Senior Producer Gary Waleik is on vacation, so Only A Game Technical Director John Perotti chose the music we played this week. Here’s his list.

This week, 53 of the nation’s best young ski jumpers convened in Salisbury, Conn. Only A Game’s Karen Given went to the 2011 Ski Jumping and Nordic Combined Junior Olympics to watch the competition and to learn about one small town’s success at preserving and enriching its place in the history of the sport.

As if NBA games weren’t noisy enough, now timeouts will kept, timely, with the use of a horn. Charlie weighs in on the lack of silence. Plus, broadcaster Johnny Miller compares Tiger Woods to America’s most famous ravine? This should be interesting.

Bill Littlefield opens the Only A Game mailbag and responds to listener comments.

NBA hall-of-famer Oscar Robertson is considered one of the game’s greatest players. But the road to greatness was not an easy one. In The Big O: My Life, My Time, My Game, Robertson discusses his career, remembers the racism he dealt with as player and as a broadcaster, and casts a cold eye on today’s pro game.

Justine Siegal says in her 20s she could throw a baseball more than 70 miles per hour. This week she threw a little slower, but it didn’t matter because she was tossing batting practice to the Cleveland Indians and the Oakland Athletics. At 36, Siegal became the first woman to throw b.p. to major leaguers. Bill [...]

At the end of the 2010 season, the Tampa Bay Lightning were ranked 25th in the NHL.  The team’s new owner, Jeff Vinik, reconfigured the front office and the coaching staff before the start of this season. Now the Lightning are the second best team in the Eastern Conference. Bobbie O’Brien explains the transformation of [...]

All eyes are on Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups in New York, but how are the Denver Nuggets coping without them? And how are fans reacting after teams around the NBA were reconfigured just before Thursday’s trade deadline? Bill reports on the fallout from the NBA’s swap shop.

Dave Duerson, a two-time Super Bowl Champion, committed suicide last week by shooting himself in the chest. As he decided to end his life, he also chose to donate his brain to the study of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease which appears in many retired football players. Bill explores Duerson’s decisions and urges both the NFL and the Players Association to respond to them.

Senior Producer Gary Waleik explains his music selections for this weeks show.