For a long time, my morning routine included listening to Mike and Mike in the Morning/Golic and Wingo, and seeing what was going on in the baseball world through NBC’s Hardball Talk blog. Last week, Mike Golic’s two decades as a morning host ended abruptly as co-host Trey Wingo quit the show and left Golic hanging. (Golic apparently found out the show was cancelled through the news and from Wingo or his bosses.) Yesterday, Hardball Talk was suspended, leaving its founding blogger Craig Calcaterra out of a job. (Golic still has a CFB gig with ESPN.)
I can’t say that Golic was one of the greats of the radio game, but I always enjoyed listening to him, and as ex-jocks go, he was better than most and also was sometimes more sensible than most. (His work without Mike Greenberg was surprisingly better than Greenberg’s without Golic.) There will eventually be someone else in the morning slot, but I suspect I am not the only one who wishes it could still be Golic and Whoever.
Craig, however, was one of a kind. He was obviously a huge baseball nerd, who turned his hobby into a career, long ago quitting his old job as a lawyer to have a dream job blogging about baseball. But he is also a nerd of other sorts, the kind who in reporting the end of the landlines connecting the dugout and the bullpen made a BSG reference about why the Galactica wasn’t destroyed. The sort who would take long digressions in his daily “And That Happened” post about the previous day’s games to talk about his favorite bands and movies (his all time favorite is The Conversation). And the sort who wasn’t afraid to wear his progressive heart on his sleeve, incurring the wrath of too many trolls. He encouraged readers to post and communicate, and I knew him just well enough that I was immediately moved to send him a note when I learned he was fired. He replied within an hour, so on top of everything else, he’s just a good guy.
I would like to offer you a Sports Corner exclusive and tell you what Craig is planning next. But that isn’t my news to share yet, so suffice it to say, Craig plans to find other outlets for his daily baseball briefing. I hope he lands on his feet otherwise, and that NBC is aware of what it’s losing.
Elsewhere…
- I continue to maintain that MLB’s current plans are untenable and should be cancelled. But on we go.
- The NBA Bubble seems to be working so far, even if a lot of it is so weird. But the games have been a lot better than I think we expected. I got my first chance to see Zion in action. Wow.
- The NHL Bubbles are also working so far, though not having any way to watch hockey, I can’t judge the quality.
- The PGA Championship is this weekend. I suspect there are more than a few golfers who are not unhappy there won’t be any fans to annoy them.
- The Pac-12’s football players are pushing back against the schools over a number of pandemic, social justice, and economic issues. Is this the start of the college sports revolution?
As ever, all sports subjects welcome. I hope in these very tough and painful times, I can provide a few minutes of diversion with Sports Corner today.