First Pitch

TigerBlog was watching TV the other day when a commercial with Chuck Woolery came on.

First, TB recognized Woolery as a game show host. Second, he couldn't remember which game show until he looked it up.

Woolery was the host of, among other games, "Love Connection," which he did for 11 years. Before that, he was actually the original host of "Wheel of Fortune."

If you add the amount of time TB has spent in his life watching both of those shows combined, by the way, it probably doesn't come to a full football game.

The commercial that featured Woolery was for Blue Emu, which 1) is a joint pain treatment and 2) has commercials on Princeton radio broadcasts. You can add 3) it doesn't have the strong scent that some other joint paint treatments do.

TigerBlog knows this from the last four words of the live read, which are "... and you won't stink." It's pretty good actually, since the knock on most of its rivals is that in fact, they do stink when you apply them.

What struck TigerBlog is the way Woolery said those last four words. He had the emphasis on "won't," whereas TB - and especially Patrick McCarthy, with whom TB does men's basketball games - have the emphasis on the "you."

TigerBlog would consider himself to be near the high end of non-radio people in terms of hours spent on the radio broadcasting games. He's done a lot of games in his Princeton career in football, basketball and lacrosse, even though he's not exactly what you would consider to be a professional announcer.

He'll be back doing some Princeton football radio this fall, something that he hasn't done in a long time. Actually, he can't really remember how long it's been, though he's pretty sure the last person he did a game with was Dan Loney. This time it will be with Cody Chrusciel.

TB was on the princetontigersfootball.com website yesterday when he noticed that there is a countdown clock for the first game, which is now 71 days away. Princeton will host Butler on Sept. 21, which will be Game 1 during the 150th anniversary season of college football.

As part of that celebration, Princeton will be playing a game at Yankee Stadium in November, against Dartmouth. That game will be Nov. 9, which will be three days after the actual anniversary of that first game, between Princeton and Rutgers on Nov. 6, 1869.

You can get more information about the game, including how to buy tickets, HERE.

In advance of that game, Princeton head coach Bob Surace and Dartmouth head coach Buddy Teevens will be throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium before Monday night's Yankees-Rays game.

As he writes this, it dawns on TigerBlog that he has never asked Princeton football coach Bob Surace why he is a Yankees fan. After all, Surace is a South Jersey guy, from Millville. How'd he get so into the Yankees?

No matter how, Surace is a huge Yankees fan. Throwing out the first pitch there has to be a huge thrill.

In addition to the first pitch and a bunch of other stuff, the football website is also releasing the results of a committee of 18 who attempted to chose the best Princeton players by position in the Ivy League era. The committee was headed by Jay Greenberg, a longtime sportswriter who now does much of the writing for the princetontigersfootball.com site.

The team was revealed Monday night at the annual alumni golf outing at the Springdale Golf Club, and it's being released in three parts on the football site. Goprincetontigers.com will have the full list early next week.

There are seven weeks left until the first athletic event of 2019-20, which will be a women's soccer game against St. Joe's on Aug. 30. As TB said, the first football game is three more weeks after that, which means that opening kickoff is 10 weeks from tomorrow.

That, though, does not mean there is no football news in the meantime. In fact, there's quite a lot of it.

There's the first pitch Monday. There's the release of the all-time team after that.

By the way, Chuck Woolery is a native of Ashland, Kentucky, a town that will be represented on that all-time team.