Buffalo Sports Headliners and Insights

Book excerpt: Buffalo's Sports Headliners and Insights by Al Bruno is a scholastic sports publication, an anthology, presenting 23 of my best sports stories and insights about Buffalo sports headliners. It is a refreshing look at Buffalo sports headliners through a time tunnel, remembering and honoring Buffalo sports heroes and winning coaches from 1965 to the present date.What makes them special, great, and worthy of their accomplishments? They became the Buffalo sports headliners, and they earned it with hard work and determination. In fact, Buffalo sports headliners often achieved the unimaginable, beating the odds against them. They won, fairly and squarely, to the crowd's delight and enthusiasm: Winning necessarily defines the Buffalo sports headliners, and they stand out, in front of the rest, the best, and are included in the city's annals; some deservingly arrive for induction into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame.Winning makes them memorable, entertaining, and ultimately Buffalo sports heroes, our Buffalo icons, like Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame Wrestler Ilio DiPaolo did for me as a thrilled youngster in the early 1960s. We cheered on DiPaolo at the top of our lungs, our version of the "Italian Hercules," while we anxiously awaited his much-anticipated, twirling, signature move, "the airplane spin" on Saturday nights, in front of a packed house at the old Memorial Auditorium in downtown Buffalo.