The "galaxy's largest" TV at Dallas' AT&T Stadium.

Looking up might be a problem.

Looking Down, Not Up by Andy Dolich

At a recent sports industry forum there was a fair amount of discussion regarding the "looking down, not up" media mode of how Millennials and many other two-eyed creatures are consuming their favorite spectator sports.

It's yesterday's news, especially in Siliconia, the worldwide capital of innovation, that our lives are crowded with super communicating devices. The sports world continues to keep shrinking through hyper connectivity. There are several mega-trends that I've diagnosed which are changing, cash registering and confusing the sporting landscape.

A picture's worth a thousand words

Technology sometimes hinders human integration. It's clear that millions of us now communicate through pictures and videos and less in words, especially if they are big words, with lots of letters. The heck with baseball cards, box scores, 8-by-10 glossies and printed programs; let me send you an Instagram. Here's a shot of my favorite ballplayer walking his schnauzer in Union Square. The positive interactivity of fans at games is going to be changed if we pay no attention to the fans sitting right next to us.

Content is king

Why would you want to buy a super-pricey ticket to sit behind home plate when MLB.com offers access to every one of its 2,430 regular-season games for $130.

We now have NFL Red Zone, NHL Center Ice, NBA Gametime and MLS Live. There is so much video and statistical information that you'll need to have as many eyes as a jumping spider, which has four sets, to watch the cornucopia of choices. Looking down is becoming much more compelling. Look up and you may miss something. Confusing.

Whose den is it anyway?

The visual experience of viewing a game in a stadium has been changed by the Cowboys' gargantuan LED "galaxy's largest" TV at AT&T Stadium in Dallas. No matter how hard you try to look down at actual players and live game action on the field your eyes will be pulled to the board. This is an analog of the Looking Down, Not Up equation, but nonetheless it takes you away from live action.

Fans want the best possible experience and they will determine which way they want to watch and communicate with their favorite teams and sports. That being said, it's hard to give a standing ovation with a phone in your hand. Sports fans are the ultimate committed customers. They will do what they want no matter what the marketing mavens have up their sleeves.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... #$@&%!

Maybe the valuable lesson in the Looking Down, Not Up syndrome is baseball-specific. Real baseball fans know that savvy seagulls never fail to fly into the ballpark around the seventh inning for the bird buffet --seven-course meals left by fans trying to beat the traffic.

In this one instance, make sure you continue to Look Down, Not UP!

Madison Square Garden, 1956.

Yama Bahama

Club Fighter by Dick Lupoff

In 1953 my father did something surprising. He invited me to attend the local boxing matches with him. We were living in South Florida. I was attending the University of Miami. There was a weekly boxing card at the Miami Beach Auditorium, a modern, comfortable venue that was used for everything from symphony concerts to basketball games.

The bouts at the auditorium featured a variety of club fighters, and in case you're unfamiliar with the concept, let me put it this way. A club fighter is the boxing equivalent of a career minor-league baseball player. Club fighters perform frequently, they make a fair living, and sometimes they even develop a loyal fan base.

But they seldom rise above this level, and the lucky ones retire to a second career with their brains unscrambled and their intellects intact. They're the guys who fill the records of champions who compile long strings of victories as they rise to the top of their profession.

The most popular regular on boxing cards at the Miami Beach Auditorium was a middleweight billed as Yama Bahama. His real name was William Horatio Butler Jr. Born on the island of Bimini on Feb. 16, 1933, he engaged in a local sport called the "battle royal," in which six boys, typically 12 years old, would fight at one time, bare knuckled and blindfolded. Last boy standing was declared the winner. And this was all for fun.

Young William had two older brothers who were skilled amateur boxers. He followed them to the gym, started training, and developed his talent.

His first professional bout took place at the Miami Beach Auditorium in November 1953. He won on a first-round technical knockout.

He was a hard worker, sometimes fighting as often as three times a month. His first eight bouts were all at the Miami Beach Auditorium, and he won them all. He quickly became a crowd favorite.

Soon, Yama Bahama's career took off. He fought in Detroit, Chicago, Honolulu and Madison Square Garden. He even had bouts at one of boxing's holiest shrines, the St. Nicholas Arena in New York. He traveled to Europe and fought in Rome, and returned to his home in the Bahamas for bouts in Nassau and Bimini.

Meanwhile, boxing matches at the Miami Beach Auditorium became a ritual for my father and me. Dad and I would keep score of each bout and compare notes with each other and with the official judges.

I suppose I identified with Yama. Seeing him box week after week, I studied his style. He was a skillful boxer, not overwhelmingly powerful, but he had quick hands and was capable of delivering a combination of lefts and rights in what seemed like split seconds. His footwork was excellent. I recently came across a video of one of his bouts on YouTube. For a few moments I was back in the Miami Beach Auditorium and it was the 1950s again.

Yama Bahama must have had the greatest night of his career on June 18, 1958. He fought the great Kid Gavilan at the Miami Beach Auditorium and won a unanimous decision. I would have loved to be there with my dad, but he was no longer living, and I was many miles from home defending my country from Nikita Khrushchev and his minions. But reading about that match in the next day's paper, I almost felt as if we'd been there, keeping score for ourselves, just to keep the judges honest.

As for history's judgment of Yama Bahama, he was more than a typical club fighter. Over a professional career that lasted for a decade he compiled a record of 77 wins, 14 losses and three draws. In those 94 bouts he scored 26 knockouts and was kayoed only twice, one of them a TKO when he bled from a cut over one eye.

Yama's last bout was in Bimini in March 1963. He won it by a TKO -- as he had won his first bout, in Miami Beach, in 1953. He died in June 2009, at the age of 76.

I will confess that I've forgotten the names of Yama's opponents -- with the exception of Kid Gavilan, of course. They were typically club fighters, not nearly as good as Yama Bahama.

In the boxing record books Yama Bahama was an above-average club fighter, but in my memory and in my heart, he was a champion.

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