Marquette basketball was rolling coming into 1971. Al McGuire had the Warriors on a run of three straight 20-plus win seasons in an era when that threshold was a key benchmark for victories. MU made the Sweet 16 in 1968 and 1969. In 1970, a highly ranked team turned down an NCAA bid and won […]
Alabama football had been away from the national spotlight for a long time coming into 2008, at least compared to their high expectations. The Crimson Tide hadn’t even reached a major bowl game since 1999, and their last national title was in 1992. Alabama hired Nick Saban a year earlier to fix that. After retooling […]
The Los Angeles Lakers came into 1977 looking to get the ship turned around. A franchise that had won the title in 1972 and made the Finals nine times since relocating to Los Angeles in 1961, had fallen short of the playoffs two straight years following the retirement of the great Jerry West. Changes were […]
The 1977 Denver Nuggets were a big part of a historic pivot point in NBA history. There were one of four American Basketball Association (ABA) franchises that were merged into the NBA, and effectively ushering in the league’s modern era. With questions lingering as to how well the ABA newcomers could do, the Nuggets vindicated […]
The Cleveland Indians and Seattle Mariners had histories that were both very different and yet quite the same. The Indians were one of baseball’s oldest franchise. The Mariners, founded in the late 1970s, were a comparative newbie. But when it came to be strangers to October, they had a lot in common. Prior to 1995, […]
The 1995 Seattle Mariners had some great individual talent in Ken Griffey Jr. in centerfielder and Randy Johnson, who would go 18-2 and win the Cy Young Award on the mound. But it didn’t look nearly enough when the Mariners trailed the then-named Anaheim Angels by 12 ½ games in the AL West on August 15. Nor was Seattle in the picture for the wild-card spot…
The city of Cleveland resembled a baseball wasteland for decades. Their pennant year of 1954 was the last time they had been in the postseason. From 1969 through 1993, when they resided in the AL East, the Tribe finished over .500 three times—barely. But under the management of Mike Hargrove, with some good young hitters, […]
The Cincinnati Reds came into 1995 with the status of a winning franchise. They had gone wire-to-wire to win the World Series in 1990 and contended again in 1992. A brief slippage in ’93 led to the hiring of Davey Johnson as manager and immediate results followed. The Reds were leading the pack in the […]
1995 was the first year the Division Series became a permanent fixture on MLB’s postseason calendar. The format had been used only once before, in the strike-split season of 1981. It was also scheduled to debut as part of baseball’s new playoff structure in 1994 before the players’ strike cancelled the postseason entirely. Thus, the […]
The Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds each ran away with their divisions in 1995, and each validated that performance with Division Series triumphs. Their battle in the 1995 National League Championship Series produced a good, exciting games. But that did not translate into a good, exciting series. Atlanta was the team who kept getting the […]
The 1995 World Series was one baseball needed. After the strike canceled the postseason in 1994, it was the first Fall Classic in two years. Better still, it featured the two best teams in baseball during the regular season, the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians. Both were pursuing historic championships–the Braves hadn’t won it all […]
On the surface, the 1970 Marquette basketball season was a typical one during the coaching tenure of the great Al McGuire. The Warriors were a good team and a national contender. They had their high points and a few low points. It was like the seasons MU had enjoyed since McGuire’s rebuilding project started to […]