Thursday Night Football is a weekly occurrence these days but it wasn't always that way. Prior to 1970, Sunday was designated the only day of the week when pro football played their games with the exception of Thanksgiving Thursday. It had become an American Thanksgiving tradition to enjoy a big turkey dinner and then fall asleep while watching the traditional holiday game on the last Thursday of November. That is until 1939 when President Roosevelt decided to give the depressed economy a boost by moving Thanksgiving to the 3rd Thursday of November in an attempt to increase the shopping season by one week.
Consequently, because the NFL season was already decided upon, this meant that the game to be played on Thanksgiving would end up being played on just a simple Thursday. Games played on any day other than Sunday and Thanksgiving was an anomaly back then. The public in general never took to it either, football not withstanding, so in 1942 the original 4th Thursday of November was reinstated as Thanksgiving Day.
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I've been quite busy at the ALCS and World Series over the past couple of weeks as the Houston Astros swept the Yankees for the pennant and defeated the Phillies for the championship. I was a guest of the Astros, drawing caricatures for the fans during the street fest celebrations at Minute Maid Park prior to the games and it was a great honor for me, not to mention the energy and excitement during game days. It was a unique opportunity for me to be included in a MLB World Series.
The day after the game, I was also invited by the marketing department to draw for many of the fans who showed up at the Team Store at Minute Maid Park to purchase Astros merchandise and the crowds were heavy. There were so many people in one small area I noticed a kind of mob mentality among the patrons. There were lines for everything. Lines for the team store, lines for face painters, lines for balloon artists and even a line to simply look through the glass doors leading into the stadium. The fans wanted to see where the magic happened the night before. On one particular occasion, a group of people were standing in a shaded portion of Union Station, resting, when a group of people began forming a line behind them. I thought it was particularly amusing because the column of people extended to as much as 20 or 30 feet and it led nowhere. The mob mentality was such that if people were standing somewhere it must be a line. Finally, some of the line standers realized how silly it was and decided to leave which incited others to do the same thus perpetuating the afore mentioned mob mentality. All in all, it was an exiting and fun couple of weeks. I want to thank Best Entertainers for arranging this adventure and also my fellow artists who also participated. In particular Joe Brownd. |