EDIT: In scrolling back through the newsletters that did survive I found a line in the 1989 News that stated it was the first Hughes Bowl edition in several years. I was involved in the airline industry in those years and Christmas time was always crazy busy so perhaps they were not published at the time after all.
A little background...the first decade of the Hughes News and stat sheet was done by hand. I bought my first computer in 1991 and beginning that year I produced our newsletter with it. It was still a 'print, copy, mail' enterprise for a while. I always thought the 90s News issues were the best. Then we moved online later in the 90s using some early commish programs. During those years I posted the news in various forms on the 'net. The format for those years was mostly just text-based which was really a step down from the stuff I'd been doing with MS Word.
Eventually, I stopped the 'weekly newsletter' and began blogging. That seemed more efficient and gave me the chance to use graphics again. But through all this one thing remained more or less constant...a Hughes News Championship Edition. It's always been one of the things I've enjoyed about the league. So when I discovered some were 'missing' or (gasp) never produced I knew that I'd have to get to work to rectify that. I do realize that I'm likely the ONLY one who cares but that's okay, I'll have fun my way, and you can have fun your way.
In (re)producing these missing/lost Champs Editions I tried to stay true to the Hughes News newsletters of the era I was working with. In filling in the decade of the 1980s I tried to give them the feel of that decade's style. Back then I used a typewriter, press-down letters for the headlines, glued down the occasional piece of clip art cut from newspaper and magazine ads, made corrections in ink, and sometimes added whole handwritten sections. By the middle of the 80s, I'd bought a box of custom-made league stationery and used that. The very first few years I used plain paper or stuff I cribbed from my job at the Houston Post. If you look at the ones I have done to fill in that decade (everything from 1980 through 1988) you'll see those things plus the usual typos, dumbass misspellings, cross-outs, and misaligned headlines.
To make these as true-to-form as possible I dug up a bunch of typewriter and headline fonts online. Back in the day, I was always running out of certain letters or numbers on the sheets of press-down letters late at night. I would fill in the gaps with what was on hand. On these reproductions, I've mixed some fonts to produce the same effect. I also let most typos go uncorrected unless it was a boxscore number.
The later issues that I've just finished include one or two that were originally sent as emails and/or posted online on text-only pages. The 2007 issue was originally a News Blog post that I've brought over to newsletter format. Finally, I did 'modern-style' Editions for 2012 and 2013. These had been done as very brief blog posts back then and I thought I owed the championship owners, Bobby and Paz, a better product.
Finally, I got the newsletters into a standard size and arranged them in chronological order. The latest Champions Edition is at the top of the pile and then they go from 1980 to 2021. I hope you'll take a few minutes to check out the 'parade' of fame by clicking the Championship News tab on the website. Or just click here. I'd like to hear your comments as well.
Now that I have finished this project I'm going to get back to the original one I had planned for this summer..archiving our history. Wish me luck.
I hope everyone is having a good off-season. Talk soon.
-commish
The late Mike Nesmith provides us with this terrific song. One of my all-time favorites. Enjoy.
And here's my little beauty. Both actually.
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