coliseum as a Los Angeles memorial to WW I dead and NOT  auctioning off its name to the highest bidder, and dealing with the statues of fallen heroes or the misdeeds of corporate branders are all of the same issue.  I think I advocate for dealing with the past as openly as we can.  I don't mean 'can' politically, but rather 'can' in the sense that we are aware enough of the good deeds or misdeeds of whom or what is being remembered.  Let's acknowledge our collective misdeeds of the past as well as our collective good deeds.  And where we don't agree, let's sit down and talk about values that these people, entities, events embody and how they connect with who we are as a nation today.

[Yes, this could use a couple of rewrites before posting, but I've got posts waiting in line to be written and I've got grandkids to go pick up right now.]

Meadowlark Lemon Takes His Leave

I saw Meadowlark Lemon and the Harlem Globetrotters at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.  I thought it was in the early 1960s, but the only mention I could find online of the Globetrotters around that time at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was in a history of the auditorium:

"And on February 3, 1959, Wilt Chamberlain and the Harlem Globetrotters whipped the Los Angeles Rams in a basketball game, 80-56." 

Whether it was that game or a later one in Santa Monica, I just remember laughing very hard and being totally amazed at what these guys could do with a basketball.  I'd note that some of the first UCLA basketball games I went to were also in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Below is a snippet of Meadowlark and the team that will give those who never saw the Globetrotters an idea of what they did on court.

Below that is a longer documentary that puts their comic talents into the context of their amazing athletic talents and race relations in the United States and the world - the real importance of the Harlem Globetrotters.

UCLA IS THE CHAMP - Sports Illustrated Cover Story 50 Years Ago Today

When I was a college student, sports was a big deal.  Probably because I started college when UCLA started winning basketball championships.  When I was at my mom's in LA recently, I found this old copy of Sports Illustrated with the cover story of UCLA's first championship.  It was exciting times.







Here's the article inside.  I saved these as really big files so you can click on the pictures below and magnify them and you'll be able to read them.

Click on the picture and use the magnifying glass and you can read this

To get some perspective, that cheerleader on the right has got to be somewhere between 67 and 72 today.

This is, in no way, intended to take any glory from today's final four.  I just thought it appropriate to post this on the 50th anniversary of the publication.  In fact, I did post on this once, but I didn't have the pictures.  I thought I'd just add the pictures to that post, but since it is the exact day today, another post seemed appropriate.