Happy 77th Birthday Bill Bradley

Today is the 29th, right?

TigerBlog has been all confused. He sent his BrotherBlog and Joe, the official TB brother-in-law, an anniversary greeting Monday. He thought it was nice of him to remember their special day.

Except Monday was the 27th. And their anniversary was the 28th, or yesterday.

TB actually realized his mistake before he heard back from either of them, so he sent a follow-up email correcting his mistake. It's from his newspaper days. You can always have a correction.

Actually, TB's favorite correction story from his own newspaper days came after the local high school tennis writer had made some sort of minor error. Hey, these things happen - and who is TB to say anything about an error when he doesn't even know what day it is?

Anyway, the editors were putting together the correction when one of them, possibly the single most cynical person TB has ever met - and 1) TB has met some cynical people and 2) this particular person is one of TB's all-time favorites - suggested this: "the paper regrets the tennis coverage."

Tremendous.

Meanwhile, happy anniversary to BB and Joe. At least TB had the right week.

And one thing TB didn't realize is that his brother's anniversary came on the same day as the birthday of the greatest Princeton athlete of all-time.

Okay, you can make a case for a very, very small handful of others. Hobey Baker, for one, and his birthday was Jan. 15. Or Dick Kazmaier, born on Nov. 23.

In this case, TB was referring, of course, to Bill Bradley, who turned 77 years old yesterday. How did TB come to realize that it was Bradley's birthday?

He heard it on "Pardon The Interruption."

TB didn't even realize the sports talk show was back on the air until yesterday, when he saw it in the channel guide. It's his favorite sports talk show, especially with Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon together. It's not forced and there's no screaming. It's just informed discussion with some genuine humor mixed in, not the phony kind where everyone laughs at nothing.

Anyway, it's back on.

If you haven't seen it, the show starts with a list of the biggest topics of the day, and the duo spends two minutes or 90 seconds talking about them. There is one segment of that and then another, and then when the final break is over, Kornheiser says "Happy Time people" and then talks about something light, such as an anniversary or something like that.

Or, as was the case yesterday, a birthday.

TB was only half paying attention at the time, but it certainly got his attention.

The only part he didn't like was when Kornheiser said "Princeton?" with great shock when he mentioned that the Tigers reached the 1965 Final Four, led by Bradley.

Other than that, Kornheiser had great things to say about Bradley. He talked about his time with the Knicks, with whom he won two championships. He mentioned his time as a Rhodes Scholar and how he went on to become a three-term U.S. Senator from New Jersey.

He also said that he figured that one day he would have become President.

Of course Bradley is by far Princeton's all-time leading scorer in basketball with 2,503 career points. Actually he's the Ivy League's all-time leading scorer. And he has the 11 highest single-game scoring totals in Princeton history as well.

And, best of all, Kornheiser also mentioned John McPhee twice.

It was the magazine article about Bradley's senior year entitled "A Sense Of Where You Are" and the subsequent book of the same name that really launched McPhee's career. He and Bradley have stayed extremely close through the years.

And so it went from not realizing that "PTI" was back on the air to having a segment on Bill Bradley and then ultimately some quality air time for John McPhee.

How much better than that does it get?

And so happy 77th to Bill Bradley, one day later.

It is one day later, right? It's the 29th, right? So yesterday was the 28th?