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Photos and Audio Clips from

"The Great Basketball Showdown"

WRTI-FM vs. WRCP

Posted by Jerry Klein.

On February 12, 1969, a ragged, hastily assembled basketball team representing WRTI-FM tipped off against an equally motley crew from WRCP AM & FM, a Philadelphia country music station. The game took place in Philadelphia's famous Palestra, at half-time of a real game between Temple and Penn State.

The WRTI team included Mark Frantz, John Friedman, Rich Kirkpatrick, Larry Malloy, Bob Sigovich and Steve Whitney. The "coach" was Fred Woskoff. Dick Weiss was supposed to play, but someone stole his gym shorts, so he was reduced to sitting on the sidelines, looking on.

Jerry Klein was the referee, since he was associated with both stations (student station manager at WRTI-FM, all-night DJ - "the Midnight Cowboy" - at WRCP).



The Photos

Photo 1 shows coach Fred Woskoff looking on in disbelief.

Photo 2 shows several of the players, including Rich Kirkpatrick (far left), Mark Frantz (arms raised, at right) and referee Jerry Klein (center, in black shirt). Can anyone tell us who the player next to Rich is?

Photo 3 shows the WRTI-FM play-by-play team, Steve Medoff (left, hand to chin) and (speaking into the microphone) his color analyst Denny (whose last name I cannot remember).

Photo 4 shows Steve's general reaction to the game.

Photo 5 shows Mark Frantz pausing for a drink while Steve describes the insanity unfolding before him.

Unfortunately, the photos don't tell the whole story. For that, we have the actual play-by-play audio.



The Audio

In Cut 1 (:45), Steve describes the teams as they arrive on the court.

Cut 2 (:52) is just before the start of the game, as Steve reveals his true feelings about the task before him.

In Cut 3 (:14), Denny paints a verbal picture of the game's referee.

Cut 4 (:45) is some exciting game action.

Cut 5 (:40) is more game action, although our announcing team seems distracted.

Cut 6 (:54) is still more game action.

In Cut 7(:54), the announcers just can't seem to keep their attention on the game.

Cut 8 (:43) is, thankfully, the end of the game, with a postgame comment from coach Fred "Red" Woscoff.

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