MLB Integration at 64

Today marks 64 years since Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, initiating the process of racial integration of Major League Baseball and, thus, opening the door for many African-American ballplayers to play in the majors in the time since. Still, within 15 years of that integration, the Negro Leagues were gone, and to this day Major League Baseball remains without African-American ownership. For more on this, please read my post on the subject from two years ago.

All My Children; All My Mother

While I did not write a post specifically about it, I have noted on this blog that my mother passed away last May (May 14 to be exact). I've also noted in a blog entry a couple of years ago that I became attached in the mid-1980s to the ABC daytime soap opera All My Children because my mom, who was a loyal fan of the show since it began in 1970, watched it regularly.

After not watching the show much in the late 1980s, in the early 1990s, I got back into watching the show. My college roommate, whose mom is also an original fan, and I used to put it on every weekday in our dorm room while eating lunch, following the adventures of Tad and Dixie and Erica and Dmitri and Brooke and Edmund and so on. The show became so significant to me in connection with my mom that in 1995, when the show's creator, Agnes Dixon, gave a keynote speech at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual meeting, I attended Nixon's speech, met Nixon, and got Nixon's autograph (personally addressed to my mom), which I framed for my mom for Mother's Day that year.

Today, exactly 11 months after my mom passed away, ABC has announced that, as of this coming September, the show will be cancelled.

While I was initially surprised, I can't say that this is something that no one could have seen coming. Soap opera ratings are not what they once were, particularly because people have daytime cable options to watch instead, and the kinds of shows that ABC is proposing to replace All My Children as well as One Life to Live, which will be cancelled as of this coming January, typically have lower production costs. I, for one, haven't watched, but for catching a scene or two here or there, in well over a decade. Still, All My Children did influence my life, and it certainly means that another connection to my mom will drift into the realms of personal and collective memory.

In 1995, when I met Agnes Nixon, I thanked her for the hours of wonderful television programming that she created. Today, I thank her again for that and, more importantly, for the connection to my mom that her show has provided me. There's probably not much chance of this, since the show is likely to have its last episode on a Friday, not a Monday, but if All My Children's last episode comes on September 12, which would have been my mom's 65th birthday, it'll be hard to believe that my mom's not somehow involved.

Thanks, Nick, for the Memories

Last week, CNN.com ran a story detailing the story of former sports anchor Nick Charles' battle with bladder cancer. He was diagnosed nearly two years ago, and while, as of this month, he has exceeded the life expectancy quote that he received upon diagnosis, he has stopped treatment, and it appears that it just a matter of time until he passes away.

As some of us surely remember (and some of us likely do not), Charles was one half of the main hosting duo during the heyday of CNN Sports Tonight, which once rivaled ESPN's SportsCenter as the place to go for a sports round-up show. While SportsCenter quickly rose to prominence after its debut in 1979, that rise did not happen without facing some challengers, and perhaps its stiffest competition came in the late 1980s and early 1990s from CNN Sports Tonight, which aired on CNN from 1980 through 2001. Over the years, Sports Tonight featured a number of hosts, including folks like Dan Hicks, Gary Miller, and Hannah Storm, who would become known later for their work on networks such as NBC and ESPN. Craig Sager, who stayed in the same corporate fold by moving on to TBS and TNT, also appeared on the show. And can anyone out there who saw the show forget the inimitable Van Earl Wright?

The main hosts of the show at the height of its run, though, were Fred Hickman (who would later go to ESPN himself) and Nick Charles. And, though I disliked that CNN's hosts tended to give away results before playing highlights, in the late 1980s and early 1990s I grew to like Sports Tonight over SportsCenter. I don't think I was alone, and indeed, I think it's arguable that the moderate success of Sports Tonight pushed SportsCenter toward bettering its broadcast to produce "The Big Show" with Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann in what might have been SportsCenter's finest time as well.

In the meantime, I have many fond memories at home with my dad and in the lounge at my college dorm watching Hickman and Charles, especially as they gave the "play of the day" each day. I don't know if there's any possibility out there that Nick will get to read this post, but in case he does (and even if he doesn't), I'd like to say thanks, Nick, for the memories. May you always know that you played a significant role in the development of this sports fan/sports studies scholar.

New Developments

I have two new developments to report that relate to the kinds of things that I try to do on this blog:

First, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, I have begun a radio show with my friend and colleague Mike Butterworth that runs from 2:00-4:00 p.m. (Eastern time) on WBGU, which is 88.1 FM on your radio dial in the Bowling Green, Ohio, area and can be found online at wbgufm.com. After a month and a half or so on the air, we've finally come up with a name for the show: After Further Review. Mike explains the rationale for this name on this post on his blog, The Agon.

And, speaking of The Agon, Mike has invited me, along with some other colleagues who study sport communication (Dan Grano, from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Abe Khan, from the University of South Florida; and Korryn Mosizek, from Indiana University), to contribute to The Agon, which is a blog that focuses on "rhetorical contests of sports, politics, and culture." I will still be posting here about sports, particularly as sports connect to personal experience, but you'll also be able to read some of my thoughts on sports at The Agon as well.