Forget About The Last Jedi, What About The First?

A LONG TIME AGO in a galaxy far, far away...

Star Wars, the book, published in 1976.

It was a time of single-screen movie theaters, of $4 tickets and $2.50 matinees. Cable television was in its 30-some-odd channel infancy, home video players were new. Three broadcast TV networks ruled the airwaves.

It was 1977 and that was all there was.

Into this now unimaginably finite universe burst Star Wars, a cinematic force the likes of which had never been seen. Looking back across a 40-year landscape of movies -- now nine -- animated TV series, toys, clothes and all manner of pop-culture bric-a-brac, it's virtually impossible to convey the revolutionary newness of that first film.

If you were born before 1972, you may be able to dimly recall the world before Star Wars. But that guy in the cubicle next to you at work, the one born in 1980 who is married with two kids and a mortgage? He hasn't got a clue.

Creating good guys and bad guys was Hollywood old hat. Believably placing them in alien locales, in highly-detailed spaceships or aboard a killer space station the size of a small moon -- one riven with seemingly bottomless, non-OSHA-compliant canyons and ledges -- seemed nothing short of miraculous.

About that tractor beam control...
From Starlog issue 14, June 1978

Light sabers crackled and hummed. Blasters blasted. X-wing and TIE fighters pitched, yawed and rolled with the maneuverability of F-15 fighters without the aid of CGI graphics.

All this sprung from the imagination of auteur George Lucas, his team of artists and a company called Industrial Light & Magic, accompanied by the iconic symphonic score of composer John Williams.

But to experience it, you had to go to the movies.

Some folks did just over and over and over again, trading the visceral newness for intimate familiarity with Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, with Han Solo and Chewbacca, with Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, and for their favorite scenes and lines.

But, then what?

I have a very bad feeling about this.

It would be five years before Star Wars' release on VHS, or cable TV. Longer for the broadcast networks.  So, where did one turn to get that feeling anew? Other media, of which there was plenty.

Star Wars -- the Book

Help me Obi Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.

Del Rey, a Ballantine Books imprint, actually beat Star Wars to the theaters, publishing its first paperback edition in 1976. Subtitled, "From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker," and not, "A New Hope," its 220 pages were positively canonical, filled with things implied but not shown on the silver screen, including the Anchorhead reunion of Luke and Biggs Darklighter and Han Solo's encounter with Jabba the Hutt before leaving Mos Eisley.

Wedge has a last name, Antilles. Han seems to have shot Greedo first, but the scene's description is vague. What's clear the Corellian reduced his adversary to "a smoking, slimy spot on the stone floor." Also worth noting: Luke's evident attraction to Leia (a concept not yet rendered icky by exposition in Return of the Jedi) and his X-Wing assignment is Blue 5, not Red.

At the end, Chewie gets a medal too. Justice.

Star Wars -- the Comic Books

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

If the 16 pages of full-color movie stills tucked into the center of the post-release edition paperback weren't enough, Marvel Comics had the perfect cure: the entire film, serially rendered in issues one through six of Star Wars, The Greatest Space Fantasy Film of All."

It was a perfect marriage. The movie, inspired by the Saturday matinee Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s, was already filled with literal and figurative cliff-hangers. Now Marvel offered more of the same, in breathlessly hyperbolic comic book form, illustrating many of those canonical novel scenes omitted from the film.

Ironically, while internally faithful to the original scripture, Marvel's cover art was anything but, depicting scenes that didn't didn't actually happen, or if they did, only allegorically. Not that I cared. It was Star Wars at 30 cents a pop. (Though the comic book series lived on, I stopped at issue six where the movie's story ended.)

Star Wars -- the Soundtrack

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster.

John Williams was a rock star. Not in the literal sense of the word as he made his name as an Academy Award-winning composers of classical movie sound tracks, but boy, could he write a memorable score. Jaws was his. Raiders of the Lost Ark too, along with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET - The Extra-Terrestrial and Superman - The Movie.

The double-album came with liner notes, and

a color poster of the climactic battle over the Death Star

If you can hear any of that music in your head, the credit belongs to him.

Still, Star Wars' symphonic score is in a class of its own, durable, instantly recognizable music, whose place in musical pop culture is renewed with every new installment. The American Film Institute named it as the greatest film score of all time.

All. Time.

And it's not just the fanfare that people recognize. Princess Leia had a theme of her own, as did Ben and Luke. Even Ben's death (non-spoiler alert 1) and the ensuing escape from the Death Star (non-spoiler alert 2) are recognizable.

The soundtrack album itself was something of an artifact even back in 1977, as it hearkened to a technology falling out of favor even then. The first disc featured sides 1 and 4, while the second had sides 2 and 3. Why? Because some phonographs had the ability to play records sequentially, holding one atop of the spindle while the other spun on the turntable below. When side 1 ended, the tone-arm swung clear, side 2 dropped and the arm moved back into playing position. Once done, all a listener had to do was flip the stack so that side 3 dropped down while side 4 waited above.

Oh... and the Star Wars long player came with this poster.

You're all clear kid! Now let's blow this thing and go home.

In addition to its four beloved sequels, three tolerated prequels and one kick-ass feature-length digression, the original Star Wars spawned an empire of Kenner action figures, Lego sets, The Clone Wars, posters, books, more books. t-shirts, pajamas, parodies, more parodies, still more silliness, Halloween costumes and masks.

President Ronald Reagan, himself a product of the Hollywood Dream Factory, probably did as much as anyone to hammer the movie into the American consciousness, borrowing it's "evil empire" theme and applying it to the old Soviet Union, then turning to a still-unrealized missile defense system immediately dubbed "Star Wars."

The force will be with you, always.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Tales from the College Football Orphanage

IT WAS A LITTLE NOTICE about a team whose problem was they attracted little notice. It stung all the same.

College football is like a religion for people in many parts of the United States. From Michigan's Wolverines, to Alabama's Crimson Tide, from the UCLA Bruins to the Georgia Bulldogs. There are Huskies and Cougars, Wildcats and Nittany Lions, Badgers, Golden Gophers, Tigers, Bears, Blue Hens, Volunteers and Cavaliers. Each has their revenant retinue of students, alumni and boosters.

I'm not one of them. Despite attending two Division I-AA schools, I'm among that sad set of graduates who've been disenfranchised.

I am a college football orphan.

Twenty years ago this week, Boston University pulled the plug on its 91-year-old football program after finshing its Atlantic 10 season with a 1-10 record. The end was reported in a New York Times news brief not much bigger than an obituary which, in a sense, it was. The paper said there were tears for the Terriers, shed by players, not fans.

Though I'd been out of college for a decade, I'd actually seen them just two months earlier when they played Hofstra University's Flying Dutchmen on Long Island. B.U. touted the game as an alumni event. Having gone to both schools, attendance seemed compulsory. I took my dad. We honored my undergrad and graduate institutions by switching sides at halftime.

The Dutchmen defeated the Terriers, 24-14. I don't recall the game being that close. Like getting together with an old friend, the reunion was somewhat bittersweet and I'd no idea it would be the last time I'd see them alive.

To be sure, it's not like Boston U. football had been much of a calling card for the school (unlike Boston College, which is not in Boston). B.U.'s golden era overlapped my time there when the Terriers were Yankee Conference co-champions three years running and, in the second year, actually advanced to the I-AA quarterfinals before being vanquished by Furman University's Paladins.

The Flying Dutchmen host the Terriers

Starring for the Terriers then: wide receiver Bill Brooks, who was drafted by the Indianapolis Colts and enjoyed a 11-year National Football League career during which he also played for the Buffalo Bills and Washington Redskins.

Earlier stars had included Miami Dolphins' quarterback-receiver-special teamer Jim "Crash" Jensen and Harry Agganis -- the Golden Greek -- who starred for B.U. in football and briefly for baseball's Boston Red Sox before dying at 26 from a pulmonary embolism.

Boston University just wasn't "a football school" and so 1997's season was its last. Hofstra, however, had other plans. The two programs seemed headed in opposite directions.

H.U. hired ex-New York Jets defensive coordinator Joe Gardi as head coach, expanded their stadium and started producing National Football League-caliber players: Jets receiver Wayne Chrebet who became a bona fide NFL star, then Super Bowl-winning New Orleans Saints receiver Marques Colston. On the 1997 squad, future San Francisco 49ers defensive back Lance Schulters. Still to come, Super Bowl-winning Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Willie Colon.

The Flying Dutchmen, soon renamed the Pride, made the I-AA playoffs in 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2001, that last appearance coming as co-champion of B.U.'s old Atlantic 10 conference.

In the end, that brief glimmer of bigger time football promise wasn't enough to inspire the dedication needed to keep Hofstra's program afloat. In 2009, a dozen years after the Terriers left the NCAA gridiron, the former Flying Dutchmen too sailed into oblivion.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Fall '77 Flashback: Birth of the Jock Rock Champion

STOMP! STOMP! CLAP! Stomp! Stomp! Clap! That unmistakable bleacher-quaking rhythm.

News of the World had a vertical gatefold featuring
 dying or dead band members, from the top Brian May,
Freddie Mercury, John Deacon and Roger Taylor

Forty years ago this week, "We Will Rock You" by the British glam rockers Queen perched at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, at the edge of certifiable hit status and on it way to immortality. Ahead of it: Foreigner's "Cold As Ice" at 39, Meco's disco Star Wars theme at 35, Barry Manilow's "Daybreak" at 23 and "Just Remember I Love You" by Firefall at 11.

The number one hit in the USA? "You Light Up My Life" by Debby Boone.

Heard any of those tunes recently?

Stomp! Stomp! Clap! 

Stomp! Stomp! Clap!

"We Will Rock You," was the first track for Queen's News of the World, released Oct. 28, 1977. The song spent 41 weeks on the chart, peaking at number 4 the week of Feb. 18, 1978. Today, it's the undisputed champ of that crowd-revving, opponent-intimidating music known as the arena anthem, aka Jock rock.

It didn't arrive alone. It wasn't even the A-side of it's own single. That honor went to "We Are the Champions."  Played in their logical order, they packed a one-two wallop virtually unseen in the post-Beatles pop era, a combination bravura and braggadocio.

We will kick your ass. We did kick your ass.

The News of the World LP went multi-platinum, selling more than 4 million copies. It also achieved a less well-documented status: the first album I ever bought with my own money.

"Buddy you're a boy make a big noise, playin' in the street, gonna be a big man some day. You got mud on your face, you big disgrace, kickin' your can all over the place..."

The Paperboy

In spring 1977, the broadsheet daily Long Island Press went out of business, leaving behind untended routes, log books, canvas bags and customers up for grabs. Newsday had become the island's dominant paper. In the demise of the Press, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post saw an opening.

Me and my best buddy across the street were recruited as freshly-minted paperboys for the sensational and sensationally inky NYC tabloid. Each of us would have dominion over roughly equal territories about a mile square.

LI Press bag, NY Post route, UK News of the World

And what a summer to deliver the Post.

Serial killer David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, was still at large, until he wasn't. "Caught!" blared the Post front page. A lightening strike at a Hudson River power station caused a regional blackout and in that darkness a horrific night of arson and looting across the city: "24 Hours of Terror" the paper exclaimed. Elvis Presley died.

Two months later, Reggie Jackson closed out the World Series with three straight homers as the New York Yankees beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, four games to two.

Folding and stuffing all those papers into my bag was a newsprint baptism.

The rest of the neighborhood didn't feel that way. Our so-called subscribers (who'd never actually subscribed, we just started delivering) gradually dropped the Post in favor of Newsday. "It's not you," they said. They just didn't like the Post or what it did to their hands and their clothes.

My pal quit first and his turf became mine. Small consolation as my customers were quitting too. Every week I had less and less. Soon I too realized it no longer made sense to soldier on.

The Purchase

But I'd made and saved some tip money and took some of it to Sam Goody (or maybe it was TSS) to buy my first piece of 12-inch vinyl.

We Will Rock You and more, on Electra Records

... "Singin' we will, we will rock you! We will! We will! Rock you!'

I already had a collection of 45s and a two-speaker Voice of Music stereo on which to play them. But this was a whole album, my only one, and I kept it in heavy rotation. Ask my sister. Ask my parents. Ask the neighbors. Ask them about the Brian May guitar solo.

On the whole, News of the World was, well, spotty. After those first two tracks, there was a notable drop in quality. The most memorable deep cuts were the down-beat "All Dead," the encouraging "Spread Your Wings" and the embarrassingly trashy "Get Down, Make Love." Not that I had anything to compare it to.

Four decades on, its those two opening tracks that still endure. WWRY topping list after list of the best of the jock rock genre, WAtC becoming a kind of gay anthem and then, incongruously, a Donald Trump campaign song. Finally, for your listening pleasure, here they are.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Last Call for Harvey's Wallbangers: The 1982 Brewers

When St. Louis met Milwaukee

IN THE END it came down to Gorman Thomas.

Of course it did.

By the time the Milwaukee Brewers slugger strode to the plate with two outs in the top of the ninth inning of the last game of the 1982 World Series, he was the walking embodiment of the franchise, its original building block and a last link to the team's origin as the Seattle Pilots.

The Brewers would live or die on what he did next. It was a moment 14 seasons in the making.

Thomas was the Pilots' first pick, taken 21st overall in Major League Baseball's June 1969 amateur draft. But, as he started his pro career with the Billings, Montana, Mustangs, the parent club's first and only season in Seattle was turning into a disaster.

They entered June in third place at 20-24, then slowly sank to the bottom of the AL West. Total attendance at worn-out Sicks Stadium, a minor league park meant as a temporary home during construction of a new domed stadium, was just 677,944. The Pilots were lost in a sea of red ink.

Efforts to sell them to local investors failed. Lenders called a $4 million loan. Soon they were officially bankrupt and, near the end of Spring Training 1970, gaveled to Milwaukee car salesman Allan H. "Bud" Selig, who re-named them the Brewers.

Though maligned as baseball commissioner for the World Series-killing 1994 work stoppage and then for the steroids era, Selig slowly, patiently, accrued the pieces of a contender. Maybe too slowly. Perhaps too patiently.

The joy of 1981. The expectations of 1982.

With their 1970 move to Milwaukee and the Washington Senators' relocation to Dallas-Fort Worth two years later, the Brewers shifted into the highly competitive American League East, the toughest division of its era, an era when making the playoffs required a first-place finish. Getting there meant overtaking perennial powers like the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

Thomas made the show in 1973. The next year, 18-year-old shortstop Robin Yount arrived. Slugging first baseman Cecil Cooper was acquired in a trade. Hard hitting outfielder Ben Oglivie too.

Sparkplug Paul Molitor came in 1978, finishing second in Rookie of the Year balloting. That same year Thomas slammed 32 homers and designated hitter Larry Hisle hit 34. Lefty Mike Caldwell won 22 games, finishing runner-up for the A.L. Cy Young Award and the Brewers won 93 games.

With all that, the team dubbed "Bambi's Bombers" in honor of manager George Bamberger, finished only third, 6.5 games behind the Yankees in a season remembered mostly for New York overtaking Boston for the A.L. East title after trailing by 14 games.

In 1979, Milwaukee moved up to second, winning 95 contests but finishing eight behind the pennant-winning Orioles. They slipped to third the following season, during which Bambi resigned due to heart trouble and was replaced by Bob "Buck" Rodgers. In 1981 they rebounded with the division's best overall record, but just half a title to show for it. They lost the first ever A.L. Division Series to the Yankees, three games to two.

The Seattle Pilots' only first-round draft pick.
(from the Brewers' 1982 yearbook).

Still, starter Pete Vuckovich had lead the league in wins and reliever Rollie Fingers' 28 saves earned him both the Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards. Both men had been acquired, along with catcher Ted Simmons, for four lesser players in a December 1980 deal with the St. Louis Cardinals.

That was supposed to be the big trade that put them over the top. Now they were back in "wait 'til next year" mode. And next year started badly.

With the team wallowing at 23-24, Rodgers was fired on June 1. His replacement was long-time coach and 1959 A.L. batting champ Harvey Kuenn who, though just 51, was bedeviled by health problems. Two years earlier, a blot clot had forced doctors to amputate the lower portion of his right leg.

His leadership ignited the team, inevitably nicknamed "Harvey's Wallbangers," who went 72-43 the rest of the way. They finished first but so did the Orioles, who took three in a row from Milwaukee over the season's final weekend to pull even. For the second year in a row, the Brewers had to play a division rival for the right to play on. This time they won, 10-2.

And so it was off to Anaheim to play the California Angels in the A.L. Championship Series, but without Fingers. A month earlier, the incumbent MVP had torn a muscle in his pitching arm, ending his season. His replacement was a rookie, Pete Ladd. They promptly lost the series' first two contests, despite starting Caldwell and Vuckovich, before rallying to win the last three.

Ladd saved two of those games, including the clincher, and the Milwaukee Brewers had their first pennant and a date with the National League champion Cardinals.

A singular event in Milwaukee Brewers history

Game 1 in St. Louis saw Molitor's five hits -- a record -- pace the Brewers 17-hit assault. The final: Wallbangers 10, Red Birds 0. The Cardinals regrouped, rallying late from a 4-2 deficit to take the second game 5-4. Two nights later St. Louis won even more decisively, 6-2, in Milwaukee. The Brewers bounced back to win games 4 and 5, sending the series back to the Gateway City, needing just a single win for their first crown.

They never got it.

Avenging their game 1 drubbing, the Cards decked the Brewers, 13-1 in game 6, setting up a winner-take-all game 7 climax.

St. Louis posted a run in the bottom of the fourth. Milwaukee came back with one in the fifth and two in the sixth to lead 3-1. From there, the Cardinals took over, scoring three in the bottom of that frame to take a 4-3 lead they'd never relinquish.  The Brewers would notch just one more hit, an infield single, over the final three innings, while the Cards would add two more runs in the eighth.

Simmons and Oglivie grounded out in the ninth, bringing Gorman Thomas to the plate to face the N.L.'s best reliever, Bruce Sutter. Thomas' 39 homers had led the A.L. in 1982. It was the second time he'd done so. The Pilots pick also drove in 112 runs while batting .245.

He worked the count to 3 balls, two strikes, fouling off three straight pitches before swinging over the top of the last. Joy in St. Louis echoed as heartbreak in Milwaukee. For five seasons, the Brewers ranked as bonafide contenders in baseball's the toughest division, only to finish first runner-up.

Manager Harvey Kuenn, seated second row center, surrounded by his Wallbangers
(from the Brewers' 1983 yearbook)

Yount, who hit .331 with 29 homers and 114 runs batted in, won the 1982 A.L. Most Valuable Player award. He'd do it again in 1989, eventually accrue 3,142 hits and make the Baseball Hall of Fame. Molitor too would make the hall after racking up 3,319 hits with the Brewers and later, the Toronto Blue Jays and Minnesota Twins. Vuckovich won the 1982 A.L. Cy Young Award.

Fingers too was later enshrined in Cooperstown as was his Cardinals counterpart, Sutter. St. Louis would win the N.L. pennant again in 1985 and in '87.* But for that era's Brewers, the championship window had closed.

Milwaukee backslid to 87-75 in 1983, costing Kuenn his job at season's end. They'd endure more than a decade as an A.L. also-ran before moving to the N.L. in 1998 and wouldn't make the post season until 2008. Three years later, they played the Cardinals for the National League pennant, losing 4 games to 2.

Kuenn died in 1988. He was just 57.

In 2013, the Brewers gave away a Gorman Thomas-as-Seattle Pilot bobblehead.

* An earlier version of this post had credited the Cards with just an '87 division title. The actually went to the series that year, losing to the Minnesota Twins in seven games.

 -- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Miami Diary: When J-E-T-S Spells P.T.S.D.

JOSH McCOWN STAMPED his right foot once, signaling the snap from center.

His New York Jets, having surrendered a 14 point lead to the Miami Dolphins, had the ball again with the score still tied 28-28, but buried at their 15 yard line with just 47 seconds left in regulation time.

My cousin, who grew up not far from the home of the 'phins, leaned over to me and predicted the Jets and McCown would run the ball once, perhaps twice, kill the clock and take their chances with overtime.

I concurred and as the Hard Rock Stadium crowd roared, watched McCown take the snap, then scramble toward the left sideline searching for an open receiver...

In my mind's eye, suddenly it was December 21 1997. Jets' ball, first and goal to go on the Detroit Lions' 9-yard line. A field goal would tie the game 13-13 with more than seven minutes to play. A win would send the Bill Parcells-era Jets to the playoffs for the first time.

QB Neil O'Donnell took the snap, handed the ball to rookie running back Leon Johnson, who scampered toward the right sideline then stopped abruptly before turning upfield and cocked his arm to heave the ball toward the end zone...

"Oh no, he's going to throw it..."

Thought coalesced, mouth agape, eyes wide with horror, all I could do was watch.

Two Jets games, 20 years apart and that exact same reaction, that exact same result: an interception followed minutes later by a loss.

Then it was an errant pass to Lions defensive back Bryant Westbrook. Today it was Dolphin Bobby McCain.

Does it really matter?

The Parcells Era came and went, as did the Al Groh Interval, the Herman Edwards Epoch, the Man-Genius seasons and Blustersaurus Rex. To no avail.

Now we are in year three of Bowles, Todd and year 47 of Super Bowls, none.

Traumatized, shell-shocked, we persist in the hope of a different outcome.

What is the definition of insanity?

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Perdition on Ice: The Rocky Start of Jersey's Devils

MY MACHINE SHE'S A DUD, out stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey.

Bruce Springsteen penned those lyrics in 1973, part of the 7:04 love song-turned-concert jam fest Rosalita (Come Out Tonight). Nine years later, with a little bit of metaphorical foresight, those words could have applied to the Garden State's first National Hockey League team, the New Jersey Devils, who debuted 35 years ago.

Strangers in a swamp land.

Far from a random appellation, the Devils got their name from the legendary Leeds devil, rejected spawn of Mrs. Deborah (Smith) Leeds of Galloway Township, a mother of 12 who wanted nothing to do with a 13th. "Let this one be a devil," she reportedly said.* And so it was that said child, once born, fled into the Pine Barrens from which it periodically emerges to terrorize the locals.

Its namesake hockey team too was rejected, twice. Born in 1974 as the Kansas City Scouts, the franchise lasted just two years in western Missouri before relocating to Denver as the Colorado Rockies. There they languished for six more seasons before being shipped east by John McMullen, owner of Major League Baseball's Houston Astros.

Ensconced in the brand new Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, the Devils were comprised almost entirely of players other teams didn't want, a kind of icy purgatory if not exactly hell.

Their primary benefactor was the reigning Stanley Cup champion New York Islanders, whose castoffs New Jersey general manager and coach Billy MacMillan readily acquired, despite having been voted off the Island himself as a player six years earlier.

Among the luminaries stocking the original Devils roster:

• ex-Islanders goalie Glenn Resch, former NYI forwards Dave Cameron, Hector Marini, Steve Tambellini and Yvan Vautour, plus ex-Isles defenseman Bob Lorimer**;
• ex-New York Rangers defenseman Carol Vadnais;
• future three-time Stanley Cup-winning Chicago Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville
• World Hockey Association survivor Mike Antonovich;
• struggling former first-round pick Paul Gagne;
• reluctant Finnish defenseman Tapio Levo; 
• team captain Don Lever;
• U.S. Olympic hockey star Neal Broten's brother, Aaron
• and MacMillan's brother, Bob.

They were a talent-poor squad crashing a metropolitan area that featured an Original Six franchise and, arguably, the best team in the world. The Rangers lost the Stanley Cup finals in 1979. The Islanders won the chalice in 1980, 81 and 82. The Rockies had been to the playoffs. Once. In 1978.

Homesick Finn Tapio Levo, the team's best defenseman and
forward Hector Marini, whose solid first half made him the Devils first all star

If there was any chance of alchemy by proximity to their Long Island progenitors, that likely vanished just days into the season when MacMillan dealt center Merlin Malinowski to the Hartford Whalers for still another ex-Islander, enforcer Garry Howatt, and speedy forward Rick Meagher.

Clad in red, white and green sweaters emblazoned with a stylized red NJ crest, those first edition Devils finished Hades in the NHL's Patrick Division with a record of 17-49-14.***

For a time, their breakout star appeared to be Marini, an energetic forward unable to break into the Islanders talented lineup. He started the season strong and was New Jersey's lone delegate to the All Star Game at Long Island's Nassau Coliseum. Marini even assisted on one of three goals scored by the Prince of Wales Conference in a 9-3 Campbell Conference blowout. Wayne Gretzky scored four times for the winners. It was downhill from there.

The inaugural season ticket pitch. It wasn't entirely hyperbole.

Though Marini soon faded, MacMillan assembled the Kid Line, featuring Broten, 22, flanked by 20-year-olds Gagne and Jeff Larmer, an early-season call-up who potted 21 goals and 45 points in 65 games.

Broten lead the Devils in scoring with 16 goals, 39 assists and 55 points.

Their top-scoring defenseman, Tapio Levo, posted seven goals and a team-best 40 assists, but he didn't want to be there. Coaxed to rejoin the team in October, at season's end he left for home, never to return.

It was not all for naught. Their lousy finish enabled them to take forward John MacLean sixth overall in the 1983 NHL draft. He lasted 14 years, scoring 701 points, second in franchise history. Already in the pipeline, defenseman Ken Daneyko, their all-time games leader, whose sweater number 3 is retired, and high scoring forward Pat Verbeek.

Those three men would team with Broten and the yet-to-be-drafted Kirk Muller to lead the team to the playoffs in 1987-88. Though the road was long, the Devils finally won Lord Stanley's cup in 1995 and again in 2000 and 2003.

*Though accounts of her fateful utterance sometimes differ.
** With the Devils' first first-round pick, in the 1982 draft MacMillan took Rocky Trottier, whose older brother Bryan already starred for the Islanders.
*** That's ties, not overtime losses, which weren't introduced until 2005-06.

Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Discovery's Long Journey Through Time and Space

LISTEN. Starship Discovery has come unstuck in time.

A 1979 fanzine celebrates ST's return

Blame it on a highly localized distortion in the space-time continuum, a Kerr Loop formed from superstring material, the slingshot effect or the Guardian of Forever.

Blame it on Q.

Call the Temporal Integrity Commission or just call it fate, the U.S.S. Discovery, NCC-1031*, took flight Sunday night, 40 years after it was designed by Ralph McQuarrie, the artistic visionary who gave Star Wars its retro-futuristic aesthetic.

McQuarrie's concept was created for a never-made first Star Trek movie, variously titled Planet of Titans and Planet of the Titans. That project was scrapped in favor of a never-made TV series, Star Trek Phase II which later morphed into Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Thirty-nine years ago this month, McQuarrie's work on Star Wars, Star Trek and the original Battlestar Galactica were the subject of a feature article in uber-geeky Starlog magazine, but there his reimagined starship Enterprise seemed destined to remain. The project for which it had been commissioned, dead and gone.

Starship Discovery's primordial ancestor, the McQuarrie-drawn Enterprise
as seen in Starlog 17, October 1978.

The next Enterprise we all saw was the instantly recognizable big-screen version of the original NCC-1701 (no bloody "A," "B," "C," or "D"), not McQuarrie's radical departure. Still fresh in mind, that triangular-hulled ship got a cursory hat tip in a 1979 fanzine celebrating the franchise's revival before fading from view. Or so it seemed.

From the 1979 "Fandom Triumphs" fanzine

There's an ecological efficiency to the Trek universe, the ability to recapture and recycle concepts once they're made a part the canon and even when they're not.

James T. Kirk got his middle name -- Tiberius -- from an animated series episode. Stories commissioned for Phase II were rewritten for The Next Generation. The Enterprise self-destruct sequence in ST III, The Search for Spock was first uttered in the TOS outing Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.

Megalomaniac Khan Noonien Singh got his start back in 1967's Space Seed, returned in ST II, the Wrath of Khan and was still menacing as of 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness.

True to his name, Kahless the Unforgettable has not been forgotten. From his first appearance in 1969's The Savage Curtain, the Klingon Empire's progenitor remains a motivating force for Klingons in Star Trek Discovery.

So it is that McQuarrie's starship finally got a series of its own after languishing in the shadows for years as a study model and spare part.

A space-faring Flying Dutchman, the McQuarrie mock-up drifted through the Trek universe for decades. It was a dim shape hidden in the shadows of the vast space dock in 1984's Search for Spock. Six years later it was allegedly among those ships wrecked in the Battle of Wolf 359 in TNG"s Best of Both Worlds before appearing again in NextGen's Unification.

Ralph McQuarrie's circa '77 sketch, published in Starlog, became the basis
for last year's Discovery flight teaser.

Then, 14 months ago, one of his illustrations came to life in a Discovery teaser video: an angular starship hidden within an asteroid that takes flight to a pulsating, hammering soundtrack. Its shape and its lineage were both unmistakeable and controversial. It was a Federation starship unlike any other and it was 39 years old.

The video drew more than 2.3 million views and more than 4,600 comments, among them, "ugh," "hideous" and "USS Cheese Wedge."

To be sure, McQuarrie's ship evolved over its four decades of phasing in and out of the Star Trek universe. The original drawing featured a ship with small, cylindrical nacelles and a solid saucer section. The Discovery test flight version's saucer was ribbed, it's nacelles squared off. The ship as finally seen in episode three of the new series, Context is for Kings, features a never-before-seen saucer of concentric rings.

It's not exactly Ralph McQuarrie's starship, but it's not your father's either. Sadly, the illustrator didn't live to see his vision come to life. He died in 2012 at the age of 82.

Owning it

Last week in this space, I questioned the need for a new Star Trek series, what with six predecessors and 13 feature films. More Trek seemed, well, excessive. Still, I watched the broadcast debut, and then episodes two and three on CBS All Access.

I confess, I'm hooked on its good, evolving story line. It's unlike any Star Trek outing before and that raises a some questions: is it true to Gene Roddenberry's vision? Is it Star Trek in name only? A colleague said Fox's send-up, The Orville, is a better Trek than Discovery.

Blasphemy?

Not saying I'm not watching. I'm just not sure. Feel free to vent in the comments box below.

* When this article first ran, I'd transposed the registry number as 1301. It is now correct.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Trekdom's New STD: The Gift That Keeps on Giving?

TOS, TAS, THEN AFTER A TIME, TNG. DS9, VOY and most recently ENT.

Compiled by fan Bjo Trimble and published in 1976,
the Concordance was an all-in-one guide to the first
series and animated sequel. That's all there was.

Now there's STD, hold the penicillin.

For Trekkers of certain age, the coming debut of Star Trek Discovery represents something of an embarrassment of riches. Not to look a gift alien artifact square in the orb, but one wonders in this digital age when anything seems possible and all forms of Star Trek are available all the time, whether a new series is necessary or even desirable.

Heresy, I know, but bear with me.

Between NBC's cancellation of the original series -- TOS to the Trek cognoscente -- and 1979's turgid but welcome Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there was a generation of us who learned to survive and to sustain ourselves on what we had.

What we had wasn't very much: nightly reruns on New York's WPIX-Channel 11, a dozen volumes of James Blish adaptations, original novels, bad comic books and Star Trek conventions. For a lucky few in the NYC-metro area, there were dedicated stores, The Federation Trading Post in Manhattan and on Long Island, Star Base I.

Still, we survived. Without the Internet, without streaming on-demand video, we survived (thank you VHS format).

Set phasers on stunned?
The next next next generation

STD (would you prefer DIS?) follows the animated series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the lowly-regarded prequel Enterprise. That's 546 hours of TV, 23 days worth, non-stop. Plus there's first-generation movies one through six, next gen movies seven to 10, and three alternate timeline gen one re-boots. Add about 23 and 1/2 hours, or another day, for them.

Given no other obligations, including meals, bathroom breaks and sleep (not to mention sex, bathing or gainful employment) one could spend the better part of a month marinating in all things Star Trek. And that's only the official canon. Youtube offers even more.

Now we get a series tailor made and delivered for binge-watching.

William Shatner, yes him, notoriously once told a room full of Trekkies, "get a life." Sure that was said in the context of a Saturday Night Live skit, but do you really think the thought hadn't crossed his mind before that?

So the question is, do we really need another Star Trek series? Perhaps more specifically, do we need this one? I am a bit wary. Call it Star Trepidation.

STD has had a notoriously difficult gestation. It's Sept. 24 debut comes six to nine months behind schedule, on a CBS for-pay streaming platform. Original show-runner Bryan Fuller quit. Early reviews have been... well there aren't any. They're embargoed.

Plus, it faces immediate competition from the already-airing, not-for-pay, somewhat tongue-in-cheek FOX offering, The Orville, which is supported by TNG-era producer Brannon Braga and boasts episodes directed by him and by Trek alumni Jonathan Frakes and Robert Duncan McNeill.

Conventions like Star Trek America helped sustain the
series' hold on the public consciousness in the between
the original incarnation and most of its subsequent sequels

Jury's still out on the semi-satirical Orville, which remains balanced on the knife-edge between serious and silly (see episode 3, "About a Girl.").

Discovery on the other hand, appears deadly serious, maybe too much so for an era when reality -- killer storms, earthquakes, nuclear saber rattling and reanimated racial animus -- seems to cry out for a something sunnier, more optimistic, something like Star Trek was born to be and was until the 12th movie, Into Darkness.

Plus DIS is a prequel, immediately challenged to fit into the canon without disruption. If the short-lived Enterprise proved one thing, dedicated Trekkers and Trekkies are a persnickety bunch. They take their continuity seriously.

Tonight, millions of us Star Trek fans will hunker down in front of our TVs, and tune in for the premier. First one's free! How many of us will stick around when it's not?

That will be the biggest discovery of all.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive.com

Happy Birthday to the U.S. Constitution

THE U.S CONSTITUTION IS DEAD! The constitution is alive! It's both. It's neither. Only the founders know for sure and for sure they're dead.

On this date in 1787, that document was signed by a collection of people who managed to put aside their differences to forge a compromise that became the greatest governing document the world had -- and has -- ever seen.

The original Constitution, on display at
the National Archives in Washington DC

Since then its been revered and criticized, praised and fought over, a virtual Rohrshach inkblot of political preferences and predispositions, with those fighting over the framers' intent swearing the only correct reading favors their side, whatever side that is.

"The Eed Plebnista," and "holy of holies," it was also the great reveal of one of the worst episodes of the original Star Trek, keying on its opening incantation, "We, the people."

Though surely not the framers intent, the preamble following those words proved surprisingly singable, educating a generation of kids that grew up on School House Rock (though John Popper of Blues Traveler fame, did a pretty kickin' rendition too).

Among its 39 signatories: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin. Among those who refused: Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, father of the gerrymander, and Virginians Patrick Henry, he of "give me liberty or give me death!" and George Mason.

Of course, the story of the Constitution didn't end with its drafting 230 years ago, or with its subsequent ratification. Not even close. While its original three articles set up our government, Congress, the presidency and the judiciary, there were a host of issues left unaddressed, though not for long.

Two years later, 10 amendments were added, a set of protections known as The Bill of Rights -- which Mason had protested the absence thereof -- those amendments guaranteeing:

• free speech, freedom of assembly of religion and of the press; 
• the right to bear arms;
• the right to be free from having soldiers garrisoned in your home;
• to be free from illegal search and seizure, 
• to due process and freedom from being forced to testify against yourself or have your property taken without compensation;
• to a speedy trial, with a lawyer, with the right to question your accusers;
• before a jury of your peers;
• after which you cannot be subject to cruel and unusual punishment;
• an acknowledgment that people have rights it may not address;
• and that those powers not covered by its three original articles, were left to the people and the states.

LIFE Magazine celebrated the Constitution's
200th Birthday in its Fall 1987 issue

Down through the years, still more amendments were added, the guarantee of equal protection of the law, prohibiting slavery, briefly and spectacularly unsuccessfully banning the consumption of alcohol, giving blacks and women the right to vote, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, giving the government the right to collect taxes and limiting presidents to no more than two consecutive terms in office. 

And still it people say it is simultaneously overbroad and incomplete. There are those who say it's a living document one that must be read in the context of its times, containing implied rights, like the right to privacy, there are others who say that's its wrong to try to read into the document what isn't there, that it's a dead document, its meaning static and fixed, to be applied as written.

Its unlikely the debate will ever end and that's a part of its inherent greatness.

The Constitution is dead! Long live the Constitution!

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

History and Mystery of the N.Y. Mets' Tackler, John Stearns

O.J. SIMPSON OR STEVE CARLTON? Pro football or big league baseball? Thirty-two or 32. That was the choice facing then 21-year-old John Stearns, a two-sport star at the University of Colorado drafted in 1973 by the NFL's Buffalo Bills and the National League's Philadelphia Phillies.

A UC Buffaloes defensive back, Stearns set a team record with 16 interceptions. As catcher for its baseball team, he'd led the NCAA with 15 home runs as a senior. The Bills, understanding he was leaning toward baseball, made him a 17th-round pick. The Phillies selected him second in the nation and that was that.

Stearns, still in his Phillies uniform,
 from the 1980 Who's Who in Baseball

A year later, Stearns arrived in the City of Brotherly Love for a brief sip of coffee: one game, two at bats and his first big league base knock before being dealt to the New York Mets as part of a package for reliever Tug McGraw.

There, within two years, he succeeded veteran Jerry Grote as the Mets number one catcher, a slot he'd solidly hold for just three years before a succession of injuries gradually wrecked his career. 

While the bold type will tell you Stearns made the NL All-Star team four times during his Gotham tenure, there's no official record of the former football star's on-field tackles and there were many.

The night in question

Seems Stearns, nicknamed "Bad Dude," never lost his defensive back intensity, at times venting his frustrations on Atlanta Braves mascot Chief Noc-a-Homa, Montreal Expos pitcher Bill Gullickson and Pittsburgh Pirates perennial all star Dave Parker -- no tackle there, but a spectacular home plate collision in which the colossal outfielder sustained a broken cheekbone and jaw.

The Mets backstop had a particular intolerance for fans running on the field and Shea Stadium security's inability to catch them.

Early in the 1982 season, as the Mets were trying to lockdown a victory over the defending World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers, two fans ran onto the the field in the 9th inning. One was caught as he tried to climb over Shea's outfield wall. The other led security on a chase across the infield, where an impatient Stearns slammed him to the turf. 

The New York Times reported the next day, "[Reliever Neil] Allen's work was interrupted when two fans ran onto the field. One was apprehended by security guards as he tried to scale the outfield fence. The other eluded guards to shake Tom Veryzer's hand before being tackled by Stearns, a onetime defensive back at the University of Colorado."

My May 15 1982 scorecard with the notation:
 "Penalty 12 Stearns, holding. 15 Yards
 1st Down, LA." 

So that happened. But it may not have been the first time, or even the second, or the last that some wayward Mets fan met the former college football star the hard way.

Earlier this year, the Centerfield Maz blog reported a similar event on June, 12 1980, also in a game against the Dodgers. But that's not the end of it.

The fan site UltimateMets.com lists every man who ever played for the Mets. Each of those entries includes a page where fans can log their own memories of that player. Stearns' propensity for open field fan tackles is mentioned there a lot, but no two fans seem to agree on the details.

Some say he was catching that day, others say he was manning third base. Some, including me, say it was an infield takedown, others say the outfield. At least two of the entrants corroborate the Centerfield Maz date, saying they were there too.

So here's my question, fellow Mets fans of a certain age:  Just how many times did Bad Dude Stearns take down a runaway fan? 

Bonus question: Was one of them you?

Belated thought: John Stearns would know for sure. Anyone know where to find him?

Please enter your comments below. If you're new to this site, check out the roster of topics. Plenty here about the Mets and more.

Most importantly, thanks for reading.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Cali Coda: Kingman's Career Flickers Out in Phoenix

FOR DAVE KINGMAN, THE END CAME SUDDENLY, unceremoniously and ignominiously. When he played his last game for the Oakland Athletics in 1986, nobody eligible for baseball's Hall of Fame had hit as many home runs as him, 442, and been denied induction. And nobody had ever hit so many homers in a single season, 35, and not played again in the majors.

1979 -- Kingman's Peak
.288, 48 HRs, 115 RBIs

Surely, there would be another chance for the rangy slugger whose long-limbed upper-cut swing could seemingly send horsehide spheres rocketing into orbit. Besides, when he'd signed with the A's just two years earlier, Kingman had one of his best years, batting .268, blasting 35 homers and driving in a career-best 118 runs.

The home runs kept coming, precisely 100 over three seasons in the East Bay, but that's where the good news ended for the man variously known as Kong and Sky King. As the A's primary designated hitter in '86. he'd batted just .210 and, while he drove in 94 runs, he'd struck out 126 times and had an on-base percentage of just .255.

Kingman, who had a history of stormy press relations,  also sent a live rat, in a pink box, to a female sportswriter. Unamused, the A's fined him $3,500 and threatened to release him if he ever did something like that again. When his contract expired at season's end, Oakland opted to let Kong go, replacing him with another aging slugger, Reggie Jackson, who starred for the A's in the early 1970s.

Surely somebody was in the market for his occasionally electrifying displays of power. But Kingman -- turning 38 and just 58 homers shy of the 500 mark that could potentially punch his ticket to Cooperstown -- had no takers.

Before there were Arizona Diamondbacks...

His 16-year-career, bounding from the San Francisco Giants to the New York Mets, to the San Diego Padres, to the California Angels, to the New York Yankees, to the Chicago Cubs, back to the Mets then to the A's, appeared over.

But not quite yet.

In early July, he signed a minor league contract with his original team, the Giants. Sky King would DH and play first base for their AAA affiliate, the Phoenix Firebirds. There he'd try to rise from the ashes for one more shot at the bigs.

Kong's last call would last about three weeks, during which he'd bat just .203 -- against minor leaguers on the way up and retreads trying to prolong their careers just as he was -- with two homers and 11 RBIs. In 59 at bats, he fanned 12 times.

On Sunday night, Aug. 2, he played first base for the Firebirds as they took on the Los Angeles Dodgers' top farm club, the Albuquerque Dukes, losing 6-5. In what may have been his last at bat as a pro, against former big league reliever Pete Ladd, mighty Kingman struck out. Two days later, having not played again due to a toe injury, he exercised an escape clause in his contract and released himself.

No rising from the ashes on this night.

Done.

Except for this: It was later adjudged the the 86-87 off-season was one in a series where Major League Baseball's owners colluded to hold down salaries and deliberately avoided bidding against each other for free agents.

Though in retrospect, Kingman's career appeared to end on its merits, he was only in Phoenix because no big league team offered to sign a man who'd just finished second in the American League and third in the majors in home runs.

His Firebirds fadeout followed the conspiracy that consigned him there.

In 1995, eight years after his career was euthanized by Pete Ladd in the Arizona desert, arbitrator Thomas Roberts awarded Sky King $829,850 in damages.
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the eighth and last part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive