Recently in Sporting life Category

This past June, I attended the Special Olympics Summer games, held at UC Davis. 800 athletes from northern California participated in track & field, swimming, bocce and tennis.

Brittnay Joy is not directly related to me, but she's as dear to me as any granddaughter. I call her my "Granddaughter of the Heart." She competed in swimming events at these Special Olympics, representing Team Folsom Hills from Folsom, Calif.

On Friday Brittnay settled into a dorm room, where she stayed for two nights with other girl athletes. That evening featured opening ceremonies at Aggie Stadium in Davis. A torch, the "Flame of Hope," had been carried by over 500 law enforcement personnel throughout northern California. The last runner lit the Olympic cauldron with the torch — Let the Games Begin!

Through all the events, you could hear all the sounds of people having a good time, as well as cheering for every competitor. We were loudest in the Aquatic center, of course. It was exciting as Brittnay and other swimmers prepared. Coaches reminded the swimmers to keep their heads down or just to keep going to the end of the lane.

Brittnay competed in three events with 16 to 21 year olds. She won a bronze medal in the 50m and gold medals in the 25m and 4x25m relay. It was really an amazing weekend for Brittnay.

Her fellow athletes had an amazing weekend too. At the finish, volunteers waited with open arms to give hugs and praise for a job well done. Because whether the athletes won a gold medal or a fourth place ribbon, all were "brave in the attempt."

This story is having its day on the web. I like it, myself.

Paul Schultz, U.S. Coast Guard investigator in Key West, Florida, found a digital camera in the water. He couldn't identify the owner, but the content was secure. He posted the images on the web, and, people being people, word got around and the owner was found. 1,100 miles away across the Caribbean Sea.

Turns out a group of divers in Aruba had lost the camera a while before. Currents brought the camera to the Florida Keys.

At one point, the camera caught a ride with a passing sea turtle, who somehow managed to get video rolling. A 5-minute video is posted on YouTube and shows life at sea from the vantage of one of its citizens.

It's very cool. Video done by one of our neighbor species, and personally moved across space by the filmmaker him/herself.

(Sea turtles, rumor has it, have a thriving social media for themselves, especially video. I'm unable to access it, but I hear their humor is really, really funny.)

On this day in 1973, Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees strode to the plate as the very first designated hitter in a regular season Major League Baseball game. Since that dubious moment, the American League, and games between it and the National League, have featured the DH.

Whether you' re for or against the rule — and there are still arguments about it, trust me — the DH changed the game. Pitchers don't hit anymore, which is maybe OK because they are notoriously bad hitters. And good hitters who are not good fielders have a different value in the game. For aging stars, there's an extra year or two in the limelight. There's a new position on the field — er, in the game, that is. (DH's don't really take the field , per se — they make more of an appearance.)

In the good ol' days, a strategy was needed to work around the pitcher coming to bat. Thus bunts, steals, pinch hitters, defensive shifts, etc. All that stuff was employed because teams had to work around a poor hitter. With the DH, there's an extra good hitter that has to be worked around instead. Strategy and finesse suffer, according to purists.

On the other hand, the game flows nicely hitter to hitter, without the interruption of a lousy bat. All hitters are capable of professional-grade output, and fielders and pitchers get no moment's reprieve. The game is streamlined, according to innovators.

All in all, the DH has been around almost as long as it wasn't around, and it ain't going away soon. So Happy Birthday (sort of), designated hitter! Here's to Orlando Cepeda, Dave Winfield, Edgar Martinez, David Ortiz...

Over a century and a half ago, James Marshall's famous gold discovery, in the tailrace of John Sutter's recently completed lumber mill on the American River, easily ranks as one of the world's great events. While Concord's "shot heard round the world" was nearly instantaneous, the momentum of the gold rush actually took a while to gain momentum.

Here's a quick test: What year was that token nugget discovered?

Most people think 1849. The actual year was 1848. And it was even early in the year: January 24 to be precise! And technically this wasn't even the first gold discovery in California.

To understand the delay between the discovery and the actual rush, we need to study the speed of communication before Statehood, from California to the Eastern States. We also have to remember the skepticism of the people of news reports they read in the papers.

The time was ripe for migration, given California was in the process of being ceded to the United States following the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hildago, signed February 2, 1848 — a full week after Marshall's discovery.

First reports of the gold discovery arrived in San Francisco within a month and in the East during the summer. Few took notice, however. Even the military leadership in California was initially skeptical of the quantity of riches. Then a combination of marketing and bureaucratic reporting combined to ignite one of the greatest migrations in history.

The marketing started with the famous parade of Sam Brannan in May through the streets of San Francisco exclaiming gold on the American River while holding a bottle of gold. Since he had already cornered the market in mining supplies, the excitement he created drove up the prices of his goods many fold. Within weeks the town of San Francisco began to empty.

Like me, Jim Davis loves TV. But Davis is ahead (I'm not really keeping track) because he loves what's on now, where I like old stuff. It gets interesting (weird, maybe?) when you consider Jim Davis's "now" is the old stuff I like, because he was a TV nut 60 years ago. So we're sorta contemporaries, Davis and me.

Sorta.

Davis was spotlighted in the April 1949 issue of Wells Fargo Messenger. The Messenger was the newsletter that went to team members across the footprint, which was limited to San Francisco in those days. The older version of the Messenger, which we've written about before, was distributed to Wells Fargo Express team members.

Wells Fargo & Co.'s Express was nationalized by the US government in 1918 as a wartime measure, and Wells Fargo was left with its one banking office in San Francisco. These mid-century Messengers had a lot of items about new hires and Company picnics. Reading through these timeless communiqués, it seems like Wells Fargo had a continuous photo contest — and the "seagull on the shore at sunset" won every time.

Anyhow, Davis was an interesting story because he was quite the expert on that newfangled gizmo, television. In 1949, radio was still going strong and the movies had yet to suffer television's astounding popularity in the '50s. But TV was taking off  — there were about a million sets in operation and the lineup of shows was expanding. The first Emmy Awards  were presented that year. And since Davis knew so much about something so cutting-edge, the Messenger took it upon itself to share his expertise with team members.

The Q&A is quite helpful. A 10-inch screen — top of the line, folks — with a magnifier attached is "hi def." And that magnifier lets you buy the TV already assembled! Why sweat?

And how 'bout those 4 hours of programming each night? (Pass the ketchup.)

But here's how new the application was. To show Davis as a TV geek, they thought it appropriate to show him holding a length of film. You know, like the movies, only in your living room. And not film.

Awesome.

Nothing is as heartwarming as a funny-looking dog. You just know he's your best friend EVER.

Second on the heartwarming list has to be a funny-looking building — it simply HAS to be a good place if it looks that bad.

Of course, sometimes a structure looks bad because of the architectural sensibility of the time. Victorian buildings, for instance, are the absolute definition of "WAY too much of everything!"  Or mid-twentieth blocks  that eschewed anything that might suggest humans were inside.

Then there's Kennedy-era  cool. Like the A-Frame Wells Fargo branch built in the early 60s in Eureka, California. The idea was, I think, to suggest Mountains and skiing and a Winter Olympics vibe.  That's just my opinion, of course, but I'm generally right about things like this that don't matter.

In 1944, Wells Fargo plopped a trailer at the U.S. Naval Air Station   in Alameda, California, to provide quick financial services for service people and employees at the base. The trailer was there till the mid-60s, before Wells Fargo consolidated the several branches there into new buildings.

In 1960, American Trust Company and Wells Fargo merged. The combined company had an office aboard the cruise ship SS Monterey.  The sign detailing Fiji currency suggests to me that the biggest business at the window was currency exchange. Whatever the case, it was a nice assignment, I'll betcha.

A few years later, a new Wells Fargo branch was being built in Placerville, California. The Company set up temporary quarters in a double-wide trailer on the Fairgrounds.  There is a reason this is funny to me. Now I know temporary quarters in trailers are not unusual in any business, and the fairgrounds are a large space with limited use. It was a smart decision. It's just that when you see the photo, it looks like "a double-wide on a fairgrounds."

All the comedy you expect from that phrase happens. Sorry.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Wednesday in the National Hockey League.  Guided By History happily gives a stamp of approval!

Whether or not you're a hockey fan, you should take a look at the sport. Hockey is cool and has all the elements you love. There's the video game element, for starters: Teams race back and forth trying to put a small projectile  in a cage  using cudgels.  The cage is protected  by a Cerberus-like figure. 

Hockey has the basketball element: Graceful, speedy strategy and playmaking — even speedier, though. But it's without all the silly officiating, where the whistle interrupts everything all night long. Hockey has the football element: Shoulder pads and helmets, big guys plowing into each other  — even slamming each other into a wall! But it's a smaller field of play, and hockey players exercise all this skill and hard contact while on ice skates. 

Pretty macho.

Hockey also has a baseball-like history , with great games and legendary players and a Hall of Fame  and dynasties  and everything. To cap it all, the Stanley Cup  quest is a total saga every year. The winning team overcomes every possible obstacle — only the very best can survive to claim the Stanley Cup.

I say all this not because I'm a fan — I'm a fan because of all of this, which made me a fan. Hockey is cool. Chuck sez check it out!

The baseball season has begun  and I thought I'd look around for a story on it.

Our Archives have some vintage pix of Wells Fargo teams from earlier days. Way back when, baseball teams were very local. There were town teams, school teams, ethnic teams, company teams and pro teams. Good players moved from team to team and game to game, playing for one team in the morning, another in the afternoon. This tradition still survives, just in a different shape. You'll find school teams, of course, and the Minors  are still doing a good business. Local clubs field teams.

"Semi pro"  teams were usually sponsored by a local company and competed against others in the area. The best would compete at the end of the year in the National Baseball Congress World Series , which is still around. That sort of semi-pro ball largely disappeared in the last 30 years, but many Big League players made their mark in this local tradition. Wells Fargo had teams, sponsored by local offices, and often took local championships. Sometimes, teams would form just to play each other for pride. Winners got their pictures in the Wells Fargo Messenger.

As I looked up all of this on the web, I chanced across the story of Mickey Lolich , a pretty good pitcher for the Detroit Tigers  in the 1960s and 70s. While best known for his three wins in the 1968 World Series , Lolich pitched every four days for years, often throwing a complete game. He struck out 2,832 — third all-time among lefties.

Lolich  was a workhorse on the field, but was beloved for his, well, regular guy shape — he looked like your dad out there. He owned a donut shop in the Motor City and retired from baseball to run it. Naturally right-handed, Lolich had injured his right shoulder as a kid (a tricycle accident!) and became a left-handed thrower as a result.

Mickey Lolich is not remembered well enough . His amazing 1971 season was Cy Young Award-worthy, except for the phenomenal year turned in by Vida Blue , who took all the big awards that year. Lolich was almost as effective the next year for the division-winning Tigers, but Gaylord Perry  was just a little better and won the award. Lolich will have to console himself with several Tigers pitching records, and the eternal devotion of Tigers fans.

Funny thing is, Lolich's numbers eclipsed another pretty good pitcher for the Tigers: a guy named Hooks Dauss.  Hooks pitched during the Ty Cobb  years in Detroit, likely why we've never really heard of him. He won over 200 games, pitched a lot of innings, and is 30th all-time for hit batsmen. (FYI, you gotta be a good pitcher to plunk a hitter.)

Hooks Dauss and Mickey Lolich were really good ballplayers, but too few people remember. So I'm doing my part to campaign for them.

There's your baseball piece for the spring, folks.

Guided By History is pleased to welcome the first blog entry by Sue Choate, Wachovia's Archivist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Sue has organized Wachovia's archives for 20 years. She is a reader, a skier and a grandmother of 5. As Wells Fargo and Wachovia become one Company over time, it's great to share the great histories both banks proudly maintain. (CR)

Football is not a sport I find interesting.  I do, however, enjoy the advertisements  during the Super Bowl.  The best are obviously the result of savvy marketing firms and perceptive companies.

For the first time, Proctor & Gamble  ran spots for  its Tide brand during the Super Bowl, as did Victoria's Secret and Sunsilk hair care.  These ads were clearly targeting female football fans. Identifying and targeting consumers who are likely to purchase, or influence the purchase of, certain products is smart business.

It occurred to me recently, when my seven-year-old grandson was extolling the appeal of a chocolate and peanut butter-flavored cereal  , that its manufacturer knows exactly when to advertise. I asked if he had ever eaten this cereal — he hadn't, but had heard about it on TV.

Seems that Saturday mornings guarantee a captive audience for cereal advertisers.

That makes me consider just how ingenious Wachovia was way back around the turn of the century when it identified and targeted its services to a specific group of customers. This information didn't come by way of telephone polls or marketing research surveys. Wachovia's then-all-male management, however, was well aware that taking care of financial affairs was not the sole responsibility of men, so the bank decided to devote a specific room in which ladies could do their banking.

It wasn't an elaborate setup. A velvet curtain was hung in the doorway of the bank lobby to partition off a small area, and a sign was hung that read, "Ladies Room." In this genteel atmosphere, women could take care of their banking business without having to step around brass spittoons in the lobby for men to dispose of their chewing tobacco. Here they could also write business letters, or simply relax. I wonder how many took advantage of a trip to the bank to delay the laundry chores or supper preparations that awaited them at home?

It's gratifying to know that identifying and meeting customers' needs will remain the goal of the merged Wachovia-Wells Fargo. It is certainly a tradition with the two companies — that "Ladies Room" proves it!