Wednesday night, after I\u2019d scurried around the airport in Fresno, looking for luggage that wasn\u2019t there, my cell phone vibrated but I ignored it and instead stepped to customer service and politely scolded the airline representative for shoehorning me into a connecting flight that, especially during holiday season, was unlikely to receive bags from my preceding flight into San Francisco. After filling out the forms and being told to drive on home to Bakersfield and wait for their call, I reached into my pocket, pulled out the phone, summoned my message, and heard the voice of a childhood friend tell me Stu Nahan had died earlier that day.<\/p>\n
For kids growing up in Sacramento in the early and mid-1960\u2019s, Skipper Stu Nahan was by several lengths the biggest celebrity in town.\u00a0 Even Captain Sacto, Harry Martin, lacked Nahan\u2019s dynamism.\u00a0 Who else could\u2019ve competed?\u00a0 Governor Pat Brown to us was a rather portly and obscure figure.\u00a0 Ronald Reagan hadn\u2019t yet taken the town.\u00a0 Pro sports were still a generation away, and provincial citizens of the capital city enjoyed moaning that Sacramento could never support anything big time and shouldn\u2019t try.<\/p>\n
Stu Nahan understood that and marked time as he hosted a children\u2019s show featuring cartoons, Skipper Stu\u2019s easy banter with kids on an imaginary boat, and his signature jest, \u201cYou\u2019re a hamburger.\u201d\u00a0 In the evenings and late nights on TV he read the sports, and his insight and energy made many viewers feel they were, for the moment, in a major league city.\u00a0 In my neighborhood of Sierra Oaks along the American River several miles east of downtown, kids who loved cartoons and sports were delighted that Skipper Stu lived among us.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have to worry about rudeness when knocking on his front door.\u00a0 We went to school with his eldest son, Mickey, probably the only kid in Central California who knew how to ice skate and play hockey.\u00a0 Stu had starred as a goalie for McGill University in Montreal, where he was raised.<\/p>\n
In the Nahan\u2019s house, in the early 1960\u2019s, I saw one of my first color television programs: Count Basie and his orchestra were playing, and after so many years of black and white programming the bright images exploded like the Fourth of July.\u00a0 Upstairs, in the master bedroom, there was a laundry shoot to the washer room below.\u00a0 I still haven\u2019t seen another.\u00a0 One of my most exciting experiences came a couple of years later when Stu called my home and challenged me to a sports knowledge contest.\u00a0 His son and others had told him I studied statistics and history quite a bit.\u00a0 We answered each other\u2019s questions without a miss until I asked him one about the nationally ranked basketball team at Western Kentucky University, in Bowling Green where I\u2019d lived until age five.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh no,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cNone of that obscure stuff.\u00a0 Only the big leagues.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay.\u00a0 Who was the pitcher when Babe Ruth hit his 60th<\/sup> home run?\u201d<\/p>\n That was a batting practice pitch for a guy like Stu Nahan.\u00a0 \u201cTom Zachary,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He had too much talent and enthusiasm to stay in sleepy Sacramento.\u00a0 In 1966 he moved to become Captain Philadelphia for the kids and broadcast professional hockey for the Philadelphia Flyers.\u00a0 Two years later he landed in Los Angeles.\u00a0 And that\u2019s where the handsome and charming fellow belonged.\u00a0 Late in his career, Stan Atkinson, the suavest of Sacramento newsreaders in the 1970\u2019s and 80\u2019s, commented in a newspaper interview that as fledgling TV talkers he and Stu Nahan had been \u201cbad boys\u201d and courted most of the blonds in the Sacramento Valley.\u00a0 In that regard, a kid who lived on my street returned after a flight from Reno and excitedly told us he\u2019d seen Skipper Stu on board with a beautiful lady.<\/p>\n In L.A. Nahan warmly delivered the sports news on television for 29 years and also worked in radio.\u00a0 While at KABC Channel 7 he drove a car with the license plate \u201cStu 7\u201d and publicly traded fusillades with the network\u2019s most popular and unpopular sportscaster, Howard Cosell, whose paradoxical talent made him simultaneously acerbic and thoughtful, eloquent and verbose.\u00a0 \u201cWatch him,\u201d Nahan commented.\u00a0 \u201cHe tries to embarrass the other announcers.\u201d\u00a0 ABC executives generally routed them away from each other.\u00a0 Nahan\u2019s largest audiences came with his appearances as a sportscaster in all the Rocky<\/em> films. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Since his passing, more than 40 years after his final broadcast from Sacramento, numerous local kids from the 1960\u2019s have sent me emails.\u00a0 The messages are similar.\u00a0 Skipper Stu was by far the best we had and memories have not weakened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wednesday night, after I\u2019d scurried around the airport in Fresno, looking for luggage that wasn\u2019t there, my cell phone vibrated but I ignored it and instead stepped to customer service and politely scolded the airline representative for shoehorning me into a connecting flight that, especially during holiday season, was unlikely to receive bags from my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[678,37,212,86],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n