I didn't expect to see a Gary Deeb quote in a baseball book!

Last week, I finished reading David Krell's 1978: Baseball and America in the Disco Era, and I enjoyed it, but it's a bit quirky. For a season in which all 4 division races were close and one (Red Sox/Yankees) ended in a memorable playoff, there is a lot of "America" in the text and not as much "Baseball" as I expected.

Krell does cover the events in MLB, even happenings like the Hall of Fame inductees as he takes a month-by-month approach. However, he also goes on tangents about Garry Marshall's ABC sitcoms, American Hot Wax, and the release of Herman Wouk's novel War and Remembrance.

At one point, Krell writes about the debut of CBS' WKRP in Cincinnati, and one of the critics he quotes is our old friend Gary Deeb from the Donahue episode of the podcast:

Under the loving care of producer (Hugh) Wilson, WKRP seems pointed toward the same literate, occasionally elegant comedy that characterizes MASH, Barney Miller, and the old MTM show. Rather than glorify stupidity and antisocial conduct, WKRP gently spoofs the human condition.

Yep, that sounds like Deeb, all right!

There is also an extensive passage on The White Shadow, which I enjoyed seeing because that series doesn't get a lot of attention. I don't know Deeb's thoughts on that one, though.

And now a word from their sponsor: Richard Sanders, ordinary average guy, for Honda mowers

Fresh from our Fantasy Island episode that sort of featured him--OK, actually several years later--here's the WKRP star as..some regular guy in 

Sanders is fine for this. He's just about perfect, really. Yet it's part of that awkward phenomenon of performers who are very well known for a particular role yet not well enough known as themselves to be themselves in an advertisement. There's some wiggle room because they don't say he's not Richard Sanders, but they don't say he is.

I guess it's not awkward for him; he gets the gig and the money, after all.  I still can't help but feel for him, though. Maybe it's just on me.

Great Moments in 70s and 80s TV History: Gary Sandy introduces a special WKRP rerun

One of the most famous sitcoms episode is the 1978 WKRP in Cincinnati Thanksgiving installment titled Turkeys Away. What fascinates me is this clip of series star Gary Sandy introducing a repeat of it in December 1980:




I don't remember many reruns getting this kind of special treatment back then. Sandy talks about the big reaction the original broadcast got, so I guess CBS figured this rebroadcast would get good numbers.

Personally I'd like to see every rerun get a special intro like this.  "Hi. I'm Grant Goodeve. When we first broadcast this episode of Eight Is Enough, we didn't anticipate the dozens of cards and letters we received talking about the Who's on First routine performed by Dick and Nicholas."

I also think it's funny that Sandy jokes about showing a Thanksgiving episode several weeks after the holiday. Hey, if they can do that, we can run this post months before the holiday. It's really this intro, though, not the episode itself, that excites me.

(As it happens, November 27 was Thanksgiving in 1980, and CBS ran a new The Waltons, while the preceding and the following Saturday each saw a new WKRP, or so I think. I am unable to confirm the airdate reported by the YouTube poster as December 13, 1980, and in fact, I saw an indication that a different episode aired that evening. )