(SportsRadio 610) - I want to tell you something I’m so excited about – the four-day, 50-year reunion of the Houston Aeros that starts Thursday and ends Sunday.
The reunion features many of their former players and will be an incredible walk down memory lane for the two-time World Hockey Association championship team that starred Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe, his sons, Mark and Marty, and an array of outstanding players who moved on to the National Hockey League after captivating and entertaining Houston fans for six seasons.
Among the players returning are Mark Howe, Marty Howe, four-time Stanley Cup champion John Tonelli, Terry Ruskowski, Ron Grahame, Morris Lukowich, Jack Stanfield, Glen Irwin, Cam Connor and John Gray, among others. Some who can’t make the reunion are sending videos. Family members representing the late coach, Bill Dineen, and the late goaltender, Wayne Rutledge, also are coming to Houston.
I covered the Aeros during my first two years at the Chronicle.
I can’t wait to hear everyone tell me, “You haven’t changed a bit!” Well, we know that’s not going to happen. It’s been so long, I doubt most will remember me, but being reintroduced and catching up is going to be such a blast.
I wish Jerry Trupiano, who gave me my start in the radio business at KTRH in 1976, could be here for the event. I understand he’s sending a video.
I owe such a big part of my career to Trupiano, the Godfather of sports talk in Houston. He was the Aeros’ play-by-play broadcaster, and he put me on KTRH for the first time on my first road trip, and I’ve been blessed to do local radio ever since, including the last 24 years for SportsRadio610.
Now, a little background so you can see how fortunate I’ve been and how I wouldn’t trade those two seasons covering the Aeros for anything.
While attending Baylor, I spent 3 ½ years working for Dave Campbell at the Waco Tribune-Herald. After graduating in 1975, I applied for a job with the Chronicle covering the Aeros. I didn’t know squat about hockey, had never seen a game, and the only players I’d heard of were Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull and Bobby Orr.
I never thought I’d get the job, but I had a good connection. Tony Pederson, a college roommate who got me hired by Campbell at the Trib in 1973, worked at the Chronicle and recommended me. It was a huge break in my career. When Pederson became our sports editor, he put me on the Oilers, and my career path took another direction I’ll always cherish.
When I got the job at the Chron in 1976, I panicked. How in the world was I going to cover a beat in a sport I knew nothing about? I went to the Waco Public Library just about every day for two weeks and read everything I could get my hands on about my new sport and the Aeros’ legend, Gordie Howe, “Mr. Hockey.”
At 45, Gordie had come out of retirement with the Detroit Red Wings, where he played for 25 years, to sign with the Aeros so he could play with his sons, Marty, 19, and Mark 18. Their unprecedented story was such big news that it transcended hockey – it was newsworthy beyond the sports world.
By the time I arrived at the Chronicle, the Aeros had already played four seasons under coach Bill “Foxy” Dineen, an excellent coach and a terrific person who helped me tremendously. The Aeros had made the playoffs every year, and, led by Gordie, Mark and Marty as well as so many other talented players, they’d won back-to-back championships that earned them the AVCO World Trophy playing in the old Sam Houston Coliseum downtown.
In my first season (1976-77), they moved into their palatial palace, The Summit, which is now Lakewood Church. SportsRadio610, where I’m employed, is right down the street from the church. When I go to the station, I drive by the parking lot I used for practice and games, and I get flashbacks to some of the greatest times of my 52-year career as a sportswriter.
I was 24 when I started covering the Aeros. Three days after I arrived in Houston, I watched me first practice. It was a skate-around on gameday. Afterward, I was introduced to what I thought were two players coming off the ice by media relations director. Rich Burk.
The first actually was a player, Poul Popiel, but the second turned out to be an impostor. I asked Burk if the second player coming off the ice, a goalie, was Ron Grahame or Wayne Rutledge. “No,” Burk told me, “that guy coming off the ice is Barry Warner, a local radio host from Buffalo who thinks he’s a hockey player.” That was my introduction to Barry Warner, the Houston radio legend.
Warner and the late Herb Elk, a hockey fanatic who worked for the Aeros and later the Astros, went out of their way to help me learn my new sport, introduce me to players and others in the organization. Basically, they helped teach me how to cover a professional beat in a big city.
The players understood my predicament, a guy from Waco eager – and desperate -- to learn a strange sport, and they were so gracious with their time. Those who helped me the most were Dineen, Gordie, Ruskowski, Rutledge, Lukowich, Stanfield, Rich Preston, Ted Taylor and Andre Lacroix, among others. I’ll always appreciate the effort they put in to advise, support and encourage me.
When I got to Houston, I’d been on a plane one time – Waco to Odessa. Shortly after we arrived, we left on a two-week road trip across Canada and the U.S. – beginning in Quebec City and ending in San Diego. What an experience. In San Diego, I couldn’t believe there was some crazy guy dressed like a yellow chicken bouncing around the arena entertaining fans.
We almost always flew commercial and were seated in coach. We changed planes a lot to reach our destinations. The first time I encountered turbulence, I thought I was going to die. I looked at Gordie, who sat in an aisle seat looking down at his crossword puzzle through granny glasses, and if he wasn’t bothered, neither was I. I got a lot of courage watching Gordie, who died in 2016, do his crossword puzzles.
Once, the turbulence was particularly bad. I looked for Gordie, but he was sitting a few rows behind me, and I couldn’t see him. I gripped the armrests so hard I thought they’d break. The Aeros’ captain, Ted Taylor, looked at me and said, “McClain, the only people afraid of dying on a plane have kids or lots of money in the bank. You don’t have kids, and I doubt the Chronicle pays you enough to bank any bucks.” And he was right. Somehow, we survived.
As we traveled around two countries, I marveled at how good the Aeros were, how they won so many games even after just a few hours of sleep, how they never seemed to get tired and how much fun they had. They were practical jokers.
Rutledge, who had a great sense of humor, would be reading a newspaper on the team bus, lost in thought as he focused on a story. One of the players would light the bottom of his paper on fire, and it would burn about halfway up the page before he noticed, threw it to the ground and stomped out the fire, vowing to get revenge on the perpetrator.
While waiting in airports, a couple of players would put a 10- or 20-dollar bill on a string, place it in the concourse, hide behind a counter, and when someone would reach down to try to nab it, they’d jerk the string and come out laughing hilariously.
I’ll never forget a road trip to Calgary in 1976. As soon as we got to the hotel, some players went to the bar and huddled around a television showing a minor league hockey game. They were oooing and ahhing about a player, and when I asked who they were watching, Taylor turned and said, “A guy the experts say is going to be better than Orr, name’s Gretzky.”
In my first season covering the Aeros, they won the division title and lost to the Winnipeg Jets in the semifinals of the playoffs. The Howes left for Hartford after that season, but the Aeros had such a great coach and so many exceptional players in what turned out to be their last season (1977-78), they finished third in the shrunken WHA and lost to the Quebec Nordiques in the quarterfinals.
The Aeros’ last owner, Kenneth Schnitzer, did everything he could to get the franchise into the NHL, but the older league’s owners and commissioner didn’t want another team in the south. Schnitzer, a developer who had the millions it would take to bring the NHL to Houston, finally gave up and disbanded the team before the 1978-79 season. The Aeros were the only WHA champion that wasn’t absorbed by the NHL.
This weekend, there are going to be so many fascinating stories told about those remarkable six seasons in which Houston was home to a tremendous coach and so many talented players who never missed the playoffs, never had to rebuild and always made sure to put the best players on the ice for every game.
Houston needs an NHL franchise. If Dallas, Denver, Phoenix and South Florida can have franchises in the four major professional sports, why can’t Houston? It can if given the opportunity. Are you listening, Tilman Fertitta?
In the meantime, let’s hoist a glass and toast a 50-year reunion for a two-time champion featuring some of the best athletes, best people and best teams our city has been blessed to have.
John McClain can be heard Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday on SportsRadio 610 and Monday, Thursday and Sunday on Texans Radio, also on SportsRadio 610. He writes five columns a week and does three Houtopia Football Podcasts for SportsRadio610.com.