Radio history — ‘Monday Moaners Club’
Semi-professional football was a topic of discussion at the Monday Moaners Club on Oct. 18, 1948.
The Glens Falls Commodores were set to host the St. Johnsville Eleven in a game that had been postponed from the week before due to rain, and the Hudson Falls Green Jackets had a playoff game scheduled against the Whitehall Pachyderms.
“If you see various high school coaches dashing madly into the Commodore Restaurant (on Warren Street) at noon today, don’t worry,” The Post-Star reported on another occasion. “They’re just attending the weekly edition of the Monday Moaners Club.”
Every Monday during football seasons in 1948 and 1949, Steve Davis, sports director of WGLN radio, broke bread with area coaches and broadcast the gathering over the air.
“The session, of course, is open to the public, and you’ll find it’s a very enjoyable way of spending a lunch hour.”
Davis made Dartmouth College Football Coach “Tuss” McLaughry an honorary member of the club, and presented McLaughry with a personalized “crying towel,” when the coach spoke at a sports banquet at The Queensbury Hotel in 1949.
The original name of the club was to be the Monday Quarterback’s Club, but somewhere in the course of the first program it was changed.
At some point, the program was changed to a 6:15 p.m. supper broadcast from the Hotel Towers, a historic hotel that once was where the Hudson Avenue opening to the Centennial Circle roundabout is now.
Davis had more than just an academic knowledge of semi-professional sports.
In the summer of 1948, he played for the Glens Falls Independents baseball team with Dean Courier, who Davis would interview over the air in February 1949 when Currier got a contract with the Chicago White Sox.
Also in 1948, Davis organized and was president of the Northeastern New York Semi-Pro Basketball League, a 12-team circuit that included franchises in Glens Falls, Fort Edward, Granville, Saratoga Springs and the Albany area, with each team playing a 22-game season.
Davis envisioned and organized the first Northern Conference All-Conference High School Football Dinner in 1949.
“During the two-and-one half years that he spent in Glens Falls he was organizer of more than a few successful ventures,” The Post-Star reported on March 28, 1950 when Davis left Glens Falls to attend television broadcasting school in New York City.
Davis left Glens Falls just after WGLN, a radio station affiliated with The Post-Star, merged with WWSC.
Davis was active in the community.
In 1950, he was narrator for a drama skit at the Temple Beth El Purim observance, and “the genial WGLN sportscaster” recited the poem “Ode to the Umpires” at the Adirondack Chapter of Certified Umpires dinner at La Cabana restaurant at Glen Lake.
In 1949, he was announcer for the city’s community Halloween party at City Park, and performed an impersonation of entertainer Eddie Cantor at the Lions Club talent show in December.
Sources: The Post-Star Oct. 8, 21, Nov. 3, 1948; Oct. 29, Nov. 1, Dec. 9, 16, 1949; Feb. 9, 14, 19, March 28, 1950.
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