Sports Connections with David Smale

Episode 104: Howie Schwab - Always Ready with the Answer

Who is the only Heisman Trophy winner to play in the Final Four? Who is the only player to win a World Series and an NBA championship? These are just a couple of the questions Howie Schwab has been asked by total strangers on the street after he became famous for being a sports trivia expert on ESPN’s “Stump the Schwab.” He won 80 percent of the contests during the four-year run of the show, and he’s not afraid to talk about the 16 times he didn’t come out on top.

Episode 103: Doug Tucker - Taking Advantage of Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

Doug Tucker came to Kansas City to be the lead sports writer for the Associated Press just when the Kansas City Royals were getting good. He not only covered their first World Series appearance in 1980 but their first World Championship five years later. He also covered their two most recent World Series appearances, including the 2015 World Series championship. He also covered national championships and near-misses for area college sports teams and a pretty successful run for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Episode 102: Tom Shieber - Roaming the Hall

There’s an old expression that says if you find a job where you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. If that’s true, Tom Shieber hasn’t had to work since 1998 when he joined the staff at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. The native of St. Louis who became a fan of the Cardinals at an early age in spite of the fact that his parents and siblings weren’t baseball fans, Shieber leads the department that “tells the stories” of America’s pastime.

Episode 101: Vitali Valui - Paying It Forward

When Vitaly Valui was a young man in recently liberated Belarus, he roamed the streets looking for money and picking fights. But his connection with visiting missionaries, who used sports to connect with local youth, helped Valui change his life. For the past three decades, he has used sports to reach the young people of his country with a better way of life. And he’s been very successful at it, winning international competitions as the Belarussian national rugby coach.

Episode 100: Joe Lunardi - The Changing Culture of College Athletics

When Joe Lunardi joined us for our first episode in January, we were all giddy that the NCAA tournament appeared to be returning. With our 100th episode, there’s a dark cloud hanging over all of college athletics. College football—actually the money associated with college football—is changing everything we know and love about rivalries and traditions of college sports. Joe joins us to talk about his predictions of what’s to come. And there’s a surprise at the end!

Episode 99: Mel Tjeerdsma - A Winning Culture

Championship-level coaches will tell you that staying at that level often is harder than getting there. But when getting there means taking an 0-11 team and turning them into a 15-0 national champion in five seasons, getting there is pretty spectacular. That’s what Mel Tjeerdsma did at Division II Northwest Missouri State. The year after winning the school’s first national title, the Bearcats backed it up with another title, a four-overtime contest that stands as one of the greatest college football games in history. He then won another national title a few years later before turning it over to a former player and assistant who won three more titles. Listen to Coach Tjeerdsma tell us how he did it.

Episode 98: Jeff Montgomery - How We Spell Relief

Jeff Montgomery is the Kansas City Royals’ all-time leader in saves, but he’s just as comfortable behind the mic as he was on the mound. He never possessed overwhelming “stuff,” but he recorded 304 saves by outsmarting the opposition. He now is part of the Royals’ pre- and post-game broadcast crew, as well as providing pitching insights during the game for the play-by-play crew. His second passion is golf, and we managed to keep him off the course long enough for a fun look at baseball from a pitcher’s perspective.

Episode 97: Daniel Wawrzyniak - Finding the Common Ground

Daniel Wawrzyniak has been in the same general role for more than 30 years, but the 50-year-old former competitive basketball player still feels like a kid. As one of the directors of sports camps for Proem Ministries in Poland, Wawrzyniak uses sports to cross all kinds of barriers, bring people of different cultures, nations and economic circles together to compete and find the similarities in all of us.

Episode 96: Callum Williams - For the Love of the Game

Callum Williams has been broadcasting soccer professionally in Europe and North America since he was barely out of his teens. His enthusiastic delivery makes him a fan favorite for whatever club for whom he’s calling their matches. A native of Birmingham (England, not Alabama), his love for “football” came at an early age when he rooted on his beloved Aston Villa. He’s now the “voice of Minnesota United FC” in MLS, and he joins us to talk about “the beautiful game.”

Episode 95: Steve Hall - Tossing It Around

We all grew up tossing a Frisbee around the backyard or the park. It probably didn’t take long for a competition to break out if your family or friends are like ours. For the past 10 years, that has been taken to the next level with the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL). Steve Hall, a former Ultimate competitor is the commissioner, and he is taking the league to new heights with expansion in the near future. He joins us to talk all things “disc.”