Beyond ’69

When the New York Mets took the field for the first time, America was awash in a tidal wave of promise.  The year was 1962—John Glenn had become the first American to orbit the Earth, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy had taken viewers on an unprecedented televised tour...

Softball, Nostalgia, and “Happy Days”

When Happy Days premiered on January 15, 1974 as a mid-season replacement for ABC, it began a 10-year journey as a refuge from the barrage of daily headlines indicating malaise, frustration, and tension—particularly in the second half of the 1970s with inflation, gas...

Maxwell Smart, Spy Extraordinaire

Get Smart parodied the popular spy genre in the 1960s, countering serious offerings, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, Get Smart gave American television audiences a humorous view of espionage during the Cold War.  Don Adams...

Origins: “Happy Days”

A logical nexus can be drawn between the 1973 film American Graffiti and the television show Happy Days, ABC’s prime time juggernaut that debuted in 1974.  Drive-In hamburger stand.  Rock and Roll.  Teenagers.  Ron Howard. Actually, the conception of Happy Days...

The Other Wrigley Field

Wrigley Field is a baseball landmark. It thrives in nostalgia, our baseball memories contributing to its increasingly rich history. Not that Wrigley Field, “the ivy-covered burial ground” as described eloquently yet mournfully in Steve Goodman’s song A Dying Cubs...