Sunday News from Kenosha, Wisconsin • 27

4 D3 Sunday News February 3 1985 KornkieV Column Darts invade Sports Night to pack gym Sports fans will try to forget about the arctic weather and think baseball when they pack the Holy Rosary gymnasium tonight for the 32nd annual Holy Rosary Sports Night New Milwaukee Brewer's pitcher Danny Darwip yill be one of the featured speakers NFL players Larry fticCarren of the Green Bay Packers and Brian Baschnagel of the Chicago Bears will also speak Kevin Grevey of the surging Milwaukee Bucks is the other celebrity guest Tom Sutton of Milwaukee Channel 12 will be Master of Ceremonies Wendy Hunkeler of Tremper and Jarvis Brown of St Joseph will be honored as outstanding high school athletes Their names will be engraved on the Alan Ameche Trophy Doors open at 5 pm and the dinner begins at 6 Packer could shoot from outside How good a basketball player was Billy Packer? Says his old announcing partner A1 McGuire: was a great outside shooter Unfortunately the games are played indoors Fact is Packer was a pretty good marksman as John Wooden and Walt Hazzard would testify In 1962 the first season Wooden made it to the Final Four Packer scored 22 points to help Wake Forest beat UCLA 82-80 in the third-place consolation game Hazzard scored 15 points for the Bruins Cincinnati won the title with a 71-59 victory over Ohio State Kenosha News photo Kenosha darter by way of England Chris Pappe Pappe It is under-a game at Jude's cording to that games in a row and more people get a chance to play although he and triple score rings The is worth 50 points The darts are thrown from a distance of eight feet professional will hit the double-20 100 Limes out of 100 in practice eight out of 10 times in tense competition incredible what they can 1 Pappe said form is to lean over the line to get two or three feet on the board" The darts are aimed overhand not underhand as in the American aberration called dartball Pappe a good salesman for the electronic version of the game which is most common in American taverns those flimsy little plastic darts I throw them at all well" he said He told of a place in Milwaukee called English Darts South that sports a huge Union Jack on the wall wooden beams and 16 idartboards "It anything like an English pub Tpo many dartboards Everyone is playing Over there a pub has only one he said Incidentally the cartoon char- -acter Andy Capp is an inveterate darter Pappe who is 25 has been in Kenosha the past three years He manages the RV Sports Motel on South Sheridan Road and attends Parkside on a part-time basis After explaining the scoring of a darts game called 301 and all the math involved in scoring it was obvious he was cut -out for his double major in Physics and Computer Science was a good public school rugby player in England I was selected for- the All-England under-19 trials but I broke a shoulder making a tackle four weeks before the he said (American) to me is a joke although after watching it for three years I can appreciate a good he said "Rugby is a beautiful game It flows It keeps going for an hour and a half Football is stopping all the time changing players "I took a liking to baseball but I could never stand cricket I played a little in school but I kept getting hit by the Not everyone wants to venture out into the cold a crosscountry skier or 1000-mile runner Maybe it will never catch on but Chris Pappe prefers the very-English and very-civilized tradition of tossing a few darts while staying warm in a cozy pub SportsVue demise gives Bucks By GREGG HOFFMANN Sports Writer MILWAUKEE The folding of SportsVue Cable Network could have a major impact on state sports fans Network officials announced Friday that SportsVue a service started by the Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers last April was finished as of programming The network carried the Bucks game at Portland Saturday night The service had attracted only 16400 subscribers state-wide and was struggling financially Earlier in the week it had been announced the network would cut programming trim staff and tfy to negotiate new contracts with cable operators Officials of Jones Intercable which carried SportsVue in Kenosha and 55 other Wisconsin Jn this country Pappe is gangbusters in darts "I discovered darts -t Parkside I was even preside of its dart club for a while When we had a tournament last year nobody could touch me he said In the ACY tournament at UW-Whitewater he took third place He's only taking five credits this year so he eligible to shoot darts for Parkside Pappe entered a tournament sponsored by last year in Milwaukee and reached the quarterfinals before losing to another transplanted' Englishman Tony Wells in a high scoring game "I won about $30 for being in the last he said have to go to Milwaukee before I can find somebody to play Kenosha is kind of slow in A major dart tournament is underway now the Lowenbrau High Score Dart Challenge Most Kenosha taverns are involved There is local regional and state competition Lowenbrau presumably would like to start a darting tradition similar to around here The best part of the tournament however is the one dollar donation to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation by every darter Long ago the English judiciary the with long white wigs ruled that darts was a game of skill not chance so wagering was acceptable ac- said you weigh all these things one you have to "consider I hope there are other alternatives John Steinmiller the vice president for business operations said the sale of the team was one of or 15 that will be discussed in the next couple weeks Those proved rough for SportsVue Milwaukee was an essential market for the service but the city similar to Kenosha has 1 just begun to install cable television Warner Amex has started to cable the city but expected to complete the system until 1986 That was too late for SportsVue The Milwaukee horrendous season last year hurt the network SportsVue officials real chance to even fully cabled yet we are far ahead of cable efforts SportsVue management expected an earlier cabling of Milwaukee to bolster subscriptions So blame Warner-Amex and The city of Milwaukee for thosikdelays The network needa 40000 households to break even it currently has 16000 customers It does not take a math wizard to compute that Milwaukee by itself would likely have made SportsVue more than a break-even affair Cable companies in near suburbs as well as Racine and Waukesha have withheld SportsVue from their cable customers despite strong interest In many cases those companies wanted to increase the price far beyond the $8-10 range SportsVue was discussing These companies seemed to want to reap a greater profit Or blame the abysmal showing of the Brewers in 1981 when the package was fiK offered If it had been available in 1982 subscriptions might have soared: The magazine of which I was contributing editor-columnist started even earlier than the network Both magazine and programming were quality products however And they received a warm welcome wherever they were available My personal belief is little will change dramatically with By JIM KORNKVEN Sports Editor Darts is the national pub game in England but according to Chris Pappe the small coterie of darts players in America take the game far more seriously "Over here the people really get into it It is cutthroat vicious Pappe said over there really care who wins They play with their wives and girl is England where Pappe grew up goes out to the pub to socialize almost every night They sit around talking and playing darts You get a lot of practice at he said in an accent straight out of Masterpiece Theater He noted that in America a person can come home from work and watch TV on 26 dif- ferent channels There is no reason to go out at night In England there are only three channels and not much to see on them so everyone goes to the pub "Every pub has one dartboard and 20 or 30 people waiting a turn to he said "You pqj your initials up and wait for a turn then you keep score for a game and finally get a chance to play the winner of that game "I was just a mediocre player in England The last choice on my said His pub was called Ferry located on the West Row in Suffolk near New Market (Stop in sometime) cities said as late as Friday afternoon they were hopeful a new agreement could be worked out However acting general manager Dan Finanne said the decision to fold was reached because enough people wanted to pay $8 to $10 a month for the service" From beginning owner Jim Fitzgerald made two things clear: (1) the service was a venture into and (2) its ultimate success or failure would have a big impact on whether the Bucks could remain financially competitive or even remain in Milwaukee Rumors started Friday that Fitzgerald is looking to sell the team officials were noncommittal Friday afternoon Fitzgerald The situation is surely different for basketball however The 11052 Arena capacity i means continually higher prices for Bucks fans and less accessibility for what undoubtedly is a larger market out there You just buy a bleacher-priced ticket to a Bucks game SportsVue was part of the answer to drawing more interest with the league's smallest facility One consideration that could stave off a Bucks relocation to Minneapolis ras suggested in the most recent Magazine" is construction of a new arena nearby Ironically SportsVue's demise might add important momentum to this effort even more significant in retaining the franchise Those who should be doing the real wailing Kenosha sports fans and others away from Milwaukee It was nice to sit back in your easy chair for $8 monthly and watch the Brewers and Bucks Not every game was telecast to be sure But enough were aired even in the reduced programming schedule proposed to make the package desirable Certainly the introduction was premature As sports writer Steve Aschburner stated in the this week you sell a product until you have 'customers Kenosha FAN MAIL SportsVue never given stood Ferry or any other pub in England is for a beer or rather a pint ale The more beer you consume the less accurate you play" Pappe sqid so consequently a player won't win too many had hoped the Brewers would be their biggest draw and offered 67 games However it turned out to be painful enough watching the Brewers for free let alone paying for the Some subscribers complained that the service was not continuous SportsVue was a pay-per-view show which offered events and then went off the air Some people had expected it to be more like ESPN which can be watched throughout the day Other subscribers complained that SportsVue did not concentrate enough on Wisconsin 4orts The network tarried some Marquette Wisconsin and Milwaukee games in addition to the Bucks and Brewers but also picked up West Coast football ladies bowling and other events to fill out its survive either team soon despite the Bucks meetings beginning Monday on the franchise's future In fact as John Steinmiller Bucks vice-president said on TV Friday Milwaukee could once again see sports on pay-TV down the road With the system claiming losses of more than $100000 monthly perhaps it will merely bide its time until Milwaukee is cabled That is the proper time to offer the service anyway For those who were not so short-sighted as to oppose the pay-TV concept many thanks The teams will need the revenues in the long run Many fans simply fear the idea of pay-TV They do not realize the decision has already been made that it is to be pay-TV or practically no TV We will never again see the level of free televised sporting events from Milwaukee TV The market is simply too small to allow that All true fans can do is hope the Bucks and Brewers realize they miscalculated in their planning Hopefully they will try again at some future date rather than decide to leave us barren of sports teams in Milwaukee Again a personal note of thanks to all those who appreciated the network and magazine Dennis A Shook Contributing Editor Sportsvue Magazine noted that most professionals the ones who win 10 games and consequently 10 pints end up with beer bellies The round dartboard is divided into wedges marked from one to 20' There are double jitters schedule Network officials said the high cost of local programming prohibited them from showing mQre state events Some key cable systems such as RVS in Waukesha County and the Racine system did not pick up SportsVue because of differences over the split in revenue The moves announced early last week apparently also alienated other cable operators Another factor going against SportsVue was the glut of events on free television since the NCAA ruling last summer Fans can watch several games each weekend They apparently would rather watch Maryland play Vil-lanova for free than pay to watch state teams Add to these factors the fact that the cable industry in general has not taken off as predicted and you can see that SportsVue practically was doomed from its beginning Will its folding be followed by the Bucks' departure? It might still be premature to say No- body wants to see the Bucks stay in Milwaukee more than Fitzgerald- But it is a fact Milwaukee is the smallest television market in pro sports It is also a fact the Bucks play in the smallest arena in the National Basketball Association The Bucks currently are under the NBA salary cap but Terry Cummings Craig Hodges and Paul Pressey likely will seek their market price and the Bucks will be hard pressed to meet their demands Finally Minneapolis Anaheim and others cities have expressed interest in the Bucks Milwaukee politicians are talking about a new arena but that's been talked about before Also city officials reportedly want a five-year guarantee the Bucks will stay in town before building a facility and Fitzgerald reportedly is gun shy about that commitment Friday night you could get 50-50 odds some Milwaukee sports taverns the Bucks will be gone after this season It is possible Remember the Milwaukee Hawks and Milwaukee Braves or more recently the late Baltimore Colts or soon-to-be late Kansas City Kings The demise of SportsVue is a major blow to the Bucks Whether a fatal one remains to be seen note: Gregg Hoffmann a Kenosha News sports writer also served as a freelance contributing editor to Wisconsin SportsVue the magazine of SportsVue Cable Network 33 fouls lead to fifth defeat CHICAGO Northeastern Illinois made 38 of 45 free throws and defeated UW-Parkside 98-87 Saturday afternoon Parkside which fell to 15-5 outscored the home team from the field 37 field goals to 30 but was whistled for 33 fouls Northeastern Illinois was called for 19 fouls and Parkside made 13 of 22 at the line Shepherd a guard made 13 of 14 foul shots and scored 27 points and Guse a 6-foot-3 center made 11 of 12 at the line among his 19 points Northeastern improved its record to 7-13 with the win The Rangers who never led in the game fell behind quickly trailing by 10 points after only a few minutes By halftime Northeastern had built its lead to 15 points 46-31 Parkside cut the lead to nine points twice in the late-going but dould get no closer Parkside was led by Dennis Davis with 16 points Cornell Saddler 13 and Jay Rundles and Mike Henderson 10 each Dear Sports Editor: Wisconsin SportsVue operations died last night in its infancy as suddenly as any heart attack Pehaps both birth and death of SporstVue were premature But even more important than departure is a bigger question will the Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers be leaving town because of it? That has long been the unspoken threat almost a form 'of blackmail to coerce subscriptions The Bucks and Brewers earnestly believe they needed their joint cable project to provide extra revenues as cable TV does in other cities Both teams are now making ominous soundings with untimely end not altogether sure I believe those rumblings though The Brewers just two seasons removed from the World Series are a summer institu-tion whether or not they have a good team That was evidenced by last attendance It far surpassed what the quality of play on the field merited I bet it does so again this year More importantly the Brewers are not as cramped for space as the Bucks County Stadium may be 30 years old but it remains adequate for the demand The SportsVue Cable Network and its magazine were merely gravy for baseball Illinois 46 Parkside FTM: Parksde 9 NE Illinois 13 i i 1.