Norm Hitzges’ Nightmare

We really like to listen to Norm Hitzges. His knowledge of sports is bottomless-or so it seems. But now, Hitzges does a show every weekday morning from 6 to 9 a.m. on KLIF, in addition to his long-running weekly show on KERA, recently moved to Saturday morning. That’s a lot of sports-and that’s the problem.

Can even Hitzges churn out twenty hours a week of phone-in sports rap? What happens when every baseball, football, and basketball fan in Dallas falls silent, stunned and glutted, and flicks the dial to Top 40? It seems a bleak prospect. So come with us now to, say, late July, when the calls come less and less often-and from way out in left field.

Norm: Good morning, and a happy, happy Monday to you! Coming up in the last hour today we’ll talk with the new manager of the Texas Rangers, but until then, we’ll take your questions about anything in the world of sports.

C: Norm, did I.read it right about this humpback bell-ringer competition in Bucharest? Has that kid from Auburn got a chance on the European circuit?

N: Oh, caller, have you ever been to Bucharest? Three sports; bell-ringing, soccer, and wire-tapping. The Russians run two of them-guess which. An outsider hasn’t won the Prix de Gong since Michaelson, the great British ringer, in the late Fifties. And only then because the Rumanian champ was working off a groin pull in the, uh, salt mines, shall we say. I know we gave you Smith from Aubum as a blue-plate special last week, but I’d stay away from this one.

C: Thanks, Norm.

N: All right! Talk lines are open.. .Good morning!

C: Norm, I’ve got a question about working out a Malayan-rule croquet handicap…

N: Six.

C: Norm, you’re amazing.

N: You’re very welcome, my friend. Any questions about the Cowboys’ draft, the new Rangers’ pitching rotation.. .Good morning!

C: Norm, I was looking through a book about turn-of-the-century England, and they had this picture that was taken at Eton of this really crazy-looking sport where guys would climb up on each other’s backs…

N: (disgusted) Oh yeah, the Eton wall game. Let’s set the scene: you had some of the dirtiest recruiting in the English public school system to get players for sports like that: alums paying kids off with listings in Debrett’s Peerage, country houses…

C: How come they didn’t clean it up like the NCAA?

N: Well, see, that was the problem; there really wasn’t anybody to clean it up. You have to remember, this was the twilight of the ancien regime.. . let’s see, where’s that quote from Toynbee I had? Ah, damn, I must have spilled coffee on it. Anywa; they must have sensed that most of these guys were going to be falling like bowling pins in the Somme in a couple of years anyway, so what’s a few pounds under the table?

C: Great, Norm. Say. could I ask you another quick question?

N: Sure, anything you like!

C: Who do you like in the eight-man rowing today?

N: Well, we’ll have more on that when we get to the blue plates later on, but let’s just say that anybody who doesn’t take Yale and give the points doesn’t have an elevator that goes all the way to the top.

C: You’re something else. Norm. Thanks.

-Glenn Mitchell

co-host of “Saturday Morning

Sports Spectacular”