Pacquiao meets Cotto 40 years after I won Jeopardy! debut and saw Dick Tiger’s final Garden victory

November 9, 4:18 PMSF Boxing ExaminerColin Seymour

Previous Next

8 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the SF Boxing Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Tanya Murray, (left), K.L. Colin Seymour and Laura Thornton play NBC’s Jeopardy! on Nov. 14, 1969.
NBC--Merv Griffin Productions

The Manny Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto fight takes place on the 40th anniversary of another significant boxing event for me: the first and only time I saw the Sweet Science at its Mecca, Madison Square Garden in New York.

However, that was not my most memorable experience that day. I’m not sure any 18-year-old in New York had a headier Nov. 14, 1969. Over at the RCA Building, I won on Jeopardy!, beginning a three-program run on the original NBC daytime, New York-based, Art Fleming and Don Pardo version of the now-venerable and syndicated quiz show.

As this is a boxing column, let’s start with the core subject. The main event at the Garden featured former middleweight and light-heavyweight champion Dick Tiger, winning easily by decision at age 40 in his penultimate bout. The Nigerian lost a rematch with Emile Griffith in 1970 and died of cancer in 1971.

The man I saw Tiger fight was tough but untalented light heavyweight contender Andy Kendall, “The Scappoose Express.” Scappoose was Kendall’s small hometown near Portland. I just had to represent, as the kids say nowadays.

I had flown from Portland six days earlier, standby on a red-eye, to take my crack at Jeopardy!, seeking to become the youngest contestant in the show’s then-five-year history. Special tournaments for children have long-since ensued. I could have told them kids would do well on Jeopardy!

From the inception of the show in 1964, I had intended to go on Jeopardy! as soon as I turned 18. Taking a year off from school between high school and college, I had time for a surreal trip to New York after my job at a bean cannery in the Willamette Valley ended, around Halloween.

I had written ahead to reserve a spot at a testing session in New York, and I spent nine low-budget November days at the Grand Central YMCA on East 47th during the time it took to win a spot on the show and tape three programs that aired five weeks later (Dec. 10, 11, 12).

I wound up with $1,360, the fifth edition of the Jeopardy! home game and the Encyclopedia International from Grolier, Inc., “a source authority for the preparation of questions and answers used on Jeopardy!” that I still have. My winnings translate to $27,200 on today’s Jeopardy!. Not bad considering I went 1 for 3 in Final Jeopardy and landed on only three of nine possible daily doubles in three days despite dominating the action.

I even swept a pair of categories, Elections and Frogs. There was a froggy-throat question, which was ironic because Don Pardo developed laryngitis and was unable to voice the introductions for my second and third programs.

I came from behind to win the first of my three games, taped late on the aforementioned Nov. 14, a Friday afternoon. I ate a $2.39 dinner at a Tad’s Steakhouse and then ambled over to my not-quite-nosebleed seat at what some still call “the new Garden.” All that before I could phone home to Oregon with my triumphant news.

By the way, I mentioned on the air that I had attended “the fights” to celebrate my first-match victory.

Maybe the whole thing wasn’t up there with Portlander Dennis Moyer’s debut victory in the ring at the previous Garden 10 years earlier at age 19 (he outpointed Gaspar Ortega), but I was soaring as high as an 18-year-old legally could without a lover.