Commentary
Getting a new hockey arena won’t be easy Add it up and 30 days doesn’t seem like enough to come up with the kind of magic solution this project needs.
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There’s another angle on the Pirates’ decision to poke fun at Texas Rangers first baseman Rafael Palmiero last Sunday.
The Pirates’ scoreboard room staff used audio and visual material to reference Palmiero’s commercial endorsement of Viagra.
From a practical standpoint, harassing opposing players opens your team for the same treatment on the road – just hope you don’t have a left fielder who’s married to two women or a starting pitcher who does a revealing interview with Penthouse.
Put it this way – Viagra jokes aren’t going to bring in any customers. They could potentially drive some way.
So don’t do them.
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Soccer – the sport of the future?
This is now the fifth decade this promise has been made. Public schools started pushing soccer in the late ’60s for physical education classes and everyone who’s come through the system since then has been exposed to it.
Everyone plays the game but not enough people care to watch it at the professional level. There are places where soccer is hugely popular -St. Louis is one – but it hasn’t become a mass-appeal spectator sport on the level of football or basketball.
The World Cup usually creates some excitement but the Olympics do the same thing for hockey.
When the Olympics are over, the hockey hardcores are still there watching the NHL and everyone else waits for the next Olympics.
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Sports talk gets a little weaker this week when Marvin “Goose” Goslin takes over KDKA radio’s Saturday evening talk show from newspaper columnist Ron Cook.
Cook’s nine-year tenure was the victim of budget cuts. Because Goslin is already on staff as a morning score reader, there’s no extra cost in having him host the talk show.
Goslin is a fine person but he abdicated sports reporting long ago for other business interests. He doesn’t attend games. Cook gets around and consistently brought listeners solid information.
Under the new plan, there’s a good chance most callers will know more than the host.
Then again, KDKA ran its weeknight sports talk show under that policy for the last seven years.
John Mehno can be reached at: johnmehno@lycos.com.