Day 59 without sports 📺: Were you a Gen X 'TWiB' kid or an 'NBA Inside Stuff' millennial?
It’s Saturday morning, in case you lost track.
And in simpler times, in a long-ago era when days had definition, Saturday morning also meant kids enjoyed generally free reign over the television, liberation from older siblings or parents who otherwise exerted control over the often singular tube in the house.
Way back in the day, that meant Saturday morning cartoons — with no Nickelodeon or Disney Channel, that was the lone window for fresh, animated content, be it Muppet Babies, Ninja Turtles or Bugs Bunny.
And for those of us for which sports were a surrogate third parent, the dial inevitably would turn to one of two shows.
For the latchkey, Gen X crowd, it was "This Week In Baseball". For late X-ers and early millennials, it was "NBA Inside Stuff."
And in this sports-less landscape, with nostalgia pretty much all we have left, it’s been fascinating to view our old habits through a new lens.
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FS1 has been replaying "This Week In Baseball" episodes on Saturdays, the next a 1989 installment airing May 16. ESPN’s Michael Jordan documentary has given us glimpses of the "NBA Inside Stuff" salad days in the early ‘90s.
The differences are stark, and perhaps provide a road map for how one sport’s cultural currency exploded, while another’s withered.
"TWiB" was appointment viewing in the three-channel era, providing a breezy, entertaining and pun-laden look around the majors. It was the perfect lead-in in many markets to NBC’s Game of the Week, which always held national appeal since your hometown team’s games very likely weren’t televised.
Its soundtrack of funk and classical jams, capped by John Scott’s still-chilling "Gathering Crowds" in the outro, will still have you ready to run through a wall — in super slo-mo, of course. Host Mel Allen was heard, but not seen, a tribute to his golden pipes that could carry a show on their own. It also kept the focus almost singularly on the game — and with SportsCenter beamed to barely any homes back then, how else were you to know what happened all week?
By 1990, the expanded reach of ESPN and the rise of regional sports networks devalued the concept of weekly highlight shows like "TWiB." It can be argued another development around that time loosened baseball’s grip on cultural relevance.
CBS kicked off a sports broadcasting merry-go-round in 1988 by paying a stunning $1.8 billion for exclusive rights to MLB’s playoffs and All-Star Game. Truth be told, that was all they wanted: Sure, they featured a game of the week, but it aired over just 16 Saturdays, making the sport that much harder to find.
Meanwhile, NBC in 1989 paid a relative pittance ($600 million for four years) to snag CBS’s rights to the NBA — Michael Jordan’s NBA. By 1990, the flip-flop was complete — and "NBA Inside Stuff" was born.
From the get-go, the emphasis was heavy on personality. Its ever-agreeable host, Ahmad Rashad, would soon emerge as Jordan’s media consigliere, and the show’s fast-paced and kid-friendly content humanized NBA players in a fashion the staid big leagues and brutally violent NFL could not.
To previous generations whose NBA entry points involved the smoke of Red Auerbach’s cigar or the sharpened elbows of Patrick Ewing and Kevin McHale, the Association beyond Jordan seemed exotic. New franchises with cartoonish uniforms — the Raptors, the Grizzlies, the Timberwolves? — and the continued rise of sneaker culture made it seem almost as fanciful as a video game.
As it turns out, a global marketing behemoth was taking shape.
Meanwhile, baseball sputtered into a strike and the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, a blessing if only to forestall by a year the disaster that was The Baseball Network, an inaccessible consortium of broadcasters who made CBS’s undistinguished rights-holding years look like Camelot.
In 1996, Mel Allen died, and the original "TWiB" was gone after the 1998 season.
It was revived in 2000 for a 12-year run on Fox — which restored some dignity to over-the-air baseball coverage — but the viewing landscape had changed. "Inside Stuff," meanwhile, made it to 2004, was brought back in 2013 by NBA TV, and it still lives, hosted by Grant Hill and Kristen Ledlow.
But the kids who first grew up on it are now binge-watching adults, passing along those habits to their own children. The concept of a singular Saturday babysitter coming out of the TV — be it mornings with Mel, or afternoons with Ahmad — is long gone.
And perhaps, we lost track of the days long before this pandemic.
Sports video of the day
Since we're already down this rabbit hole, enjoy some vintage "Inside Stuff" in this 1999 installment featuring a 20-year-old Kobe Bryant, a look at 7-year-old Tim Hardaway Jr.'s youth hoops exploits and Rashad intro'ing the weekly highlights (at the 17-minute mark) like this: "We'll pump up the volume with all the best plays from the first round - the song is by Kid, uh, Kid Rock and the song's called, uh, 'Ba-wita-ba-da-buh..."
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May 9 in sports history
- 1993: The top-seeded Phoenix Suns complete an unprecedented NBA comeback, losing the first two games of a best-of-five series at home before winning the final three, capped by a 112-104 overtime victory over the Los Angeles Lakers. Charles Barkley scored 31 points in the clincher.
- 2010: Dallas Braden tosses a Mother's Day perfect game for the Oakland Athletics, with his beloved grandmother in attendance. Braden this week acknowledged he was, uh, still a little tipsy when he took the mound that day.
Sports on TV today
Get this: A smattering of real, live action.
- ESPN+ PPV: UFC 249 from Jacksonville, featuring Tony Ferguson vs Justin Gaethje and Henry Cejudo vs Dominick Cruz. Streaming on ESPN+ PPV, 10 p.m. ET.
- CBS Sports Network: Professional Bull Riding, from Guthrie, Okla., 8 p.m. ET.
- ESPN2: Korean Baseball Organization — LG Twins vs. NC Dinos, 10 p.m. ET (replay)
- MLB Network: 1984 NLCS Game 5 - Chicago Cubs vs. San Diego Padres, 10 p.m. ET.
Games we're missing
NBA and NHL playoffs.
MLB
- Toronto Blue Jays at Oakland Athletics
- Washington Nationals at Chicago Cubs
- Los Angeles Angels at Baltimore Orioles
- Philadelphia Phillies at Pittsburgh Pirates
- Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees
- Texas Rangers at Tampa Bay Rays
- Cleveland Indians at Detroit Tigers
- Miami Marlins at Atlanta Braves
- Seattle Mariners at Houston Astros
- Arizona Diamondbacks at Milwaukee Brewers
- Kansas City Royals at Minnesota Twins
- New York Mets at St. Louis Cardinals
- Cincinnati Reds at Colorado Rockies
- San Diego Padres at Los Angeles Dodgers
- Chicago White Sox at San Francisco Giants