WHA, Revisited

A week or so ago I posted my Houston Aeros Media Guide collection. I was inspired to poke around eBay looking for Aeros/WHA items and this guide from the league's first season popped up. I made an offer and landed it. Makes for a nice companion piece to my Aeros run.

In a comment on that post, Joe Shlabotnik mentioned the lack of the city name on the Aeros first guide. Given that they were originally bound tor Dayton it's quite possible that things were kind of hurriedly thrown together. Obviously the Aeros 'cribbed' the league's logo for the cover. No other team (as far as I could find) did the same. They all used original artwork or photos.

This guide is pretty simple. Most of it is taken up with team pages consisting of a roster and a directory with a short write-up. Here is the contents page...

And we get a big dose of the WHA's 'godfather', Gary Davidson. He knew about as your pet turtle does about hockey.

A page of flunkies. The guy on the bottom left looks like an extra from the set of 'Moscow On The Hudson'.

You can click to enlarge but the part that interested me was this:

Well over a year into the process the Aeros move from Dayton to Houston. That's about six months prior to training camp.


The rules page is the most interesting thing here. The WHA, like so many startups since, tried to be innovative. Overtime, shootouts, less restrictive passing and icing rules were part of it. They also made a big issue of being less punitive on guys who jumped into fights (Third Man Rule) and the sticks had a much bigger curve allowance. The page even mentions Bobby Hull and how his curved stick had been dialed back in the NHL.

What surprised me, though, was the last section which mentions 'colored' pucks. They acknowledge the failed experiment of red ones but trumpet the use of blue pucks.

All this was news to me. I kind of followed the league pretty closely but I have no memory of any of that. There are a few listed on eBay but the color doesn't really come across as blue. EDIT: As I re-read this it occurs to me that I have an Aeros puck, supposedly official and from the '75-'76 season, on a shelf behind me. It's black as coal.


Every team got the double page roster/team info page. The non-players are all listed as well as broadcasting info. Below that is a blurb about the city itself.

Here is my crew, the '72-'73 Aeros. It looks like a skeleton crew was running the club. They were probably still hiring when this book was put together.

The Squad. At the time I think I had some familiarity with maybe two players from their NHL careers, Dunc McCallum and Paul Popiel. For this former pond hockey goalie Don 'Smokie' McLeod quickly became a favorite.

There's your five-man front office. Four if you don't count the owner.

Yes, they may have been in a hurry but..."Golf Coast"?... "baseball Houston Aeros"? Yup, I realize the irony of me, Mr. Typo, picking on a few mistakes, but this was a pro team.

The Raiders had an old friend from the Rangers, Camille Henry as head coach. He'd been retired a year and had spent it coaching in the Central League at Kansas City. But the reason I show this is that there are two other familiar names listed. Herb Elk, the Raiders' PR Director and Assistant GM later came to Houston to work with the Astros. I got to know him through working at the Houston Post. He was a huge, jolly man. He died before he was 50.

And the Raiders' radio voice? John Sterling. "Theeeeeeee Raiders Win!"

Then there is a filler page with the team logos. And a complete league schedule.

The WHA refs were listed. I hadn't realized how many of them had come over from the NHL. Bill Friday was a very well known name back then. According to Wikipedia, he is the only referee to work both the Avco Cup finals in the World Hockey Association and the Stanley Cup finals in the National Hockey League. There are about six other names I know.

Then comes another throwaway page, league-wide start times. I guess those would be useful if you actually were a member of the media.

The back cover had an ad for the now-defunct Host Rent-A-Car.

 

The WHA produced league-wide guides in later seasons but I didn't find all of them with a quick eBay search. It doesn't matter since I won't be chasing any others down. Having the first year guide is kind of fun, though.

Speaking of the WHA... I am just about to crack the spine on this book...

I've wanted to read it for a while and I'm finally finding the time. Hopefully, it'll have some laughs and some memories. I'll be particularly interested in reading about the Howe Family signings and the sad end of the Aeros franchise. I may do a book report! 👨

Dammit, I miss hockey!

In a normal year, we'd be near the end of the second round of the NHL playoffs right about now.  Things would really be getting good. I'm fairly certain my Rangers would have missed out on the post-season (give us a year though!) but that has never stopped me from enjoying the Stanley Cup trek. I watch hockey, especially playoff hockey, no matter who is involved.

I spent a few days late last year sorting and cataloging my Aeros cards and assorted ephemera. Being a fan of media guides and programs I dug through boxes to see what I had kept. I found that I had five of the six guides. I found the missing guide on eBay and it's on its way now. now in hand!

I also found that my Gordie Howe poster, which he had signed at a promotional event, was missing. Who knows where it went after all these years. So I sought out and grabbed this signed photo. Gordie was the Bob Feller of hockey. He signed relentlessly over the years. He was Mr. Hockey and is still the greatest player I've ever seen. The photo didn't scan very well but you'll have to trust me that it's a beauty.

1972 was the Aeros first season. A lot of my buddies at the University of Houston came from hockey hotbeds, and we hopped on the bandwagon early. One of our group worked in the fledgling ticket office, so we got plenty of passes.

These programs are kind of fragile and I don't want to flatten them on the scanner so all I can show is front covers and a few backs. I also snapped a few pics which I'll sprinkle in. The Aeros' story is an interesting one. They were supposed to be the Dayton Aeros but lack of a suitable arena sent their ownership on a hunt for a good home and luckily they landed here.

The guide is, as you might expect, not very thick, just a dozen pages or so. Front office & coaching staff listings and brief player bios. A roster in the centerfold. Not even a schedule.

The back of the cover has the logos of the original WHA teams.

One of the things that attracted us (or maybe just me) to the WHA was the fact that some old NHL players had gotten second leases on their careers. Old school favorites like Harry Howell and old school enemies like Teddy Green and Norm Ferguson were part of it. Not to mention Bobby Hull.

For their guide the Aeros had a bit more to work with in 73-74 since there was a season under everyone's belts. I'm a bit surprised that there is no mention of the previous (inaugural) season since it had been pretty successful The Aeros had finished second in their division and won the opening playoff round before losing in the semi-finals.

The cover did the obvious, trumpeting the arrival of the Howe family.

That's my friend, Mike, on the left in the middle row on this page.

I used my letter opener to hold the pages open for pics. Interestingly Gordie didn't get a full career stat rundown like everyone else. Maybe they were afraid of running out of ink, or space, or both.

It was certainly huge news here in Houston when he signed to come along with his two boys. There were a few lawsuits as I recall as well. I think the NHL was trying to block the younger Howes from playing. They were underage junior hockey players or some such thing.

But the Howes sparked the Aeros to the first of their back-to-back WHA titles. The 74-75 guide showed off the trophy, the AVCO World Cup. We are somewhere in that crowd. The clinching game is one I'll never forget as the Aeros kept getting power plays and kept converting. A crazy night.

Here's my AVCO Cup story as I posted years ago....

[...]WHA story... It occurred the day after the Aeros won their first AVCO Cup. A good friend who worked at a department store that had a tie-in with the team was headed into work when he spotted the AVCO Cup trophy sitting all by itself on the loading dock. Just sitting there apparently after being delivered by the team for a promo. No one was paying any attention to it as it sat just feet from the morning downtown workers hustling by. Hard to imagine the Stanley Cup in that spot.

This time Gordie got a write-up, bio/vitals, and all the stats.  This was the first really substantial guide they issued, probably due to their recent success. Players get full-page bios, there are all manner of stats, some game action pictures, and playoff summaries. Pinocchio, you're a real boy now!

Another title brought another artistic rendering of the Cup being skated. The Aeros had dominated the playoffs, winning twelve games with only a single loss that came in the first round (to Cleveland and Gerry Cheevers).

With the good times came a really professional media guide. Not only were there write-ups for everyone in the franchise but the stats were extensive. They had pages for opposing teams, on-ice officials rosters, tons of team records and stats for the Aeros, and more.

The Fighting Saints were the Aeros big rivals, at least as far as we were concerned. Of course, the WHA being the goofy, fly-by-night outfit they were most of the time, had a second Minnesota Fighting Saints franchise in 1976. That team had previously been the Cleveland Crusaders.

Here is another story I related in a previous post:

At the Coliseum the visiting team would have to walk a gauntlet of fans between periods and at games end, trudging on their skates up a rubber mat along a path formed by a couple pieces of rope to the locker-room. It passed right through the concession area. Fans would give the Fighting Saints (we had another 'F' word that we used instead of 'Fighting') a real going over. I'm surprised that none of us ever got clobbered with a stick or kicked with a skate.

No 'Cup skate' to show in 1976 since the Aeros had lost in the finals to Bobby Hull and the Winnipeg Jets. They used the same artist to put Gordie on the cover. By now the team had joined the Rockets in the shiny, new arena known as The Summit. The whole vibe of the games had changed. The Sam Houston Coliseum had been a dump, but it was OUR dump, and we missed it.

Gordie was now wearing two hats, President and Chief Thrower Of Elbows In The Corner.

The Aeros were still a good team but not as good as they had been and early exits in the playoffs kind of reflected what was happening off the ice. The merger talks had everyone on a roller coaster. We fully expected to get into the NHL...at first. But the team had changed hand a few times and I suspect the folks in charge of the Aeros as the WHA started coming apart were more focused on the Rockets.

It became a day-by-day thing with nobody knowing what was going to happen. I was at the Houston Post at the time and had become friends with a couple of the writers (one who had covered the team, been hired away by them, and then returned to the paper). They all thought the franchise was going to land on its feet. But when the music stopped the Aeros were the one without a chair. I think there was talk of buying an existing team and moving them here but that was a pipe dream.

This last media guide had a 'cheaper' feel to it. The pages had changed from the glossy paper to plain stock. There was less to crow about so it wasn't as thick. Plus Gordie and his boys had moved on to the Whalers.

We did get a cool pic of tough guy Terry Ruskowski and an oddly disheveled  Bobby Hull.

And then they were gone. The WHA played a final season without the Aeros as part of it. In the 90s the IHL/AHL Aeros were formed and played here for about a decade. They were a Minnesota Wild farm club at the end. I had kids by then, and they fell in love with the 'new' Aeros. I enjoyed them as well, heck, hockey is fun no matter what level you're watching, but nothing could ever compare with those days at the creaky, dank Coliseum.

Baseball’s Sad Lexicon

Baseball’s Sad Lexicon

BY FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS

These are the saddest of possible words: 

      “Tinker to Evers to Chance.” 

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds, 

      Tinker and Evers and Chance. 

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble, 

      Making a Giant hit into a double— 

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble: 

      “Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

OK, until this morning those were 'the saddest of all possible words.' But today I figured we were close enough to the season opener that I should check the Orioles' website for news of their 2018 publications. Every year for the past several they have started selling the O's yearbook, media guide and magazine right about Opening Day. Easy as pie..order, wait, enjoy. I have every Orioles' media guide except the very first one, from 1954. I have every yearbook (they skipped a few years here and there) and at least one scorecard from every Orioles season and postseason series since '54. 

Publications..from the Orioles, Baltimore Colts, New York Rangers and others... are my very favorite collectible. I'd give up every card I have before I'd sacrifice my pub collection. Which is why I was very disappointed when the Orioles publication page showed me this:

In case you can't read it the gist of it is no more media guides will be available to the fans in paper form. Oh sure, we can download a file version but that's not the same thing. I can't hold a file in my hand. I realize that everything in the media guide is available somewhere online but grabbing that big, fat usually orange book off the shelf to find Adam Jones's career homer totals against the Tigers was very satisfying. 

I also realize that last year's guide has everything I need except last year's numbers but that's not the point. My guides are lined up in two shelves of my hobby room. Not having a 2018 guide is going to annoy me. The fact that media guys get one makes it even worse. Guides will be out there and I want one dammit!

Joe Shlabotnik pointed out via Twitter the fact that there were years that the guide wasn't readily available and I was still able to land one. That's true but that doesn't mean the 2018s will show up on eBay anytime soon. I may have to wait years for some reporter's widow to sell off the guy's hoard. It's depressing.

For the record, I was given many of the guides from the Orioles' early years by my uncle who had connections to the team back then. In the late 70s/early 80s I would call or write the club's pr department and beg for one. One lady actually remembered me from year to year as 'that fan in Texas'. Some years they sold them along with the usual pennants and team postcards via mailorder. I've saved a bunch of the forms I got back from my calls and letters. The rest, mostly the expensive ones I was missing from the mid-50s, I bought on eBay.

Yes, I'm probably overreacting to all this but it sure feels like a big piece of my hobby enjoyment is over. Yup, my gonfalon bubble has been pricked. Oh well.

Since I hate publishing a post without some sort of memorabilia here are my T206s of the "Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds, Tinker and Evers and Chance".  

Sweet cards, yes?

1958 Orioles Media Guide

I keep a spreadsheet which tracks my publications collection. For years I had the 1958 Orioles Media Guide marked off and assumed I only needed those from 1954 and 1956. A year or so I was rearranging my shelving and discovered that I lacked the '58 and added it to my want-list and eBay saved searches.

I was able to land one in pretty decent shape a month ago for about what I'd expected to pay. These are not things of beauty. And they are nowhere close to being as comprehensive as modern guides but they sure are fun to collect. the first few seasons the Orioles labeled them as 'Spring Training Guides' and the cartoon covers reflected that. But into the 60s the idea of a media guide to be used throughout the season evolved. 

Anyway this one is 24 pages counting both covers. 

The pages I scanned are self-explanatory. Staff listings, schedules, basic franchise info and records, etc.

The Spring Training schedule includes just the Giants, Cubs and Indians as only four clubs were training in Arizona in 1958. The Orioles played three games against the Reds in Baltimore before the regular season started. 

The Orioles 40 man:

The player bios were mostly stats and basic info. I'm always interested in ticket prices from back in the day. The best seat in Memorial Stadium in '58 would have set you back $2.75!

The schedules back then always had some quirks. Nowadays you'll never see a one day series as the Orioles played on May 30 against the Red Sox. Without looking it up I'm guessing that's a Memorial Day doubleheader. The BoSox played a single game in Baltimore in August as well. 

And there are a couple of 'split' weekends when the Orioles host different teams on Sunday than they do on Saturday  (May 3/4, July 12/13, Aug 23/24). They have a couple of road weekends like that, too. Crazy, right?

Now my quest is actually down to two guides. I'm prepared to pay whatever it takes for the '54 guide. The '56 is less expensive and I'll snag that one soon enough.

Another White Whale Harpooned

I joined eBay in 2000 and the first thing I did was start tracking down the Orioles and Baltimore Colts publications I needed. And there were plenty of holes in my collection. I'd chase things in fits and spurts but in the last year I got really serious about the last dozen or so guides/yearbooks I lacked.

I finished off my Orioles checklist earlier this year and knocked off nearly all of my Colts needs. But this '77 Media Guide had eluded me. For a long time. I'd generally been targeting guides from cheapest to most expensive which is why I pulled in some 1950s Colts  guides a few months ago after years of looking for reasonably priced ones.

But for some reason the 1977 Colts guide was super elusive. My eBay saved search email alert has sent me dozens of false positives through the years. The infrequent copies that showed up went for more than I thought they were worth and I never won a bid. So last week when I got another alert I was expecting that it was pointing me to the same tired 'TV Guide preview' of a Colts-Broncos game.'

But it turned out to be the real McCoy and for $15 I jumped on it. It showed up yesterday and took its place on my shelves. I would scan the insides but I don't want to fold the spine that much.

And there is a postmortem to this little episode. I received another email alert last night. I checked it and remembered that I needed to delete the alert. Lo and behold there is ANOTHER 1977 Colts media guide on eBay BIN. For $9. Free shipping. Grrrrrrrr. Years of losing bids and two of these come up within a week. And I buy the more expensive one. What can I say?