Passing The (Foot)Ball In 1952 – Past Daily Pop Chronicles

. . . or click on the link here for Audio Player – KCBS – Lookin’ Em Over – Sports Report – November 1952 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection

No doubt, if you went anywhere this Thanksgiving holiday you were invariably sitting in a room where a TV (or several) were on and a full roster of Football games were competing for your attention.

To some people, the annual Thanksgiving feast was a footnote to what has historically been a day-long homage to the scrimmage line.

No different in 1952 as is evidenced by this nightly roundup of sports, via KCBS-AM in San Francisco, sometime around Thanksgiving. The evening report, called Lookin’ ’em Over, was a fifteen minute roundup of the days sports, the news pertaining to the sporting world and an editorial here and there.

This report starts off news about the UCLA Bruins and their game earlier in the week against The California Bears. And then discusses another Bay area team The 49ers and their recent showdown with the Chicago Bears. Following that is news on the sudden illness earlier in the afternoon of 49ers Captain Norman Stanley in what was first feared to be Polio. The fears were calmed when it was learned Stanley was responding to treatment. In other news, Heavyweight Champion Rocky Marciano was welcomed in San Francisco this day, ahead of his duties as referee in the bout between Carl “Bobo” Olsen and Lee Sala. The news then shifts to the sentencing of Boxer Jesse Flores on drug charges, and Flores’ appeal to kids to stay away from Heroin. Seems even in 1952 the Sports world was a hotbed of drug activity.

More news on College Football and then news about next year’s Baseball season and the search for good rookie talent. The report goes on to lament the lack of real talent on the horizon in Baseball; not like it used to be. The big beef was with signing bonuses and a report that a high school kid in Los Angeles was signed to the Boston Red Sox and was given a whopping $60,000 bonus. It was viewed as a bad omen as it would prompt other hopefuls to ask for as much as $1,000.00 to sign with a ball club.

But then, $1,000 was a princely sum in those days.

And that’s what the Sports World was looking like in 1952, as viewed by KCBS in San Francisco.

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