In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 119: 3rd Podcast Anniversary, Cape Cod Community College, NFL Sports Talk Football, Top Pro Athletes I Saw Play Live(11-8-2023)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 119

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It is another special episode of the show this week as Episode 119 marks the 3-year anniversary of the podcast. We take a look back at the genesis of the show including a clip of my first intro in Episode 1, and how my sobriety was interwoven into the creation of the podcast. I also share words of encouragement for those who might want to start their own show.
If you're not looking to start your own podcast you can still look to improve your own life by going to(or back to) college. Perhaps you can find your inspiration as we take a look back at the long and winding road that led to the creation of Cape Cod Community College more than 60 years ago.
 We go way Back In the Day and look at a trailblazer in the field of sports video games. NFL Sports Talk Football(featuring Joe Montana) on the Sega Genesis was ahead of its time in the early 1990s and we'll look back at what made it special. Hint: the announcing was a big part!
In keeping with sports this week's Top 5 takes a look at the greatest pro athletes that I have been able to see play live. Boston sports fans, and fans in general, will recognize a few of the names.
There will also be a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule featuring the infamous moment when Art Modell announced he was moving his Cleveland Browns football team to Baltimore.
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Speaker 00:

Hello, world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 119. Daylight savings has passed. The days are now getting really short, but I'm going to try to bring the sunshine with a fun episode this week. It's the three-year anniversary of the podcast. I'm going to look back a little at the origins of this show, how it started, how it's going, where it could be going. We're going to take a look back at the long and winding road of the history of Cape Cod Community College and why it took so long for that idea to actually get brought into reality. We're going to go way, way back in the day as I look at my teenage gamer fandom and talk about NFL sports talk football from the Sega Genesis. What a fun series that was. There'll be a brand new top five that are the top five greatest professional athletes that I got to see play live in person. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule all coming up right now on episode 119 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Yes, like I said during that intro, Daylight Savings has knocked the sunsets back to 5 o'clock. I will stand by that my favorite time of year is the time from right after Labor Day all the way to the end of the year. But I will also say that I hate Daylight Savings and knocking the sunsets back so that in December it'll be dark at 4.30, the sunsets at 4.00. I mean, I guess it makes you appreciate the sun while it's out, but I won't lie, it gets rough as the days get shorter. But thank you all for tuning in. Hopefully it's sunny and bright wherever you are listening to this right now. November is a busy month for birthdays and anniversaries and such for me, and holidays, so I love that. It's also a slower month in terms of book and author events. which is good because I've got way more time to focus on podcast work. I recently cut back my day job work schedule, slicing one day off so I could now have that day to just fully work on podcast content stuff because I need that extra time to dedicate to this. I've got to see if putting in that extra work will allow me to finally turn this content work into a full-time job. I mean, I just renewed my personal trainer certification, my license through the end of 2025. So I'm not dropping that. I'll always have it to be there as a day job if necessary. But this stuff here, this is the stuff I love. This is passion. I love doing this and I love writing and I love the YouTube videos. And I hope you all enjoy them too. Sure, I make all this stuff because I enjoy it, but I also hope that people actually like it too. Thank you for watching. But until then, I know where my audience is from. I get to see it in all my analytics. Why would I be surprised? It's a Cape Cod and New England based podcast in the title. So you all should be the majority of listeners. But thank you to all of you wherever you are. This episode marks three years since the podcast started. So last week I celebrated a birthday. This week, let's celebrate an anniversary as we look at three years of the In My Footsteps podcast starting right now. So we go from last week being my birthday episode to this week being the anniversary episode of the podcast. Three years is a long time to do anything. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying out there. Wait, didn't you take a hiatus for like six months? Yes, that is true. But the first episode of the podcast was this week in history three years ago. I'm sure a lot of you out there know the origin story of this podcast. For those of you that are new to the show, I'll kind of sum it up. In the late summer of 2020, I had finally decided to give it a real shot to give up alcohol after having several years of really bad drinking problems. In episode 112, I really took a deep dive into three years of sobriety for me, so you can go back to check that out. Anyway, typically when you give up some sort of vice, you need something to fill that hole that is left by it. The most common one is people that give up smoking and then turn to food. Although I'll say I turned to food a lot too after giving up alcohol, I'm not gonna lie. But I needed a distraction, and I thought back to things that brought me joy when I was younger. And creating fake radio programs and variety shows and such with my friends when I was in high school, that was a lot of fun. The natural progression of that was to do a podcast. But the big thing was, what was I going to talk about? And I was very indecisive. I love Cape Cod, New England history. I love travel. I love the 80s and 90s. I love humor. And that seems to manifest itself in a lot of foolish stories from my own life. So I decided to just talk about all of that. I figured at worst, nobody would listen to it, but it would be something to keep my mind occupied to keep me from thinking about drinking. So at least at the very beginning, this podcast kept me sober. And those of you that listened, especially during the first six months to a year of this show, your listening kept me sober. So thank you. I'm kind of laughing about it, but it is. It's reality. And it kept me sober because it's a lot of work to do a podcast if you do it right with care. Once I came up with the subjects I wanted to talk about, I needed to lay it out to kind of structure it so it flowed. Because it was going to be a buffet of all these different topics, but you still need the buffet to look nice. I had to come up with a logo, a title. The title was pretty easy. The In My Footsteps came from the idea that nothing I was going to talk about was anything that I hadn't experienced. I guess with the history, that's a little bit different because a lot of those stories took place before I was born. But I guess I experienced researching it, if you want to get technical. I was lucky with the logo that I have two friends, Barry and Amy, that are graphic design specialists, so they were able to give me some ideas. And just like with the old fake variety show radio shows that I did in high school, I wanted to have all kinds of different music to signify different segments to create kind of a familiarity for the listeners so that you know if it's road trip segment time, there's that skid and there's that song entitled Override Drive by a man Dan Leibovitz, which I got all that music from the YouTube audio library that you can get for free, royalty free. This software that I'm recording the podcast with, Audacity, it takes a little bit of a learning curve, but it's not that hard. And I've had the same Samson Q2U microphone that is kind of the perfect mix of cheap but yet high quality. It's like where the Venn diagram kind of crosses over. Besides the actual topics and researching out enough topics to do the podcast for a good four years if I had gotten no new information, my big thing was getting the theme song. Something that fit. And that's where I found James River by a man named DJ Williams, again, off of YouTube. It's an excellent song. I have it on my mixes for the gym. I have the link to DJ Williams' website. It's been in the description of the podcast since day one. I like his music so much that when I started doing the Patreon bonus episodes, I found a different song of his to be the theme for that. called The Sound of a Dollar. I spent six weeks setting up for that first episode of the podcast to make sure it was right. I even did kind of a mock podcast, a dry run, a short five-minute podcast based around a character that used to star in a lot of the skits that my friends and I did when we were in high school called Psycho Monkey. If you're not sure what that is, we used this thing called a furry Huggums Puppet And he'd have his own talk show where he would yell at people. And it was very much teenage humor, but I always found it funny. So I created a podcast where he hosted it and just yelled at everyone. He has a very distinct gravelly voice for the people that know me and know those skits. But for you that don't, he sounds like this. Hello there. Yes, I am hosting my own podcast. And I hate everybody. Yes, I do. That was the podcast with Psycho Monkey Hates Everything. I've noodled with possibly doing a second podcast that's just that craziness because comedy podcasts are big hits, but I've only got so much room on my plate. So then episode one came and it sounded a bit like this.

Unknown:

So

Speaker 00:

Hello world! Hoping that wherever you are, you're having a good morning, a good afternoon, a good evening, whatever you've got. This is the debut episode of the In My Footsteps podcast. I am thrilled that you could join me. My name is Christopher Sederlin. I'm going to try to give you a little bit of an escape. from the world we're going to have a little bit of interesting history tidbits new england travel where to go what to see when the time is right a little bit of retro going back in time and some more interesting things as we go along but as i said this is the debut episode so it's going to be kind of a work in progress as i went along i refined it and i still am refining it I added This Week in History and then a time capsule to that and then top five lists. Now I'm starting to get into segments on reviewing old short film, educational short films. I did it with the Ounce of Prevention video in episode 101. and Snuffy the Talking Fire Engine in episode 114. And I've got other ideas, things that I might pull back on in the future, things that I might dive deeper into in the future. Because when growing and marketing a podcast and trying to eventually monetize it so I can do this as more than a hobby... It's a lot of trial and error and seeing what episodes, what subjects do better with listeners. Because even though I'm three years and now 119 episodes in, it's still all new to me. I'm constantly reading articles and watching videos on how to do a better job as a podcast host, how to market it better. That's where the Patreon and Buzzsprout subscriptions came from. The next natural step. A big thing, a big point I wanted to share with all of you that are listening is that any of you out there can make a podcast. It's not hard. The main thing you need is the time and the commitment and a subject that you enjoy speaking about. Because the vast majority of podcasts that start up, they go under within a few months because of time or poor planning or people choosing a topic that's just not sustainable. But I know so many people in my life, family and friends, that are passionate and knowledgeable about subjects that they could easily do a podcast if they had that desire. If you're thinking about it or have thought about making your own podcast, I hope this inspires you to do it. Because what I'm doing is not special. Yeah, granted, it's a small percentage of podcasters that hit it really big. I'm not looking to become... the top 1% of podcasters out there, I'm looking to get to a point where all of my content creation, podcast, books, YouTube videos, etc., become self-sustaining so that that's my only necessary income stream. That I can just do that full-time. And that's been my goal since day one. Because you've got to have big goals like that. because it gives you something to shoot for to continue to improve and better your craft. For those of you longtime listeners, I know you've heard me talk about this several times before about how anyone can make a podcast because it's true. And if any of you are thinking about starting one but don't know where to start or what to do, if you need any advice or anything like that, you can always reach out to me. Like I said, I'm not the top 1% of podcasters, but I'm closer to the top 25%, so that's pretty good based on my numbers. And as we pass three years on the podcast, looking ahead towards the next three, I've definitely got enough material for that, especially as I grow and adapt. I've got ideas where I'm going to take this, but as I go, I wanted to make sure that I thanked everybody who has listened, but also the people that have supported me behind the scenes, family and friends that... Thought it was a good idea that I do this. Those that listen and share. And I hope to all of you out there that you've enjoyed this podcast. Even though it can be somewhat random, I guess, there are lots of topics that I cover, different subjects, but you know they're going to be kind of in that same wheelhouse. New England history, travel, fun lifestyle topics, foolish stories from my own life, 80s, 90s nostalgia. Because that's all stuff I know and love. So thank you for being with me on this journey. And here's to the next three years of the In My Footsteps podcast. For more than 60 years, Cape Cod Community College has been the go-to for locals wishing to seek higher education. At present day, it includes 40 degree concentration options, more than 45 certificate programs, and serves more than 6,000 students annually. Four Seas, as it's commonly referred to by the locals, feels like it has been a part of the fabric of Cape Cod forever. And while it has been for generations, surprisingly the road from concept to the opening day took well over a decade. Through various roadblocks, Cape Cod Community College managed to not only become a reality, but to thrive. And here is how Four Seas came into existence. The initial rumblings about a potential community college on Cape Cod began just after World War II. A catalyst for this college was the impending departure of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy from Hyannis. The Massachusetts Maritime Academy was originally founded in 1891. First known as the Massachusetts Nautical Training School, it resided on Rose Wharf along Atlantic Avenue in Boston. In 1936, the entire school, now known as the familiar Massachusetts Maritime Academy, relocated to Hyannis. The school took over the buildings on Main Street that formerly housed the Hyannis Normal School. That's basically the Village Green and the Town Hall now. The buildings are still there. In 1946, Mass Maritime had acquired land at Taylor's Point in Buzzards Bay with the plan to move the school there in the not-too-distant future. May 1948 saw the first mentions of constructing a community college on Cape Cod. The Massachusetts State Board of Education began discussions with newly elected senator for the Cape Cod and Plymouth District, Edward C. Stone. The discussions centered around the need for a college on the Cape. This led to Stone introducing a bill in the state senate in December 1948. However, introducing the bill, known as Bill 213, was the easy part. Mass Maritime officially moved out of Hyannis in 1949, leaving the former campus empty. Interest was gauged in a potential community college with a questionnaire directed toward the graduating class of 1949. Of the 683 high school seniors who responded... 168 expressed interest in attending a possible college based in Hyannis. That put the potential interest sitting at just under 25%. Despite the relatively low positive response, there was hope from Senator Stone of groundbreaking for a new college sometime by late 1950. The issue of having enough students to warrant such a large project was a sticking point, though. Still, early in 1950, various towns and organizations on Cape Cod gave their approval at meetings held by Stone to proceed with the community college project. Stone recommended $100,000 for the funding of the school, or about $1.27 million when adjusted for inflation to 2023. Incredibly, during the summer of 1950, the Senate rejected the bill, then reconsidered and voted yes. The bill's nuts and bolts were then delayed to another session, making the entire process quite confusing. As if in an attempt to remind Cape Codders of his efforts, Senator Stone refiled the bill for the college on December 4, 1950. The community college project then sat in limbo for several years. It was dealt what could have been a death blow when on July 13, 1955, Stone's bill was voted down in the Senate by a vote of 22 to 15. Those opposed said that the community college was by this time old news and that there was a greater need for a state medical school. The hopes of a Cape Cod-based college were dashed. The success of the Falmouth Night School rekindled the desire for the college. It had opened in 1931 and had proven to be a worthwhile investment. In 1956 alone, 260 adult students graduated from the Falmouth establishment. By 1958, numbers such as these had reopened the possibility of a Cape Cod college. Once again at the forefront was Senator Stone. He spoke at many events urging the creation of the community college. Stone said it should be a two-year school, allowing Cape Cod students the chance to get a higher education while also not dealing with the insane costs of room and board for living on a campus. His desire to bring a community college to Cape Cod kept Senator Stone involved in local politics long past the traditional retirement age. At long last, the project became a reality in July 1960. The 82-year-old Stone was thrilled to announce that the plan was for Cape Cod Community College to open in September 1961. As was the original plan, the college's campus was to be the former Hyannis Normal School. The buildings were vacated by the current tenants in time for an October 1, 1960 deadline. From there, Dr. Irving Bartlett was named the initial president of the college. Bartlett earned a Ph.D. from Brown University. The very first person to enroll at the new Cape Cod Community College was 17-year-old Suzanne Kathleen Clowry of Dennis. A special ceremony was held on the college campus on February 16, 1961. Clowry was welcomed by Dr. Bartlett and Senator Stone. Her plan was to transfer to Boston University after two years and become a teacher. In all, 165 students enrolled for the first semester of college in the fall of 1961. The first dean of students was Dr. Eleanor Hanna, who came aboard after working as principal of Clifton Senior High School in Clifton, New Jersey. One by one, the faculty was added, with praise heaped upon each one of them in the local newspapers. Still, it could not be smooth sailing for long. Sadly, the budget for the college was cut, leading to frustration from both Senator Stone and Dr. Bartlett. Leading up to registration day for students, $250,000 of renovations were done on the buildings of the former Normal School. It was said to bear no resemblance to the old Mass Maritime Academy after the renovations. The first day of official classes was was September 22, 1961, with an orientation program for the 165 registered students. In keeping with the rocky road that led to the opening of Cape Cod Community College, the opening ceremonies of the school took place in the shadow of Hurricane Esther. Even though classes had begun, the students helped out additionally by moving equipment that was necessary. However, despite taking the long, scenic route, Cape Cod finally had its community college. Cape Cod Community College was a huge success. The first graduating class of 72 got their diplomas on June 9, 1963. Senator Edward Stone, who fought so hard for the college, lived long enough to see that first graduating class. He passed away at the age of 85 on June 6, 1964. The school rapidly outgrew its initial home on Main Street in Hyannis, and in 1964, plans began for a new location for 4Cs. It took until 1970, but a new 115-acre campus was opened just off of the Mid-Cape Highway where it still stands today. Its former campus on Main Street in Hyannis is now home to the town offices. More than six decades of service and thousands of graduates, Cape Cod Community College took the long road to creation. Thanks to the tireless hard work of Senator Edward Stone and the unrelenting support of the Cape Cod community itself, the college became a reality despite countless roadblocks. Rather than coasting on legacy, Cape Cod Community College continues to expand and enhance its experience. The campus looks different just from the time that I was there 25 years ago, and it's far different than the original few graduating classes would imagine. This dedication to expansion and enhancing the experience will keep 4Cs a viable option for young and older students for decades to come. This week in history, we are going back 28 years ago to November 6th, 1995, and Art Modell announcing that he is moving his Cleveland Browns football franchise to Baltimore. This was a major and infamous story in sports in the 1990s. The Cleveland Browns had been founded in 1945. They were one of the first eight teams of the National Football League. Art Modell had owned the team since 1961, but by the mid-1990s he had grown frustrated with the team's lack of success on and off the field. He was also unhappy with Cleveland Stadium that he felt was outdated. So Modell reneged on a promise to never move the team on November 6, 1995 when he announced he was moving the team to Baltimore. Those of you sports fans, you know that Announcing a team's relocation doesn't mean they move that week. Teams typically have to play out kind of a lame duck period of one or two seasons where they're located while the new city gets prepped. So needless to say, the city of Cleveland was not happy. They sued Art Modell, sued the Browns organization, sued Stadium Corp, and a few other people they felt were involved in this move. The United States Congress even held a hearing about the Cleveland Browns' potential move to Baltimore. It's insane. A settlement was reached, though, where Modell could move the franchise itself, the team, to Baltimore, but the Browns' name and the Browns' organization and its legacy and lineage stayed in Cleveland. Another part of the settlement was that a new stadium needed to be built in Cleveland within three years of the team moving to Baltimore. And this meant that in 1998, the Cleveland Browns were resurrected. The original Browns team that went to Baltimore was rechristened the Ravens. And in 2000, which was their fifth season in operation, they won the Super Bowl. And they won another Super Bowl in 2012. The Cleveland Browns team itself was reborn in 1999. That was when they first started playing again. So the city got its team back. So it's kind of all's well that ends well. Although sadly, when the Cleveland Browns were brought back in, they had that expansion team stink on them. And since 1999, when both the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens were playing in the league together, Baltimore has a 590 winning percentage. while Cleveland's is 335. And as of October 1st, 2023, when they last played, the Browns and Ravens have played 49 games, with Baltimore going 36-13 against Cleveland. And owner Art Modell's decision to move the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore was announced 28 years ago this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We're going back 65 years ago this week to November the 11th, 1958. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture back then. The number one song was Tom Dooley by the Kingston Trio. This was off of the band's self-titled album. The song itself is an old North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster. It's been recorded several times, but the Kingston Trio version is by far the most popular. As they said, it kicked off the folk rebirth of the 1950s and 60s with the single of this song selling 6 million copies. The number one movie was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing 50 cents. This is a drama starring Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Burl Ives. It's based on a play written by Tennessee Williams and was a big hit, making well over $17 million at the box office on a budget of just over $2 million. It was nominated for six Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director. They didn't win any, but they were nominated for six. And it's currently rated 97% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The number one TV show was Gunsmoke. This was a radio show that became a TV show about Marshall Matt Dillon and Dodge City, Kansas. This is one of those shows... that when I do time capsules, there are certain shows that show up a lot in certain decades. 50s into the 60s, we get a lot of Gunsmoke. 70s, a lot of All in the Family. 80s, a lot of Cosby Show. 90s, a lot of ER. It's just timing. Plus, the show was a huge hit with 635 episodes. And if you were around back then, November 11th, 1958, maybe you were a prospective author, Maybe you wanted to make your own Cape Cod travel guide way back then. Well, there was a way that you could take your writing on the road with you, and that was the Remington Travel Writer Portable Typewriter, which was great for students. That's what their ad says, but of course you'd know they would say that. This mini typewriter came with 42 total keys, a carrying case with a handle on it, Also, according to their ad, students that use the portable typewriter got 38% higher grades. I don't know where they got that number or how they figured that out, but hey, it was a great selling point. And if you wanted to get this for your kids or if you wanted to beg your parents to get it for you so you could get 38% higher grades, you could get one for $89.74. or $955.74 when adjusted for inflation to 2023. So it better be really good grades for that price. That'll wrap up another time capsule, another This Week in History. We're going to keep the sporting theme going now with a new top five, a list that I had a lot of trouble narrowing down. It's going to be the list of the top five greatest professional athletes that I got to see play in person. Let's see if any of you New Englanders recognize any of these names coming up right now. Oh, boy. There are top fives, typical top fives, and then there are ones like this week. You want to talk about a list that was hard to narrow down? This might take the cake as I give you my top five pro athletes that I ever got to see play live. The funny thing is, I haven't been to that many pro sporting events in my lifetime. I've seen all of the four major Boston sports teams, Bruins, Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots, even though the Patriots are halfway between Boston and Providence. But I remember all of those games I've been to. Then it was a matter of cross-referencing who played in those games, because that's the caveat. I had to see them play. So for example, I saw the Red Sox play when Pedro Martinez was on the team, but he didn't pitch in a game I was at, so he doesn't count. This list at one point was 20 athletes deep. I sliced it down to 11 with a top five and then six honorable mentions. So let's start with the honorable mentions of the best athletes that I ever got to see play live. They include... Cam Neely of the Boston Bruins, Jim Rice of the Boston Red Sox, Marcus Allen of the Los Angeles Raiders, Andre Tippett of the New England Patriots, Eric Dickerson of the Indianapolis Colts, and Wade Boggs of the Boston Red Sox. That's some legends and Hall of Famers right there that I got to see do their job in person. But now let's get into the actual top five. This was one of the hardest to narrow down. And this is in no particular order, starting with number one, Ray Bork of the Boston Bruins. Ray Bork is at the very least one of the greatest defensemen in the history of hockey and at least one of the greatest Bruins in the history of the franchise. He played 22 total seasons in the NHL, including 21 with the Bruins. He was a 19-time All-Star and five-time Norris Trophy winner for Best Defenseman in the League. Bork was so beloved that the Bruins traded him to Colorado so that he had a chance to win a Stanley Cup. And after the Avalanche won the Cup, Bork brought the Cup to Boston to celebrate here. Can you imagine any other former Boston athlete winning a championship with another team and then bringing it here to celebrate and people actually going and enjoying it? I mean, it wasn't a huge crowd, but still, people were so happy to see Bork win. Number two is Shaquille O'Neal of the Boston Celtics. That's right. I got to see Shaq play on the Celtics when he was near the end. I was a huge Shaq fan from his days playing at LSU in college. And then when he got drafted by the Orlando Magic, they were immediately my favorite team. I had a huge Shaquille O'Neal poster on my wall in high school. He was unlike any other athlete I'd seen in basketball. Typically, the centers were very skinny. Guys like Manute Boll and Ralph Sampson, Jack Sikma. Shaq was like a skyscraper with arms and legs. Don't get me started on him tearing the hoop down, busting the glass. That was so cool to see. He was like a video game character. He was a 15-time All-Star and four-time NBA champ and is another Hall of Famer just like Ray Bork that I got to see play live. Number three is Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics. Garnett was my favorite non-Celtic player. Once Shaq went to the Lakers and I had to not like him because of the rivalry with the Lakers and Celtics. When the Celtics traded for him before the 2007-2008 NBA season, it was the best of both worlds. My favorite non-Celtic player coming to play for the Celtics. It was like when the Patriots got Rodney Harrison, who was my favorite non-Patriot player. But KG helped lead the Celtics to the NBA title that season. All in all, he was a 15-time All-Star and is another Hall of Famer that I got to see live. Number four is David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox. If you had told me before the 2003 season that the Red Sox were going to sign David Ortiz, this middling player that had spent six years with the Minnesota Twins, and that Ortiz was going to lead the Red Sox to three world titles, I'd have asked what drugs they were on. Ortiz was signed alongside Jeremy Giambi and they were seen as on the same level of player. And if you're thinking I'm supposed to say Jason Giambi, no, it's his brother. Ortiz played 20 total seasons, with 14 being with the Red Sox. And like I said, he led them to three World Series titles. He was a 10-time All-Star, another Hall of Famer that ended his career with 541 home runs, and is definitely the most clutch baseball player I'd ever seen. And finally, number five on my top five list of athletes I got to see play live... is Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners. I saw Griffey play in his rookie year against the Red Sox. I was seated in center field and he played center field. I remember yelling down to him and him kind of talking back a little bit. But the fact that this baseball player acknowledged 11-year-old me instantly made him my favorite player in all of sports. I have a whole book of baseball cards just dedicated to Ken Griffey Jr. What can I say about him? 13-time All-Star, 10-time Gold Glove, another Hall of Famer. He ended his career with 630 home runs. I always associate him with the Mariners. It's hard to believe he played nine seasons for the Cincinnati Reds. But I got to see him his rookie year, and he spoke to me, and it changed my world. Well, maybe not changed my world. I just ended up collecting his baseball cards more than any other player. And that wraps up another top five. You out there who are sports fans, who are the best athletes that you ever got to see play live? I never got to see Tom Brady play live or Pedro Martinez or Larry Bird. I saw them all on TV, but not in person. And I'll be back next week with a brand new top five that will hopefully be a little bit easier to narrow down for me because this one was tough. I tell you, you kids these days don't know how good you've got it when it comes to video games, the technology, the graphics. It's mind-blowing. Me, I've always been a big fan of the sports games. I remember as a kid growing up in the early 90s, I had the Sega Genesis, and I played all of the sports franchises back then. In the years before Madden football became the phenomenon that it was and still is to this day, there was an OG of the football franchises that had the announcer calling the plays. And that was the appropriately named NFL Sports Talk Football. And I'm going to specifically talk about the two of these games that I had that was NFL Sports Talk Football 93. and then NFL Football 94 starring Joe Montana. For those of you younger that have no idea about these franchises of this game, you have no idea how impressive they were to a kid that was 15, 16 years old. Just to be able to have it sound more like a regular football game you'd watch on TV with the announcer calling the plays and the action that was happening, it was wild. So with Sports Talk Football 93, you'd put that cartridge in the Sega Genesis and turn it on, and then you'd hear this.

Speaker 01:

NFL Sports Talk Football.

Speaker 00:

As with any sporting game, you could play exhibition, you could play a season mode. That's all they had back then. But even the graphics were good with the cool helmets with the team logos on them. Of course, it was one or two players. This game came out in 1992. Sports Talk Football 93 did. And back then, the New England Patriots, my home team, they were terrible. They were a laughingstock of football. So I basically never wanted to be them. I was a Detroit Lions fan, a Barry Sanders fan. I'll keep saying this game was very advanced for the time. You had a playbook that had 50 plays. You could choose different camera views. You could do the view from the blimp, which was so funny. You'd just be looking down and there'd just be dots on the field. Like there was no way you could play like that. The commentary used something called Sports Talk 2.0 technology. which used roughly around 500 different phrases. What blew my mind when researching this game for the podcast is that the voice that did those 500 phrases was a real person. a man named Lon Simmons, who was the play-by-play announcer for the San Francisco Giants in baseball and San Francisco 49ers in football. I don't know why I had always assumed that it was some sort of AI, like the old MS-DOS, Dr. Spezo program, which that'll be a segment on a podcast coming up, those old DOS games. So the commentary always made it more fun. The changing weather always made it more fun. You could have it be random like dealer's choice weather or you could force it to be snow or rain I loved playing in the snow I don't know why it really didn't change how the game was played But I used to love it when it would be a weather game and the announcer would say either it's beginning to snow or it's starting to let up. And it would just keep going back and forth. It would never stop. Well, occasionally it would stop. But it was usually snowing heavier, snowing lighter. And he would just keep saying it in the same way. So you'd pick your play, offense, defense. They'd have the quarterback calling signals.

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The quarterback brings them out of the huddle. New York in the 3-4. The offense... And the

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commentator doing his pre-snap play-by-play. And either when the running back crossed the line of scrimmage or when the quarterback would throw it, then the camera would zoom in. And the graphics were great for the time. Yeah, yeah. If you go looking back at it now with the lens of 2023 games, it's not going to look as great. Another funny thing was even though it was officially licensed by the NFL and NFLPA and you had the real teams and you could play in the real Super Bowl, the only player that had a name was Joe Montana. So if you played as the 49ers, the announcer would say Montana back to pass. But every other person was the quarterback, the running back, the receiver. So it wasn't perfect. Although in NFL 94, Troy Aikman was also given a name. Likely due to the fact that the Cowboys were starting a dynasty, winning three Super Bowls in a row. This game really front-loaded the technology into the announcing and the graphics, so there wasn't much room left for celebrations being exciting, or the halftime show, the Super Bowl halftime show. It's like nobody cared to do that. Even winning the Super Bowl was a very disappointing celebration. I remember being so excited, finally participating playing and winning the super bowl and it was kind of like well that's it all right and there was no franchise mode you didn't carry over your team or your seasons or draft but back then we didn't know that wasn't technology that was there yet so i played the hell out of this game the announcing would always make me laugh one of my favorite things that would happen on the game is you could do replay if you had some big play you wanted to see and there were certain you cues for the announcer, points in the play where he would say something. So if you slowed down the replay, you could get it to where all these cues would come out at once. So it would go from silence as you went frame by frame to then him saying like 10 things all at once that just would make me laugh. And then you'd make big mistakes, fumble it, and he'd go, oh no, what a mistake. Or when you drop a pass, he dropped it. Or you could make him say stuff if you went for a field goal, like a 70-yard field goal on second down. He'd just say, I can't believe it. What a mistake. Those calls from him are still implanted in my head 30 years later. How he pronounced certain teams, Cowboys. He would say it kind of like that. Every team would have a nickname. The Patriots would also be called the Pats. The 49ers would be the Niners. I used to laugh like he was trying to be friends with the teams. The gameplay was relatively simple because you had a Sega Genesis controller that just had the directional pad and the ABC buttons. So you could make your running back go faster like a burst of speed. Or the quarterback, if you pressed the button harder, he'd throw the ball harder. Or you could juke and spin. You couldn't really make the receivers catch the ball. You just had to hope it was there. Like you couldn't control the receiver to get him to go up for a ball. The next year, NFL 94 was even better. That might have been my most played game ever on Sega. So even though the announcer would only call Montana and Aikman, all the other players had their names and numbers changed. which made it feel so much more realistic. I'll let you be the judge if the music from NFL 94 was better. NFL 94 improved the graphics and the gameplay, the camera angles... I can't imagine how many hours I played that game. Hundreds and hundreds for sure. And then NFL 95, which still had Joe Montana on the cover with his Kansas City Chiefs uniform. That was the last one in the series. I had that. I played the hell out of that. But the big difference with this game that didn't ruin it but definitely changed it was they got rid of the play-by-play. I wanted to hear the announcer say, better hurry, or oh no, he dropped it. Or what a mistake. I was kind of sad. They made up for it, though, by bringing in free agency into the game, which was fun because I could try to cheat the system and just sign every free agent I could. Even though it was highly rated, by this point, Madden Football had surpassed it. So I think Sega Genesis saw the writing on the wall. The next football game that came out for Sega Genesis was Primetime Football, which would have been NFL 96 starring Deion Sanders. But by this point, I had switched over to Madden and I had a PlayStation. Any of you out there play the old NFL football games for Sega Genesis? They were so much fun. Growing up back then, those games were cutting edge. The announcing was so much fun. So funny. I'm glad I could share bits and pieces of it here. I think I might go check online if there's one of those emulators so I can load up NFL 94 and hear the old voice announcing. Or maybe just find a YouTube video with clips of it. That's kind of how I got a lot of this to share with you on the podcast here. But yes, compared to football games and games in general of today, NFL sports talk football is not that great. But for us people from the 90s, it was definitely an awesome experience. And that'll wrap up episode 119 of the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to the three-year anniversary celebration of the podcast. Thank you to those who have been listening, sharing, supporting the podcast, whether you subscribe on Patreon or Buzzsprout, or just share links around to get more eyes and ears on this podcast. Like I said, my goal has been and always will be to make content creation, podcasts, writing, YouTube my sole job. I enjoy personal training that I do as a day job, but this sort of stuff I do here is what I've wanted to do since I was a kid. I've been wanting to be a writer since I was eight. I used to make... funny fake radio shows from the time I was 12. I spent my savings on a camcorder in 94 to make videos like YouTube. So yeah, you could say this has been a long time coming that I've wanted to do something like this. And it's going to keep coming next week with episode 120. We're going to look back at the very exciting time that the automobile first came to Cape Cod. Yes, this was major news in all the newspapers down here. We're going to take a road trip to Connecticut's oldest town, that being the town of Windsor. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at a very trippy 70s educational short film starring Woodsy the Owl. This made me feel like I was on edibles even though I wasn't. There'll be a brand new top five that are the top five musical artists of the 1980s that are forgotten but are awesome. You'll know what I mean when I go through this list. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule all coming up next week on episode 120 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Find me all over social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. Check me out on Instagram. The Facebook fan page, Xthreads, anywhere I can share and market the podcast and the rest of my content creation, I am there. I even have a TikTok page, but I haven't used it in so long. It's collecting dust. It's expired. I still even have a MySpace page. That thing, talk about expired. Is anyone out there, do you use MySpace still? I hope everyone gets the chance to be outside, soak in the sun. Now that daylight savings has knocked the sunsets back to 5 o'clock, the days are so much shorter, so you've got to take advantage of that vitamin D. This is the time of year when some people can get that seasonal depression because they just don't get the sun. Take the podcast with you. I keep them at a manageable length, so it's not like if you walk to the whole podcast, you'll be outside for two and a half hours. Also, be sure to check if you follow me on social media. I've been putting up polls and such about the content of the podcasts, what people like, what they want to see more of, what they want to see less of. Because if you want to hear more things or hear less of certain things, it's all still stuff that I like to talk about. I'm always looking for new avenues, new ways to market this podcast, to improve it. I also know I haven't had a sponsor for the podcast since I made the return back in July. I'm looking into trying to get advertising for the podcast sponsors. But if any of my local Cape Cod businesses want a shout out on here, definitely shoot me a message. Because I enjoy doing that, shining a light on some of the local businesses here. But I do have a few of them listed in the links that go with the podcast. I hope some of you check those out. Besides just my own links, I always try to put the relevant ones in there to add a little bit more color and depth to the episodes. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all for tuning in to episode 119. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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