Hagler-Hearns Replay to Be on Cable Monday

If you missed that fast and furious Marvelous Marvin Hagler-Thomas Hearns fight Monday night, you’ll get a chance to see a replay on HBO next Monday night at 10. The show will also include live interviews with the fighters.

HBO will replay the fight next Friday night at 11:30, then will show it again the following Saturday at 6 p.m.

If you don’t have cable, you’re apparently out of luck. ABC inquired about obtaining rights to show the fight, but HBO, which owns the delayed rights, wouldn’t sell.

The subject of Saturday’s “Greatest Sports Legends” show on Channel 7 at 2 p.m. is Bob Uecker.

Uecker, a catcher, played in the majors for five years. His career batting average was .200, and he was traded three times. But now Uecker is a legend, featured on a show that has profiled such baseball stars as Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays.

Some excerpts from Saturday’s show:

From Joe Torre, a teammate with the Milwaukee Braves: “He was a team leader, but he didn’t lead the guys until after the game--through the streets of Chicago, St. Louis and Philadelphia. He knew every nook and cranny. He knew where to find ptomaine and bad booze. If you wanted to get sick and miss the next day, you went out with Bob. . . . I was never much of a runner, but in a 50-yard dash I could beat him by 25 yards.”

From Hank Aaron, another Milwaukee Brave teammate: “He tried to teach me everything he knew about hitting. I’m glad I didn’t listen.”

And from Uecker: “The scout who signed me--his name escapes me--was a great judge of talent. After he signed me, he was put to death. . . . In 1962, my rookie year, I hit .250. Two for eight with one home run. Probably my biggest year. (Actually, he was 16 for 64 with one home run). . . . My biggest thrill with Philadelphia (in 1966) was catching in a no-hitter. What took a little glamour off it was that it was pitched against us.”

Add Torre: The former manager of the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves apparently has a future as a baseball commentator. His work on the Angel-Oakland A’s series on Channel 5 last weekend was superb. He already seems comfortable behind the mike, he offers good opinions and, in most cases, he tells viewers what they want to know. He and Bob Starr, who seems more suited for television than radio, are a good match.

Dave Johnson, Santa Anita’s race caller for seven years, is now Hollywood Park’s TV producer.

Hollywood Park has hired Johnson to be the executive producer of the track’s nightly shows on Channel 56, which will begin next Wednesday night.

The schedule will be the same as Santa Anita’s--7:30 weeknights, 8 Saturday and Sunday nights--but Johnson has thrown in a few new wrinkles.

The Monday night shows will have Johnson and a guest from the media viewing and commenting on past races at Hollywood Park.

There also will be audience participation. Viewers will be asked to send in post cards, and names will be drawn and assigned numbers. Then a non-identified race will be shown, and the person with the winning number will get a prize.

“The ratings on the non-racing nights for Santa Anita’s shows were considerably lower than on race nights, so we wanted to try something different,” Johnson said. “We didn’t want just talking heads.

“This has never been done before, and it might fall on its face. But I hope not.”

The Tuesday night shows, with Dan Kenny as host, will be pre-recorded and more newsy. “They will be more of a look ahead than a recap,” Johnson said.

Kenny, a broadcaster from Santa Barbara, will also be the host of the race recall shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. David Dangler, an actor friend of Johnson’s who is an avid racing fan, will be the host of the Wednesday and Thursday night shows. The Hollywood Park race caller is Jim Byers.

Add Johnson: He did the race calls at Santa Anita from 1977 through the 1984 winter and spring meeting. He left after a contract dispute, but says, “There are no ill feelings.”

Johnson, one of approximately 50 thoroughbred announcers in the country, lives in New York, where he works the Meadowlands’ Labor Day-through-Christmas meeting, but still maintains a home in Hollywood.

He’ll be in Hot Springs, Ark., Saturday to call the Arkansas Derby for ESPN (5 p.m., delayed). And on May 4 he will do the Kentucky Derby for ABC.

Paul Page, the voice of the Indianapolis 500, will try his hand at announcing football next season. NBC will use him on Indianapolis Colt games.

Page was in town last weekend to work the Long Beach Grand Prix, which NBC will televise Saturday on “SportsWorld” at 1 p.m.

About the taped coverage of the race, Page said: “I know people prefer live telecasts, but because this race was taped, we’ll be able to show a lot of the strategy and tactics that would have been missed on a live telecast.”

Top black athletes will be profiled in a two-hour special on Channel 4 Sunday at 2 p.m. Featured in “A Hard Road to Glory: The Black Athlete in America” will be Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, Olympian Jesse Owens, boxing’s Joe Louis, baseball’s Jackie Robinson, Olympian Wilma Rudolph, boxing’s Muhammad Ali and Olympians Tommy Smith and John Carlos.

The show, based on two years of research, will be narrated by James Earl Jones, with Arthur Ashe as host. Lou Rawls provided original music. The special is produced by Pro Serv Television.

Bill Wood, a sportscaster who reports strictly on the business side of sports daily at noon on Channel 22, predicted on his show this week that the USFL will fold before the 1986 season.

“The real estate market is flat this year,” he said. “Many of the wealthiest owners in the league are real estate investors or land developers, and with the market down, they won’t be able to borrow easily on their biggest assets or sell off their properties fast enough to generate the cash it is going to take to keep the league afloat.”

Notes The Laker playoff game against Phoenix Saturday at the Forum will be televised to much of the Western part of the country by CBS, but not here because it is not a sellout. It will be decided today which game Los Angeles will get, but it probably will be Boston and Cleveland at 12:30 p.m. . . . The announcers for the Celtic-Cavalier game will be Brent Musburger and New York Knick Coach Hubie Brown. Gary Bender and Doug Collins will work the Laker-Sun game. CBS’s No. 1 team of Dick Stockton and Tom Heinsohn will work Sunday’s 10 a.m. game between Chicago and Milwaukee.

Ratings game: Last Sunday, the Masters on CBS got a 9.0 Nielsen rating in Los Angeles, a women’s tennis tournament on NBC got a 2.7 and a USFL game between Portland and New Jersey on ABC got only a 2.3 . . . At least this weekend ABC isn’t televising the Generals. The network’s USFL game of the week Sunday is Tampa Bay at Birmingham. . . . NBC got a national Nielsen rating of 7.5 for its first baseball game of the week last Saturday. The national rating for the first telecast of the 1984 season--a no-hitter by Detroit’s Jack Morris against Chicago--was a 6.7.

Is the designated-hitter rule a good one for baseball? NBC will give viewers a chance to call in their votes during the baseball pregame show Saturday at 10 a.m. . . . CBS auto racing commentator David Hobbs will co-drive a Porsche 962 in the 600-kilometer Times/Nissan Grand Prix of Endurance Sunday, April 28, at the Riverside International Raceway. Channel 7 sportscaster Ted Dawson is entered in the 11-lap Renault Cup race, which will begin at 10:30 a.m., three hours before the enduro. The enduro will be taped by ESPN for showing later.