January was a bad month for losing regional sports personalities and February started no better.
Four days into it, north-central Pennsylvania scholastic sports broadcasting legend Barry Morgan passed away, at age 70, at Pittsburgh’s St. Clair Hospital.
According to friends, he went in for routine surgery, but while there it was discovered he had heart issues which ultimately took his life.
The former insurance salesman started his radio career in 1988 at Kane’s WLMI, then worked a stint at Bradford’s WESB-WBRR and for the past 14 years at Ridgway’s WDDH with a massive FM signal that reached into New York’s Southern Tier.
He was the station’s manager and, given his outgoing personality, also sold advertising.
Barry estimated he’d done over 2,500 high school broadcasts … football, basketball (both genders), baseball, softball and even the occasional wrestling match.
What made him unique, especially during his time at WDDH, was choosing what he was going to broadcast with management’s blessing. He wasn’t wedded to one school, and though “The Hound” was located in Elk County, he had a choice of Ridgway, Johnsonburg or ECC and, in football, even Kane and Sheffield. Barry selected the sport and school to be broadcast based on listeners’ interest in the event.
In recent years, he had done the Big 30 Charities Classic and, in the press box before the game, would ruminate to a captive audience about star regional scholastic athletes, the Steelers’ prospects for the coming season and lament his beloved, but struggling, Pirates.
He had a keen sense of humor and an infectious enthusiasm that always made me laugh and his passing leaves a major void in Pennsylvania high school sports broadcasting.
— George Hendryx, Olean’s octogenarian baseball junkie, forwarded an update the other day.
In the latest edition of Baseball America is a short piece on former Oiler and Allegany native Shawn Dubin.
A 13th-round draft pick of the Astros in 2018, the right-handed pitcher, who preferred soccer and played shortstop in high school, had a college résumé that included four schools: Jamestown Community College, Erie CC, Buffalo, until it dropped the sport his junior year, and Georgetown (Kentucky).
And while his career seemed road-blocked several times, it took a turn for the positive in November when Houston added him to the 40-man major league roster where he stands to be a bullpen option for the Astros.
Last season at Triple-A Sugar Land was aborted by elbow inflammation, but in 49 innings he struck out 69 batters. His four-seam fastball tops out in the high 90s and Dubin’s slider has been called one of the organization’s best.
The 6-foot-1 26-year-old has put on 30 pounds since being drafted and though he hopes to be a starter for Houston, his immediate future will likely be in relief.
— Mercifully, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics ended on Sunday night with a fireworks display that provided a lot more pizazz than the Games themselves.
Never has the world been more apathetic to an Olympiad than the one just hosted by China. And the numbers prove it.
The ‘22 Olympics, in primetime viewership – NBC, cable and streaming combined – was down 42% from Seoul’s audience in 2018, which itself wasn’t very good.
And, distressingly, NBC’s numbers were off by 47% from four years ago.
People just didn’t seem to care.
The ridiculous case of 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was a huge turnoff. Though she had a banned drug in her system, the gutless International Olympic Committee let her compete while every other women’s skating medalist paid the price. That Valieva failed to medal was poetic justice that only made the IOC and Russian Olympic Committee look worse, however, few actually blamed the victimized teenager.
Then there was the sad case of American skier Mikaela Shiffrin.
NBC chose the photogenic 26-year-old, who hoped to ski six events, to be its Olympic poster girl. After all, she had already medaled three times in previous Olympiads and was expected to at least equal that total in Beijing.
Instead, Shiffrin missed gates three times leading to Did Not Finishes in the slalom, giant slalom and alpine combined. She was ninth in the super G and 18th in the downhill. Her last bid for a medal came in the mixed team event, but the U.S. lost a tiebreaker and finished fourth.
But there she was, after every disappointing finish, looking into the cameras, tears streaming down her face, sharing every crushing emotion.
It was an overwhelming display of class and dignity and the polar opposite of the social media trolls who called her a “choker,” “disgrace” and worse.
To me, though, what was more bothersome was my own vibe – nothing overt or obvious – just a feeling that NBC felt she had let the network down by not cashing in its own hype.
Hopefully I’m wrong.
(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
