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Arizona Wildcats: Reanimating the ghost of John “Button” Salmon

by on Sep. 01, 2012, under Sports

He could be cantankerous. He had a propensity for blurting out terrible jokes at in opportune times. He excelled at rankling those who value the tenets of good taste.

Yes, the Snarky Palooka wasn’t loved by all…or by many…or by anyone, for that matter, really.

He was called sophomoric. Oft times repetitive. Oft times repetitive. His Tweets were described as “most certainly not at all clever — made worse by the fact that they ooze “look how clever I think I am” at every turn.”

 

 

One emailer went so far as to kneel down on her thick knee and thank the Internet for sparing the lives of trees from Palooka’s drivel.

So, like many of our cranks before us, we’re banishing the Snarky Palooka to the curmudgulous (I’m making up my own Dr. Suess words) capital of the United States: a condo in Florida.

But the puns must go on. The bad jokes and funny business must be allowed to flow.

Our new spokesman is an all-world athlete, academic star and student governor.

He was Stan Gable on the University of Arizona campus long before Gable’s upset defeat at the hands of Lambda Lambda Lambda in the Greek Games.

He’s 108 years old going on 23.

He’s John “Button” Salmon. We strapped some electrodes to the neck of the legendary UA quarterback, outfitted him with a blazer and signed him up on Twitter.

 

@GR8SalmonsGhost

 

We like to think that, had Button Salmon lived in modern times, his immortal deathbed words to his teammates — the ones that still inspire a battle cry 86 years later — would have been Tweeted, rather than mouthed to Wildcat head coach J.F. “Pop” McKale.

 

 

LAYMAN’S TERMS: Please follow @GR8SalmonsGhost for Arizona Wildcats’ quips, snarks and funny stuff.

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2012 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • mikefrombisbee

    He was a poor kid from a rough neighborhood in a copper mining town who made up for his lack of size with a willingness to push himself harder and take any knocks that came his way. Salmon graduated from Bisbee High School in 1921 but didn’t make it to the U of A until 1924. He had to work to pay his way into school. No Pell grants and no rich parents. That spinal cord injury paralyzed him from the neck down. It’s amazing that he lived 13 days. No ventilators in those days. It’s impossible to know if Pop McKale made up the story or not, but John Salmon really was an inspirational human being. I hope his ghost will be portrayed in the same way.

  • http://tucsoncitizen.com/bear-down-and-blog/ Christopher C. Wuensch

    Absolutely. I chose Salmon because I was looking for a someone that every Wildcat fan can identify with. I think we can have some fun with his likeness while avoiding working “blue” humor. I respect Salmon too much as to intentionally misrepresent both him and my Alma mater.

    Thanks for reading and the post. Part of me wants to know if JBS uttered those famous words to McKale, the other part of me is content leaving history as is.

    PS – the hardest part is trying to nail down the lingo of the 1920s.

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