The When and How Behind Roggin’s Whiffleball Segment

If you watch much of Fred Roggin’s Hall of Shame on Channel 4, you’ve undoubtedly seen the whiffleball segment.

That’s the one in which a young girl, swinging at a whiffleball on a tee, accidentally smacks her little brother upside the head with a plastic bat.

Roggin has shown it many times and will show it again Christmas night as part of his year-end special, which begins at 11:15 p.m.

The bat thuds, the mother laughs and the little boy, of course, starts to cry.

Whenever Roggin shows it, he explains the boy was not hurt.

In an effort to confirm that the tyke had escaped unscathed, a little investigating was done.

The victim is Michael Groscup, who lives in Twentynine Palms with his parents, Tricia and Marine Capt. Hamilton Groscup, and his bat-swinging sister, Sharon.

Michael, now 5, was not quite 3 at the time of the incident.

A call to the Groscup home was answered by Tricia, who verified that Michael had not been hurt when conked on the head.

Yes, she said, she had seen the piece--when Roggin was a guest on “The Tonight Show.”

“I have a sister-in-law in Riverside whose mother lives in Nebraska,” she said. “When her mother saw it, she called her daughter, who (because of the time difference) was able to tape it for me.

“We have heard from friends all over the country. It’s all been a lot of fun.”

Young Michael doesn’t agree. “It’s not funny,” he said, when his mother put him on the phone. “It hurt. I got scared.”

Add whiffle: There was nothing funny about why the incident was filmed in the first place.

Channel 39, the NBC station in San Diego, sent a crew with reporter John Britton to the Groscup home--the family was living in Chula Vista then--several months after Sharon had been attacked by a pit bull. She had been hospitalized for 10 days.

Sharon, 4 then, is now 7.

When the TV crew arrived on an April afternoon in 1986, Sharon, Michael and their mom were playing whiffleball. The crew started filming, and you know what happened.

Channel 39 never used the whiffleball segment because it was there to do a more serious story.

But somehow the NBC affiliate in Detroit got hold of the footage and put it on the air.

Roggin heard about it and asked for a copy for his Hall of Shame.

The piece is highlighted in Sunday’s year-end special, called “Fred Roggin’s Sports Bowl ’88.”

“We all know what you came to see, so we’ll get right to it,” Roggin says near the top of the show.

And young Michael Groscup once again is immortalized.

Add year-ender: The whiffleball segment is just a small part of a fast-moving, entertaining half-hour show.

Roggin and John Varvi produced the special, with David Crosthwait and Steve Pomerantz doing most of the editing.

The show, which will be repeated at about 9 p.m. Jan. 2, is vintage Roggin.

Olympics on cable: NBC and Cablevision Systems Corp. announced Thursday that they have signed an agreement to put the Olympics on cable television for the first time.

The agreement could create 150 to 200 hours of additional coverage of the 1992 Summer Olympics at Barcelona. NBC is planning 160 hours.

Cablevision’s coverage will be pay-per-view. Much of the details have yet to be worked out, but at least viewers will have an alternative.

For details, see related story in Calendar.

Cutback: As had been rumored, radio station KABC is cutting “Sportstalk,” now a 3-hour show, to 1 hour.

Beginning Jan. 3, “Sportstalk” will run from 6 to 7 p.m. weeknights, and will have only one host, Fred Wallin. Stu Nahan’s role is being reduced.

A new general talk show, with Wink Martindale and Bill Smith, will run from 3 to 6. Wallin will do sports reports on that show, and Nahan will have a regular “Stu’s Views” segment.

Nahan will continue as part of KABC’s “Ken And Bob Co.” morning show.

“Sportstalk” will remain a 1-hour show even after the baseball season begins.

Encore: The National Football League playoffs begin Saturday at 10:30 a.m., with NBC showing the wild-card game between Houston and Cleveland--an encore to last Sunday’s thriller between the same teams.

As for Monday’s 11:30 a.m. wild-card game on CBS between the Rams and Minnesota Vikings, the Vikings’ one-point victory over the Chicago Bears last Monday may have been a break for Ram fans.

The Vikings’ victory ensured that Monday’s game would be played at Minnesota. Had it been a Ram home game, there’s no guarantee it would have sold out in time to lift the television blackout.

Garagiola Returns: Joe Garagiola will be back on television the week of Jan. 9, but not on NBC.

Garagiola, who resigned from NBC after the baseball season, will fill in for vacationing Charles Gibson on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Garagiola was a host on NBC’s morning “Today” show from 1967 through ’72.

Garagiola, of course, is a candidate to become the main baseball commentator for CBS, which will begin televising baseball in 1989. He would seem to be a logical choice.

“I hope I figure in their plans,” Garagiola said. “But they’ve got lots of time to make a decision. For now, I’m excited about doing ‘Good Morning America.’ ”

Speaking of “Good Morning America,” the Raiders’ Todd Christensen, along with recently retired New York Giants linebacker Harry Carson, will make periodic appearances during the NFL playoffs.

TV-Radio Notes

Many sports events will be televised Christmas Day. ABC will show the Blue-Gray all-star football game Sunday, beginning at 9 a.m. The announcers will be Gary Bender and Dick Vermeil, with Becky Dixon on the sidelines. . . . The four Blue-Gray coaches will be have microphones. They are Howard Schnellenger of Louisville and Erk Russell of Georgia Southern for the South (Gray) and Jack Bicknell of Boston College and John Cooper of Ohio State for the North (Blue). . . . ABC will also use Dick Steinberg, director of player personnel for the New England Patriots, to talk about the pro prospects participating. ABC will televise the Aloha Bowl, with Washington State facing Houston, at 12:30 p.m. Sunday. Keith Jackson and Bob Griese report. . . . At the same time, CBS will show the Lakers at Utah. At halftime, Pat O’Brien offers a feature on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar entitled, “Saying Goodbye.”

CBS, already preparing for the 1992 Winter Olympics at Albertville, France, will televise a winter sports special, “Winterfest,” on its “Sports Sunday” show at 11 a.m. Tim Ryan is the host of the show from Albertville. Segments include Lesley Visser on U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen and his family, O’Brien on ski jumper Eddie (the Eagle) Edwards, Ryan and Billy Kidd reporting on downhill skiing competition at Val d’Isere, France, and Scott Hamilton with World Junior Figure Skating.

Figure skating will be the highlight of NBC’s “SportsWorld” at 1 p.m. Christmas Day. Charlie Jones is the host as NBC looks at 8 years of the World Professional Championships. . . . The college football season will be reviewed and the bowl games previewed on GGP Sport’s syndicated “Race for No. 1 College Bowl Preview” Christmas Day at 3 p.m. on Channel 2. Jim Lampley is the host.

George Foreman, on boxing’s comeback trail, will be on Z Channel next Wednesday. His fight against journeyman David Jaco at Bakersfield will be televised at 7 p.m. . . . The Roberto Duran-Iran Barkley fight, scheduled for Feb. 24 at Atlantic City, N.J., will be a pay-per-view event distributed in Southern California by Choice Entertainment. . . . The winner of that fight is scheduled to meet Michael Nunn sometime next summer on HBO, provided Nunn beats World Boxing Assn. middleweight champion Sumbu Kalambay at the Las Vegas Hilton March 25, also an HBO fight. The two-fight deal with HBO is worth a reported $2.5 million to Nunn.