David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

100th Birthday Humbles John Kundla

Posted on June 28, 2016June 28, 2016 by David Shama

Former Gophers basketball players and family paid tribute to John Kundla yesterday at his assisted living residence in northeast Minneapolis. The former Gophers and Minneapolis Lakers coach turns 100 on July 3.

Kundla played for the Gophers in the late 1930s and coached at his alma mater from 1959-1968. Ex-Gophers Paul Presthus, Bill Davis, Don Linehan, Al Nuness and Larry Overskei presented the coach with a No. 100 Minnesota jersey. “We celebrated the 100th birthday of our coach, friend and a true gentleman,” Presthus said.

Kundla has lived a remarkable life. He coached the Lakers to five professional basketball championships from 1949-1954. Only Phil Jackson and Red Auerbach have won more titles. Kundla’s players included center George Mikan, who is often recognized as the greatest basketball player during the first half of the 20th century.

While coaching the Gophers, Kundla led teams to second and third place finishes in the Big Ten but never a championship. He helped pioneer opportunities for black players at Minnesota and in the Big Ten. Kundla’s 1964-65 team had three African-American starters—something that was unusual in the 1960s. Those starters were Lou Hudson and Archie Clark, who both became outstanding NBA players, and Don Yates who was another athletic contributor for Kundla.

Kundla’s son Tom said yesterday his dad spoke out against segregation in the 1950s when he was with the Lakers. “I couldn’t have had a better role model,” Tom said.

Overskei, Davis, Presthus, Nuness, Linehan, Wilson surround the coach.

Coaches are known for a “my way or the highway” mentality, but that wasn’t Kundla’s personality. He coached with a caring manner and his demeanor is recalled with fondness by former players.

A native of Minneapolis, Kundla attended the old Central High School on the city’s south side. He was a starting forward for the Gophers in the late 1930s. After college he coached at DeLaSalle High School and St. Thomas before becoming the Lakers coach in 1948 for an annual salary of $6,000.

A June 2nd online issue of the New York Times included a lengthy story about Kundla, referring to him as the oldest living hall of famer in any of the four major American sports. Louie Lazar’s article said the former coach is still active despite being in a wheelchair and having hearing aids.

Kundla lives now at the Main Street Lodge, and he has almost come home again. He is only six blocks from the apartment building he lived in when he first coached the Lakers.

Able to dress and cook breakfast for himself, Kundla plays bingo and cribbage. He credits being a gym teacher with forming good health habits. “I still to this day ride the (exercise) bike to stay in shape,” he said yesterday.

Karen Rodberg, Kundla’s daughter, joked (I think) that if yesterday afternoon had been a bingo day her dad wouldn’t have been available for the party. Yes, Kundla’s competitive nature is still on display when enjoying bingo or cribbage.

Jim Kundla, another son, lives near his dad’s residence and the two play cribbage every day. The older Kundla said the game is good for his mind. “We enjoy playing and it also kills time,” he said. “Jim is a great cribbage player and I learned a lot from him.”

The soon to be centenarian wouldn’t boast about his cribbage and bingo skills. Not bragging and giving credit to others is a trait that goes back to coaching days with the Lakers and the Gophers. It was the players that deserved credit, not the coach.

“He doesn’t pat himself on the back,” Presthus said. “He taught us a lot of life lessons.”

Presthus played for the Gophers in the mid-1960s and as the years have passed he has come to appreciate his former coach more than ever. “He did things the right way,” Presthus said.

That included encouraging players to give best efforts and attend classes. But there was something else that was part of Kundla’s “DNA” and it makes an impression on Presthus to this day. “Family was always No. 1,” Presthus said. “Faith, family and friends. Those are the three things (with Kundla).”

Kundla’s wife Marie died several years ago but his children share major roles in his life. They now have the opportunity to give back to the father they admire so much. “I couldn’t have had better parents,” Tom said.

The group at the party included not only family and ex-Gophers players but former U trainer Jim Marshall and ex-basketball student manager John Bell Wilson. Yesterday there was reminiscing, photo taking and cupcakes with the number “100” on each of them. There were also a lot of smiles and congratulations in the room.

“It was pretty nice of them to come,” the old coach said. “I sure appreciate the honor. I never thought it would be a hundred years. What a break!”

Worth Noting

Gophers coach Richard Pitino will headline Thursday night’s “Post Time” fundraiser at Canterbury Park. The event is open to the public and is organized by the Golden Dunkers organization that has supported Gophers basketball for more than 40 years. Fans can learn more about an evening of basketball conversation, horse racing, and food and beverage hospitality at Goldendunkers.com.

Jimmy Williams was one of the most effective recruiters in the history of Gophers basketball. After he left Minnesota in 1986 his coaching stops included Nebraska, and while with the Cornhuskers he recruited and instructed Tyronn Lue who now is head coach of the 2016 NBA champion Cavs.

It looks like almost $100 million in fundraising has been committed for the University of Minnesota Athletes Village project. That’s about two-thirds of the necessary total for the project that is already under construction. Part of the project is the new football facilities which the Gophers are likely to occupy by 2018.

Former Gophers and Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz is rebuilding his Orlando home that was struck by lightning last year. Holtz, 79, coached the Gophers in 1984 and 1985 and still has friends in Minnesota.

Among those Minnesota friends is Minneapolis businessman Harvey Mackay who wrote about the late Muhammad Ali in his syndicated newspaper column last week. In a story headlined “Lessons Learned from The Champ,” Mackay referenced the “1,000 megawatt smile” of Ali. “He knew smiling was the universal language,” Mackay wrote.

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Mantle Made 1956 Year for the Ages

Posted on June 24, 2016June 24, 2016 by David Shama

The Twins play the Yankees tonight in New York but there is something else going on in Yankee Stadium more important to me. The Yankees are giving away 18,000 Mickey Mantle Triple Crown Bobbleheads to fans. It was 60 years ago, in 1956, that Mantle won the American League’s Triple Crown, achieving the rare distinction of leading his rivals in batting average, home runs and RBI.

This is a timely day to pay tribute to The Mick.

Count me among the millions of adolescents who idolized the Yankees superstar centerfielder while growing up in the late 1950s and 1960s. I had heroes like Willie Mays, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and a handful of Gopher greats including Bobby Bell and Sandy Stephens. But no one was bigger to me—and much of America’s youth—than the incomparable Mantle.

Mickey was a god to us. He was 5-foot-11 and weighed about 200 pounds. Baseball people said he was built like “concrete” and moved faster than light. I can’t remember who—maybe it was Billy Crystal or Bob Costas—who also said no ball player ever filled out a uniform like Mantle wore his. With bulging forearms and a sculpted body, when No. 7 walked toward the plate fans were in awe.

Crystal and Costas—just like the John Q. Publics of the world—revered Mantle who was small town handsome with his blue eyes, blonde hair and impish smile. I read that to this day Costas, now 64, carries a Mantle baseball card in his wallet. My best Mantle cards are in a safe deposit box and I probably have lots of company on that.

In 1956 The Mick was at a tipping point in his career. He joined the Yankees in 1951, not yet 20 years old. The hype was already starting about this phenomenal talent from small town Commerce, Oklahoma who might just become the greatest Yankee of all time. More heroic some day than Babe Ruth. More loved than Lou Gehrig. A better all around player than Joe DiMaggio.

Mantle was going to make a habit of hitting 500 foot home runs. He was going to break Ruth’s single season record of 60 home runs. Not only would he be the greatest switch hitter in baseball history, he would run to first base faster than anyone in the game. He would steal bases with ease, and run down sure doubles, triples and home runs in center field where he replaced the graceful and sure-handed DiMaggio.

By the spring of 1956 The Mick was damn good but he wasn’t Superman. He had led the American League in home runs in 1955 and three times helped the Yankees advance to and win the World Series. He was a regular on the American League All-Star roster, but not the greatest player in the game on his way to being the best ever.

Nope. Not yet, and maybe never.

Frustrated Yankees fans—with dysfunctional expectations—sometimes greeted Mickey’s plate appearances with boos. The shy kid from Oklahoma was more mortal than Ruthian, and in the early Mantle years the paying customers in at Yankee Stadium weren’t happy. In 1956, however, the Bronx boo-birds went bye-bye.

That year the 24-year-old Mantle apparently decided to ease up on himself and all the pressure he had felt in the past playing under the biggest of microscopes in New York. The results were amazing and they fulfilled the daydreams of hero worshipping fans. Mantle hit 52 home runs, drove in 130 runs and batted .353.

It was and remains one of the greatest seasons ever for combining power and batting average. His slugging percentage was a career-high .705. Mantle excelled in the field and on the bases, too, making big plays for a Yankees team that won the American League pennant and World Series. Mantle won the first of his three career AL MVP awards, and his 1956 season was so admired he was honored with national athlete of the year awards.

Many who saw Mantle in 1956—ballplayers, writers and probably even little kids—will swear to this: “Nobody ever played baseball better than Mickey Charles Mantle that year.”

In 1956 The Mick was the epitome of the five-tool player: run, hit for average and power, field and throw. It was his greatest of 18 seasons in the major leagues, and even inspired him after retirement to write a book about that year—My Favorite Summer 1956.

Mantle would go on to have several other worthy seasons including 1957 when he hit a career high .365. But there would only be a single other “one for the ages” summer for the great hall of fame slugger. That came in 1961 when Mantle and teammate Roger Maris chased Ruth’s home run record.

By then Mantle was worshipped even by the impossible to please Yankees fans. It was Maris that was greeted with boos at Yankee Stadium, not The Mick. The gods of baseball, the fans thought, should let Mantle break Ruth’s record, not Maris who had played for two other big league organizations before joining the Yankees and was viewed as unworthy of comparisons to Mantle and The Babe.

The left-handed hitting Maris, having a career season and with a gifted ability to pull the ball toward the short right field foul pole at Yankee Stadium, broke Ruth’s record by hitting 61 home runs in 1961. An abscessed hip hospitalized Mantle late in the season and slowed his chase of Ruth and Maris. The Mick finished the season with 54 home runs, and left much of America disappointed that it was the Hibbing-born Maris who was baseball’s new home run king.

Mantle’s career was characterized by bad luck and physical frailties. Even prior to reaching the big leagues he was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone. In Mantle’s rookie year of 1951 he badly hurt his knee on a play in the outfield during the World Series. Severe knee issues dogged his entire career. He also had hamstring problems and other challenges including a drinking problem and carousing.

Who knows how great Mantle might have been? He had almost constant problems with his body, at times wrapping himself in so much athletic tape he looked like a mummy turned ballplayer. He likely believed the boozing helped him deal with the pressures and insecurities of his fame. Then, too, there was a family history of males dying young from cancer. That made The Mick want to party and live for the day—even at the expense of playing at his best.

But that wasn’t the stuff we heard much about back when Mantle was a magazine cover boy and Teresa Brewer was cooing a record in 1956 called “I Love Mickey.” Writers covered up the problems and demons afflicting sports heroes back in the 1950s and 1960s.

That made it easier for a little kid in south Minneapolis to worship No. 7. I wanted to be just like Mantle. I became a switch hitter, and I loved the good fortune that my nickname from birth was Mik. In a schoolyard, out in the street or in the backyard, I tried to be Mickey.

When Mantle and the Yankees came to town to play the Twins starting in 1961, the series brought more excitement than Christmas. Mantle, Maris, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Elston Howard and all the rest. This was baseball’s greatest dynasty led by baseball’s greatest hero. Elvis and The Beatles were big—Mantle and the Yankees were bigger.

I collected every Mantle baseball trading card I could find. Still own them all. Maybe a couple dozen Mantles from the late 1950s and 1960s. Even now there is so much enjoyment in looking at The Mick and recalling how great he was—and how much more he might have been.

Wouldn’t trade the cards or the memories for anything—not even a Triple Crown Bobblehead.

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Mike Zimmer Works Even on Vacation

Posted on June 22, 2016June 22, 2016 by David Shama

Mike Zimmer began his summer vacation last Friday by doing what? Yeah, working.

The Vikings 60-year-old head coach started his summer break between minicamp and training camp by showing up early in the morning to speak to a group at the Minneapolis Club. Zimmer had an audience of business and civic leaders laughing at one-liners. His remarks looked as well organized as his team that last season became NFC North Division champions for the first time since 2009.

Yes, Zimmer’s work ethic is present even when on vacation. In the weeks between now and the start of training camp Zimmer will spend time in various ways including a visit to his ranch in Kentucky. The coach acknowledged there will also be a little red wine once in awhile.

And there will be something else filling his time during the next few weeks. “I’ll be working,” Zimmer said.

“He has a plan of what he wants to get done,” said George Stewart. “He does a great job of being exact. He is very detailed. He plans out what he wants to get done and he attacks that plan. Not only with the players, but with the coaches. We all know what we have to get done for us to be successful.”

Stewart coaches the Vikings wide receivers. He has been an assistant in the NFL since 1992. Before that he worked at both Notre Dame and the University of Minnesota when Lou Holtz was head coach at those places.

Stewart isn’t blowing smoke when he talks about Zimmer who after being a career assistant in the NFL finally got a head coaching opportunity with the Vikings at age 57. Stewart played for Holtz at Arkansas before coaching under him. He regards Holtz as a father figure and talked about him and other famous coaches during an interview with Sports Headliners last week.

“I’ve been around several hall of fame coaches, (including) Lou Holtz as you mentioned. Chuck Noll…to Bill Walsh. I know Mike got into it late (age 57) but if he was given the opportunity at 40 years old as opposed to being 56 or 57 you’d speak about him in those same terms (hall of famer) too because he has great vision.

“He had a great vision for this team when he got here. He had prepared himself to be a head football coach over time as an assistant and it’s showing off now.”

The Vikings are a favorite to be an NFL winner next season and years beyond. Zimmer is on a short list of the league’s more highly regarded head coaches after only two seasons. The team was 7-9 his first season of 2014 after the club had finished 5-10-1 the year before. Last season brought that division title and an 11-5 regular season record.

General manager Rick Spielman, Zimmer and others in the organization have acquired and developed a roster of talented players. Zimmer likes his 2016 team—enough so that he cancelled the final day of minicamp practice last week.

“Well, if we’ve been crummy (this spring), I wouldn’t have cancelled it,” Zimmer said last Thursday. “…I just like the way this team works. I told them that today that, ‘I appreciate the way they go about their business.’

“They’re dedicated to being a good football team and they didn’t believe me at first (practice cancelled). A bunch of them said, ‘Did he say go practice or no practice?’ So they just sat up there for a little while (at Winter Park). They weren’t sure. They thought it was a joke or a trick, but I felt like I’ve seen what I needed to see.”

Zimmer’s surprise cancellation of practice indicates he will throw a “curveball” at times to his team. Don’t be too predictable, change things up.

Ideas like that may come from Zimmer, or perhaps at the suggestion of hall of fame coaches like Bill Parcells or Bud Grant. Zimmer is friends with both men. Occasionally he will refer to phone conversations with Parcells who he worked for with the Cowboys years ago. Grant, who took the Vikings to four Super Bowls, keeps an office at Winter Park where the Vikings practice. The two men have hunted together.

Just two full seasons into Zimmer’s career he has been compared to Grant. The two took such different routes to head coaching. Grant was a head coach at 29 for Winnipeg in the Canadian Football League. He retired at age 58.

That was just about the age Zimmer finally got his own team. Stewart is puzzled why it took so long for an NFL team to grab Zimmer as the head man.

“He should have been a head coach years ago,” Stewart said. “I don’t know what was the reason behind that. (He is) a quiet person and maybe that’s the reason why. I don’t know if he had an agent (to promote him). I do believe if he was a head coach years ago, you’d be speaking about him in the same light as you speak of (Bill) Belicheck (four Super Bowl wins). …”

Like Grant, Zimmer doesn’t tolerate mistakes by his players for very long. Last season the Vikings were the least penalized team in the NFL with 88 flags. The offense was the least penalized in the 32-team league with 30 penalties.

“If there’s a little wrong misstep, he’s going to see the misstep,” Stewart said. “He’s going to ask somebody. He’s going to talk about it. There’s no gray area with coach Zimmer. He’s going to do things the right way. He’s going to keep everybody accountable and our players respect that.”

Missed assignments and sloppy play can leave Zimmer red-faced. Although usually quiet and low key, the team has known his wrath. But players also know he cares about them and they accept his sometimes stern manner.

“You have no choice to settle in with that,” cornerback Xavier Rhodes said. “That’s no question. You can’t say nothing about that. It’s just him. He’s going to be who he is. We just accept him for who he is and that’s what we love about him.”

Rhodes said Zimmer knows “how to win” and is going to get players to do what he wants them to do. Sometimes he will even show them a sense of humor. “Once in awhile,” Rhodes said. “It’s good to see that side of him, to let us know he trusts in us, and he knows we want to get things right.”

Teddy Bridgewater (photo courtesy of Minnesota Vikings).

What the players also see is a supportive coach when talking to the media. An example came last week when Zimmer was asked about third-year quarterback Teddy Bridgewater who has experienced some struggles. Zimmer referred to the winning teams Bridgewater has played for in college and with the Vikings—emphasizing “that’s the most important thing,” not individual statistics.

Zimmer has learned to be more comfortable with the media, but like a lot of coaches facing the press, answering questions is a less appealing part of the job than other aspects. This time of year Zimmer seems more relaxed and even jokes with the media as he did last week when an outdoor practice was shortened because of a lightening threat. Zimmer said he didn’t want reporters to be struck by lightening. “I’d miss you,” he said.

Zimmer can crack a smile, show some levity with those around him, but make no mistake he is single-minded and someone who is going to get things done his way as he pushes toward more success for the Vikings.

“He is demanding,” Stewart said. “He is no-nonsense and he’s exact, and he’s unforgiving in terms of the way we work.

“That’s the deal in trying to be great, trying to win a championship here. We’ve been to four Super Bowls here, as you know. Haven’t won one. We’re trying to get to another one, but again that’s down the road. But I think with the things that he’s doing, he’s preparing everyone.”

Yup, preparing. Even when on vacation.

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