There’s no place like home. National marketing manager Christine Baum, while pitching ESPN Zone’s Jan. 1 competition in Chicago and New York to find the “Ultimate Couch Potato,” let slip that she’s the great-great-granddaughter of Frank Baum, author of “The Wizard of Oz.” She’s from Los Angeles, but — believe it or not — she actually lived in Kansas while working for a company trying to build an Oz theme park there. That idea lost out to the development of the Kansas Speedway. She returned to Los Angeles saying, “I still think there’s no place like home, but home for me is California.” That’s where the family gets together over the holidays and watches “The Wizard.” “The Munchkins got a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame on Nov. 27 and I was invited.” She tells a history that “most people don’t know: My great-great-grandfather developed the story of Dorothy and the ruby slippers by telling it to neighborhood kids. They sat in his study and heard tales of witches, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. They kept pestering him to name the wizard. Once, when the kids were most insistent, he glanced at his file cabinets. One was labeled A-N, the other O-Z. And that’s where Oz came from.”
The timing for Cindy Alston to join the Women’s Sports Foundation board, along with Laila Ali, couldn’t have been better. The former CMO left Gatorade after 22 years to spend more time with her three daughters, Lindsay, 16, Megan, 14, and Nicki, 8. “There was no crisis. I was like a two-sport athlete, a CMO and a mom. I needed to be great at one. I’ve always wanted to be a full-time mom. Until now, I haven’t done that.” She attended “almost every one of Lindsay’s field hockey games, including the state championship,” and then nursed Nicki, who sustained a hairline fracture in her last soccer practice. But Alston wants to “stay connected” and the board seat “is perfect. It’s an amazing organization and I’m the mother of three girls who play sports.” … Donna Lopiano, the foundation’s former CEO, is writing a book on college sports administration. She was the women’s AD at Texas for 17 years and is a past president of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.
Boris Said, NASCAR driver and defending champ of Geoff Bodine’s Bobsled Challenge at Lake Placid, said “Corporate America doesn’t appreciate” bobsledders. He’s the son of Olympic bobsledder Bob Said. Bodine, who crashed his sled on his first practice run for the Jan. 3-5 Challenge, started designing sleds in 1994. Since then, U.S. teams have won four Olympic medals in Bo-Dyn sleds. … Global Spectrum’s Scott Norton boasted about the versatility of University of Phoenix Stadium. When the Cardinals were away, a pre-Super Bowl food drive was begun at a bridal show. The goal: 63,400 cans, one for each seat. It culminates at a food trade show in January. Guest services manager Connie Ciuffreda conducted tours of the holiday-decorated stadium to “add to the season’s spirit.”
NBC’s Michael Weisman told Harry Coyle stories at the first Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame ceremony. “I had to miss a day for my son’s bar mitzvah and Harry said, ‘Does that mean you’ll have to wear one of those Yamahas?’” The late Coyle, a veteran TV sports director who pioneered the center-field camera shot, was an original inductee with Roone Arledge, Howard Cosell, Jim McKay and seven others as Bob Costas and Jim Nantz hosted. Dick Ebersol handed Weisman a needed glass of water, which induced another Coyle memory: “One time when runners were on, Coyle yelled: “‘Get me the runner.’ Cameramen focused on the runner at second. Harry yells, ‘No, the runner!’ Cameramen shift to the runner on third. Harry yells, ‘No, the food runner! I’m starving!’”
 |
| The Lynn University crew used the winter meetings
for a classroom and learned a lesson in credentialing. |
Tom McGinn owns the Quad Cities Riverhawks and Rock River Fury of the Premier Basketball League, which starts its inaugural season Jan. 4. He said there are economies in marketing two teams in the same league “and we get better deals from bus companies.” The owner of 24/7 Directories and his wife,
Andrea, have three children,
Kaitlyn,
Ryan and baby
Allyson. He said that his “players are like extensions of the family. They even take my kids to McDonald’s and out for ice cream.” … Professional Bull Riders board member
Tom Teague purchased a bull with slightly blue coloring and named him “Deja Blue,” recognizing
Tommy Lasorda, who is said to bleed Dodger blue. Lasorda, who had been introduced to Teague by PBR CEO
Randy Bernard, attended the Premiere Bucking Bull Sale in Las Vegas.
Badges? Professor Ted Curtis, with 13 Lynn University undergrads was to meet Journal News reporter John Delcos in the press room at baseball’s winter meetings. They weren’t credentialed, so were turned away. The guy behind them was White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. He was carded too. “Credentials?” he said in an accent worthy of a Sierra Madre bandit. As he blew by the guard he said, “I don’t need no [stinkin’] credential.”
John Genzale can be reached at johngenzale@gmail.com.
