COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY! - MIKE IN DA - SEPTEMBER 1, 2010

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY!

Written by: Mike in DA
Date posted: 9/1/2010

HMW FAVORITE HOFFY IS OUT AT 1560 THEGAME: ANOTHER WHITE GUY FROM OUT-OF-TOWN TO TAKE HIS PLACE! SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

If you’ve been following the Peanut Gallery over the last few months, every so often I ask Ken Hoffman of 1560 KGOW to put his biography on the station’s website.

For three years in the “Biography” section for Hoffy, it has been saying, “Ken’s Bio will be up soon so in the mean time read David Nuno’s bio.” Well, there is finally no need for Hoffy to complete his biography any longer on the website.

I don't know Travis Rodgers from Aaron Rodgers, Roy Rogers, Jacquizz Rodgers, Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Travis Bickle. But I do know that starting next Tuesday (September 7), Travis Rodgers (nicknamed “T-Rodge”) who was the senior producer for "The Jim Rome Show" and a producer on Rome’s TV show, “Jim Rome Is Burning” until their mid-2009 “divorce” will replace Hoffy as host in the 1-3 PM slot on 1560.

KGOW is looking for a ratings boost in the mid-day going up against Rome (SR610), Matt Thomas (790) and "The Blitz" on 97.5 FM.

In an earlier PG here, there was mention that Rodgers had been guest co-hosting and guesting on 1560 while commuting from his home in Southern California with the possibility that he might have been auditioning for a hosting job or position either at 1560 or Sporting News Radio. Travis is a friend of KGOW’s afternoon drive-time host, Sean Pendergast.

Rodgers has plenty of experience in radio and TV. For 14 years, he worked as executive producer of Rome’s nationally syndicated radio show and was a producer on ESPN’s Rome show for six years. He was responsible for content, production, booking guests, and show strategy. He has many contacts in sports and will probably make good use of those connections for his new show.

Travis received a degree from the University of California - Santa Barbara and pitched for its baseball team in the early 1990s.

In June 2009, Rome announced at the end of one of his radio shows that Rodgers was moving on to bigger and better things. This seemed very suspicious to many of the clones because these two guys were close for so many years. You can hear Rome's announcement at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfc7qaAavv8
.

The Rome radio show had become mediocre over the last several years and didn’t have the kick it did when I first started listening in 1997.

Rodgers will be hosting the show by himself, so that means we will be missing many of David Nuno’s senseless wise-guy remarks as Hoffy's sidekick, as well as bikini models and trivia contests.







YOUR FAVORITE HOUSTON SPORTS TALK PERSONALITY POLL: SEMI-FINALS – POLL #2 RESULTS!

In HMW’s Poll #2 of the semi-finals of “Your Favorite Houston Sports Talk Personality Poll” that ended Monday (August 30), the results by percentage of total votes were:

John Granato 1560 AM (16%)

AJ Hoffman 97.5 FM (69%)
Matt Jackson 790 AM (6%)
Barry Warner 610 AM (5%)
Raheel Ramzanali 1560 AM (4%)

From this group, Messrs. Granato and Hoffman will move on to the Finals next week.

This week's Semi-Final bracket includes Matt Thomas (790), John Lopez (610), Adam Wexler (790), Ralph Cooper (1430), and Kyle Kennedy (610). 

Don’t forget to vote for your favorite guy.


CALLER OF THE MONTH - AUGUST 2010

The Peanut Gallery's Caller of the Month for August 2010 is Dale. Dale earned the award by consistently putting down and tearing apart on 1560 "Longhorn" Scott, one of the most obnoxious sports talkers on local radio, in their several one-on-one caller-on-caller confrontations over the recent period.

FOOTBALL HANDICAPPING FLUB!

Flubs are all over the place in the sports world. From local sports talkers who give misinformation regarding sports history to the Houston Chronicle, which gives a Little League World Series score showing that Toms River, NJ, beat Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which never could have happened, since the teams were in different pools and one was a U.S. team and one was an international team.


Even in the gambling world, there are flubs, as football handicapper, Bobby Smith, describes:

“The following situation is typical of the industry that has come to be known as “sports information:” For the last 10 days on the web site of an outfit that calls itself, “The global leader in sports gaming information,” all offshore College Football and NFL pointspreads for Week 1 games with a road favorite have been incorrectly displaying the home underdog as the favorite.

For instance, Hawaii is –21 over USC. Toledo is –14.5 over Arizona. Kansas City Chiefs are –5 over San Diego Chargers. It was obviously a computer glitch. But when you call yourself the global leader in sports information and all you have to do is parrot the line a sportsbook gives you, you ought to get it right the first time 99.99% of the time and when you don’t, you should correct the problem within 24 hours, not leave it up as reported truth for 10 days. If that’s the “worldwide leader” in sports information, well…that’s an example of what somebody can get away with it when an industry is not regulated.” END.

INDIAN GIVERS!

On Monday here, I mentioned the flub that Rich Lord and Robert Henslee made last week when they didn’t know about the Grantland Rice Trophy. As I mentioned, Rice was a great American sportswriter of the early 20th century. He is credited with the line: “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” and he dubbed the great backfield of the Notre Dame team of 1924 the "Four Horsemen" of Notre Dame.

The Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) names its annual college football national champion and presents the school with the trophy named for Mr. Rice. Therefore, it was highly fitting that the FWAA asked USC to return the Grantland Rice Trophy from 2004 because Reggie Bush and others on the team were not following the rules.


It is as if the FWAA and its members are doing this because they were conned into believing that USC had followed all of the NCAA rules and regulations with regard to the members of that 2004 football team and now they found out the truth. Hey, if you dig deep enough, you will find that every Grantland Rice Trophy winning team since 2004 has broken the rules also and so did ones before 2004. As that great Tennesseean, Grantland Rice, once said, “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t competin’.

IS WASHED-UP BASH BROTHER HOMELESS?

Last week, a few of the local sports talkers mentioned that José Canseco was back in baseball. He signed on to play for the Laredo Broncos in the United League, an independent minor league consisting of six Texas teams. In his first AB, he homered. When I first heard about it, I thought he might be trying to get back into MLB.



Then I went to the TMZ website and found out he was evicted from a house he was renting in Northridge, CA, and that reminded me that he had financial problems for a while now. Remember “The Canseco Experience” where you could pay money to spend a day with him, hang out, and see what it was to be like and live like José Canseco. I assume he made very little money, if any, from the “Experience”.

Now it looks like he got someone to  pay him to do something that he actually can do well, which is play baseball. According to the Broncos, Canseco was a hitting coach, pinch hitter, and DH for the team for the last two weeks of the season that ended on Monday night.

I realize that this kind of job is hardly something that will return him to the kind of lavish life he had as one of the Bash Brothers, but it has to be better than him trying a boxing career and going up against the likes of Vai Sikahema and Danny Bonaduce.

ANOTHER WASHED-UP JUICED-UP GUY!

Speaking of baseball players who just might have “juiced-up”, the current issue of Chicago Magazine reports that Sammy Sosa is ticked off at the Chicago Cubs because they have not retired his uniform number yet. FYI - OF Tyler Colvin, is wearing Sammy's #21 this season for the Cubs. The nerve of some people. Wait till Sammy sees what the Baseball Hall of Fame voters think of him in a few years when he is eligible for the Hall. 


SELIG STATUE SHOULD HAVE HIS EYES COVERED

Bud Selig was the guy who brought baseball back to Milwaukee in 1970 when he bought the expansion Seattle Pilots and moved them. A statue of Selig was unveiled last Tuesday (8/24) outside Miller Park in Milwaukee. If it wasn’t for Selig, Milwaukee might still be without baseball. Word on the street was that the original plan was to have Selig sculpted with his hands covering his eyes, his ears, and his mouth, but it was rejected.

If you split Selig into two different categories of owner and commissioner, there would probably be two different opinions of hin. He restored baseball in Milwaukee, got them to a World Series, and managed to get his Brewers into the same division as the Cubs and Cardinals. For that, he probably deserves a statue.

As a commissioner, he canceled a World Series, allowed an All-Star Game to be tied, and now makes that same exhibition game the deciding factor in who gets home field advantage in the World Series. For that, the statue deserves to have done to it what pigeons do to statues. As well as what drunken fans also do, when needing to recycle their beer.


This makes you think of third world countries where the head of state insists on putting statues of himself everywhere.

MANNY'S MAIN CONTRIBUTION TO THE DODGERS!

Now that Manny Ramirez has left the Dodgers, we can now ask their fans and management what contributions did Manny make to the Dodgers. Other than many Dodger fans having a Manny wig stored in their closets, I can’t think of any other. 

TALK HOST RUDENESS: NOTHING NEW!

If you call in to SR610 when Brien Straw is on the air and he interrupts you while you’re talking, expect to be hung up on by Brien, if you voice displeasure, such as a caller did on Sunday afternoon (8/29) when he told Brien, “I’m the caller, you’re the host.” Co-host Greg Koch made no comment at the time, but after the break, he told Brien that he was a “bully”.

I have a feeling that HMW reader Earlis might have picked up on this: "Mr. Straw really sticks in my craw and it's okay to think you with swagger, but damn be nice to people. They listen to the commercials, hence they pay the bills and that would include the aforementioned Mr Straw's salary. He is on my last nerve..." END

Mr. Straw is doing a nice job of getting on people's nerves. Maybe someone at SR610 should speak to this guy.

THE TILLMAN STORY

I recently saw the documentary, "The Tillman Story" on DVD, which opened last weekend in limited release. For those interested in the subject and who are not familiar with the full story, it is worth the time to see it. Unfortunately, the Angelika Theater closed down this past weekend, so don’t expect to see it on the big screen in Houston, unless it is shifted to the Landmark Theater, AMC Studio 30, or some other local theater when its release is expanded on September 10.

At the time when I heard that Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinal safety, was leaving the NFL to join the U.S. Army, I didn’t know Pat Tillman from Chris Tillman, Charles Tillman, or Spencer Tillman, so I googled to find out about him.


Like most of us, I couldn't understand why he left a nice paying high-profile job in the NFL to join the Army. The film tries to explain why, then exposes how the government covered up Tillman's death in 2004.

According to the documentary, the Army and the government have yet to apologize to the Tillman family for lying about Tillman's death. Death by “friendly fire” is always tragic, but it is a fact of war. Just like in Vietnam and other wars, accidents happen and people die from them. You're supposed to learn from your mistakes and then move on.

The Tillman Story tells the story of the Tillman's family atttempt to get the real story of what had happened to their son and brother. You can check out the preview at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU0eEFHAAU4.

The debate will come up once again as it does every year around Memorial Day: Should Pat Tillman be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?


Sportswriter Peter King says no and presented his case in a column on SI.com. Here are a few of his reasons http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/peter_king/06/01/mail/index.html?eref=sihp:


1. The Pro Football Hall of Fame is for what men do on the football field.


2. In the 90-year history of the NFL, 24 young men who played in the league died serving the U.S. Google Bob Kalsu, the (Buffalo)Bills lineman who died in Vietnam. If Tillman goes in, should the other 23 also be enshrined?


3. Why should only veterans who died be admitted to Canton? What about those who may have served valiantly as fighter pilots in World War II and came home, or infantrymen who fought in Vietnam, or ... you get the picture.

Do you agree with King, or do you think Tillman is a Hall of Famer? Send your thoughts on this to crierscorner@aol.com and we'll post them.









FLUB OF THE DAY!

You can always rely on sports talk veteran, Rich Lord, to flub. On Monday's (8/30) afternoon drive show, Rich and co-host, Robert Henslee, were talking about the Houston Mount Rushmore of #34s - Earl Campbell, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Nolan Ryan.

Rich knew that Astro manager, Brad Mills, was part of Ryan's record-making strikeout history and said Mills was Nolan's 5,000th stikeout victim. WRONG!

Mills playing for the Montreal Expos at the time on April 27, 1983, was actually Ryan's 3,509th victim, which put him one ahead of Walter Johnson on the all-time strikeout list.

Once again, a lazy sports talk host misinforms the audience by not going to the computer to get the information correct.

FOR READING PURPOSES ONLY!

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