By CHRIS WALTERSKIRCHEN
For Kansas City Royals fans it has been a long-time coming since their hometown manager managed the All Star Game. Three weeks after managing in the 1981 All-Star game Jim Frey was fired and replaced by Dick Howser. Howser led the American League to an All-star game win in 1986 but shortly after the game was diagnosed with a brain tumor which immediately ended his managerial career and 11 months later would lead to his death.
The American League won the last All-Star game in Cincinnati starting a run of 6 consecutive wins. As a matter of fact since 1986 the American league has won 21 games, the Nationals 7, and the infamous tie in Milwaukee when the teams ran out of players.
Here is an ominous fact for the Grizzly football as they looked ahead to the November 21 game in Bozeman against MSU. Only 4 of the last 14 rookie head coaches have won their first “Brawl Of the Wild”. The last 3 Griz head coaches have lost their first encounter with the Bobcats and 6 of the last 7 Bobcat coaches have lost their first meeting with the Griz.
Kraig Paulson was the first Griz to make “ 37” significant and began the tradition of passing the number onto to a Montana native. Paulson was a Griz assistant for a total of 20 seasons and he had been on the staff at UNLV the past five seasons. For the 2015 season Paulson will be coaching the defense at Division II Northern State of Aberdeen South Dakota. The Wolves of Northern State host MSU-Northern in October.
Over the last 20 years the Los Angeles Dodgers have reached the post-season 8 times but in that span have never advanced to the World Series. In truth the last time the Dodgers played in the World Series it was 1988 when ignited by Kirk Gibson’s game-one heroics they defeated the Oakland As in 5 games. Since the Dodgers last appearance in the Fall Classic 24 other major teams have made at least one World Series appearance. The only MLB franchise that has gone to the Series at least once since 1988 are: Seattle, the Chicago Cubs, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Baltimore Orioles and the Montreal/ Washington franchise.
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Chris Walterskirchen has been an observer of Montana sports for nearly half a century. A Kalispell native, Chris has worked in various capacities for professional and college sports organization of at various times: ranging from announcing and statistical work to the concessions and even a stint as a costumed mascot.
Chris has academic degrees in communications and elementary education. His style of sports trivia involves more than just who won and who lost, but also focuses on the obscure or human side of sports. In this blog you will learn things like the Grizzly football team has won 210 games over the 19 seasons since they have had Monte as their mascot or that UNLV is the only school that both the Griz and Lady Griz have both faced in the NCAA basketball tournament
When not following sports Chris enjoys taking care of animals of all kinds (a peacock rescue?) and reading to pre-schoolers.