Living Out Loud

by Craig Sager

  At the shootaround before the game, Pop did his typical media press conference. I tried to grab him for a minute to apologize, but he wanted nothing to do with me, so I took some paper, scribbled an apology, and handed it to him on his way out. He took it, gave me the Pop scowl, and continued on his way.

  Now, in 2014, as I lay in a hospital bed in Atlanta, Pop once again was in my life. I didn’t see the TNT pregame show, so I did not know that Junior would be making an appearance until halftime, when Ernie teased it again. I couldn’t believe it. Junior had just been in my room that weekend and had said nothing to me about it. But my shock turned to a father’s nervousness for his kid. Would he ask the right questions? Would he understand the director’s cues in his earpiece? Would Pop be kind?

  The next thirty minutes, I was a nervous wreck. I knew the interview would come at the end of the third quarter. I wanted to call Junior beforehand, but something held me back. I lay in the hospital bed, IVs attached, chemo flowing into my veins, with Stacy next to me, recording my reaction.

  We watched the interview. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I was so enormously proud of the way Junior handled it, as he had no on-air experience at all. But beyond that, the gesture of his willingness to step in for me brought me immense pride. I had not felt that close to my son in many years.

  When Junior returned the following day, he handed me a sealed, unaddressed envelope with the Spurs logo in the return address spot. I used what little strength I had to carefully open the envelope.

  Craig,

  I heard the news and want you to know you are in our thoughts as you begin this process. It certainly will not be easy and I can only hope you will persevere and beat it.

  Your intellect, competitiveness and humor will certainly be good companions as you move forward at this difficult time.

  Bottom line, get your butt back on the court where you belong! We make a great team.

  Very Best, Pop

  It was a classy and unnecessary gesture by Pop, and it certainly gave me a boost in energy. I was going to make it back to the court no matter what. As I lay in bed, my fate uncertain, I thought back to the canvas of my career, and the moments that made it up. It had all started at a tiny radio station in Sarasota, Florida, with a call from a guy named Cliff.

  12

  THE COLORS OF MY LIFE

  As my high school years were drawing to a close, and my realization that I was unlikely to become a professional athlete came to the forefront, I figured the best way to get my real-time rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins would be to become a professional fighter pilot in the Air Force. Ever since I’d watched the planes take off and land at O’Hare with my father, I’d been in love with planes, and besides, my father had served his country, so it was only fitting that I should as well. My parents were conflicted about my ambition to seek a nomination to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs—this was at the height of the Vietnam War.

  My father wanted me to explore all my options, so we visited the University of Miami, where his buddy and WWII cohort, Bert Parks, was a distinguished alum. I got a taste of the Ivy League on the Dartmouth campus. And, of course, I spent time at Northwestern, my hometown school. The Academy nomination process played out, and I was informed that Representative Charlotte Reid had not nominated me to the Academy, but rather to the United States Military Academy—West Point. No airplanes, perhaps, but not too shabby, I thought to myself.

  I took a visit to a cold and snowy West Point and met with a young basketball coach named Bobby Knight, who would go on to win nine hundred games at Army, Indiana, and Texas Tech and be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame. At that time, he wasn’t yet the volatile coach that he would come to be known as. (Years later, when Coach Knight and I became friends, I told him that I’d almost played for him at Army. “Sager,” he responded, “what makes you think you would have played?”) But after giving it some thought, I didn’t want to become a soldier with a four-year postgraduate commitment to the Army, and I decided to attend Northwestern, which would conveniently also keep me near my Cubbies.

  When I arrived at Northwestern in the late summer of 1969, I tried out for the Northwestern football team, despite my profound dislike of football practice. I was an athlete, and I couldn’t imagine not playing a sport in the fall, so I tried out for the freshman team, since in those days freshmen were ineligible to play varsity. I suited up in full pads in the Chicago heat in August and took on guys who were my size (since I had finally grown a few inches), just with more football ability than me. During one preseason practice, I suffered a concussion returning kicks. Later that day, I suffered another concussion. As I lay on the field, I knew I was at Northwestern and I knew my name, but other than that I had no idea of anything else. At the hospital, they told me I had double amnesia and that I would need to wear a foam helmet around campus while riding a bike. No way. I decided to leave football behind before ever playing a game in college, and to focus my time on basketball, playing pickup at Patten Gym for hours on end. I had grown six inches since my senior year of high school, and with my ball-handling skills, I figured I had a decent shot of making the freshman team.

  I introduced myself to the freshman coach, Jim Braegel, and asked for the chance to be a walk-on. Not only did I get the chance, but, after injuries to many of the team’s key players, including star Rick Sund, I ended up playing significant minutes my freshman year, enough to earn a scholarship on the varsity team the following year—or so I thought. I loved the game, of course, but I also loved the camaraderie and the travel and the practices. I loved everything about playing basketball at Northwestern. Prior to the start of the next season, colleges changed the rules to allow freshmen to compete on varsity, which limited the number of spots for guys like me. Coach Brad Snyder said that I could practice with the team as a walk-on, but my playing time would be very limited. With the demands on a student-athlete and with a true desire to get my degree in four years, I decided to step away from basketball before my sophomore season.

  Somehow, some way, I wanted to be around sports. It was like air to me. I did enjoy the spirit of the school, so I decided to join the Northwestern cheerleading squad, believing that I would get to go on the road with the team. But I soon learned that that wasn’t the case. So in November, when there was an opening to be the school’s mascot, Willie the Wildcat, I jumped at the chance, as Willie always went on the road—and didn’t even have to practice during the week. Long story short, I got the job, and for the next two years, this Willie was perhaps a little too wild, as my “ask for forgiveness later” attitude got me in all sorts of trouble.

  My first big football game as Willie happened at powerhouse Ohio State University, where the Wildcats were huge underdogs. I put everything I had into being an obnoxious, energetic, unabashed Wildcat supporter, albeit through my body motions and my enormous fake wildcat head. Unbelievably, Northwestern scored a dramatic upset in Columbus, and the Buckeye fans were not happy. It probably didn’t help that I remained on the field, taunting the Ohio State fans and players and reveling in our victory after the game. It didn’t take long for some members of the Ohio State marching band to begin pushing me and poking me with their flagpoles. Ohio State security couldn’t care less. Somehow, word made it back to the Northwestern locker room, and dozens of players in full pads came to my rescue. It would be the first of my many escapades as Willie.

  My love affair with my college of choice in no way compromised my devotion to the Chicago Cubs, and I made every effort to attend their games. In 1971, I was there in the left-center-field bleachers as my hero, Ernie Banks, stepped up to the plate at Wrigley, on the verge of hitting his five hundredth career home run. With a crack of the bat, the ball was headed my way. I was absolutely convinced that I would catch the historic ball. It was coming right toward me. Down, down, down, I stuck out my hands and … it eluded my fingers and landed just beyond the netting the Cubs had recently installed above the outfield brick-and-ivy wall
and bounced back off the hard concrete of the stands. It was just one of many Cubs moments I was able to experience while I was in school at Northwestern.

  As for my studies, I marched to the beat of my own drum. During my senior year, for example, I engaged in an independent study program with a young professor on campus, Gary Wodder. Along with two classmates, I wanted to study the effects that alcohol and marijuana consumption had on the motor skills of subjects, something with which we had some experience. So one day, we gathered in a campus gymnasium with twelve volunteer subjects. Before any substances were consumed, each of the twelve subjects—including me—was baseline-tested on speed, reflex time, endurance, and free-throw-shooting ability. (I made 24 of 30 initially.)

  After all baseline tests had been recorded, all twelve subjects left with instructions—six to start drinking beer and six to smoke pot over the next four hours. It was only natural that I be included in the six who drank.

  I went back to our fraternity house and started pounding beers. Four hours later, we all reconvened at the gym and were tested on the same metrics as before. I scored better in every test after drinking for four hours, including increasing my free throw percentage from 80 percent to 87 percent. (That research explains why I score better in golf as the round goes on.)

  As graduation inched closer in June 1973, I had some choices to make. I could go back to Batavia, I could stay in Chicago, maybe even play some basketball in Belgium—one of my former teammates was now coaching overseas—or I could pursue a job doing what I did best: talking. My dream job was to do play-by-play for the Chicago Cubs, which seemed an unlikely goal, so instead I set my target on being a major-market television sports anchor. (Although I made a mental note after graduation that if I was not on television by the age of twenty-nine, I was going to become a race car driver. I craved the need for speed!)

  My parents had moved down to Sarasota shortly after I graduated high school, and over the summers I had spent time working at local radio and television stations there. In fact, during the summer of 1972, the Democrats held their convention at the Miami Beach Convention Center, and the news director sent me to Miami to try to get some sound bites from delegates and politicians. Political talk was common around our dinner table, with Dad occasionally looking up from his work to chime in in defense of Richard Nixon, and I was fairly well-versed in the politics of the time. But during a hotly contested convention that resulted in the nomination of George McGovern for president, I got to see firsthand that politics was a combat sport and that the drama, competitiveness, and uncertainty that drew me to sports could be found in the political arena as well. But politics and news reporting was not in my future. I found news to be very conflicting: I had a very cheerful, happy personality, which made delivering depressing reports of murders, robberies, and scandals quite difficult. Whereas in sports I could witness triumphs and successes, and report on remarkable achievements.

  Before my Northwestern graduation, Cliff Lanson, the station manager from WSPB Radio in Sarasota, offered me a job at $94 per week doing morning and afternoon news updates, and I accepted. I moved to Florida and began my new job, supplementing my income by giving sailing lessons on the waters of the Gulf and bouncing and bartending at Big Daddy’s, a chain of bars in Florida that became an instant success with the lowering of the state’s drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen in 1973. I became one of Big Daddy Flanigan’s favorite employees and soon found myself in a management role, counting money and closing stores from Sarasota to Naples to Fort Lauderdale on the weekends.

  I poured my heart into my radio job and took it very seriously, tracking down leads, showing up at city council meetings, and otherwise smothering the local news scene. In addition to the newscasts, I served as the host and play-by-play man of the local high school football scene, broadcasting a game of the week every Friday night. I didn’t cover professional sports. That is, until 1974, when a major sports event came on the horizon and I knew that I had to be there to report on it.

  *

  Henry “Hank” Aaron had finished the 1973 season with 713 home runs, one shy of tying the great Babe Ruth, and Aaron endured the attention, as well as some racially motivated threats on his life, in the off-season. So, based on his contemporaneous output, the record-breaking homer was likely to come in the opening series in Cincinnati or during the home opener in Atlanta the following week. As a local radio news reporter in Sarasota, I wasn’t assigned to the story, but as a baseball fanatic, I followed the home run chase closely, and when Aaron tied but did not break the record in Cincy, I knew that I had to be at the next game in Atlanta.

  It just so happens that WSPB was a radio affiliate of the Atlanta Braves, so I knew many of the players and key staff. I used that angle when I asked my boss, Cliff, to allow me to travel there to report on Aaron potentially achieving this groundbreaking milestone. He thought about it for a few seconds.

  “Be back for drive time in the morning,” Cliff finally said, sternly, from across his desk—then, leaning in: “or you’re fired.”

  I laughed. He didn’t. Then I didn’t. “Yes, sir … Of course, sir…”

  I bought a ticket on National Airlines and flew directly from Sarasota to Atlanta the afternoon of the game. I had no game ticket, but I was reasonably confident that my connections in the Braves’ public relations department would come through with a credential—which, God bless ’em, they did, but one that simply got me into the stadium. I wasn’t the only journalist asking for a favor, and as I was not the highest on their priority list, they had no media seat for me, just the photographers’ box next to the third-base dugout, and that’s where I was relegated. So there I sat, field-side, packing light—it was just me and my microphone and recorder, next to a cameraman from NBC, which was nationally televising the game. I felt like Maury Wills, anxious for the steal sign …

  Before the first pitch, on a cold and wet night when the weather nearly canceled the game, I was on the field, talking with managers and players from both teams, as well as with Aaron’s parents. Back in those days, athletes and coaches were much more accessible and willing to talk with the media. As the game got started, I stood in the photographers’ bay in one of my father’s old white trench coats … waiting …

  After a lifetime of memorizing statistics and achievements, I held Babe Ruth’s 714 career home runs in reverence as the greatest milestone in sports, and I viewed Aaron’s breaking the record as the greatest moment in the history of our national pastime. Feeling the moment, the tension, the anticipation of seeing the imagery of the flags waving, and hearing the sounds of pitches hitting the catcher’s glove and bats connecting with balls—everything was more vivid that night. I would never witness a setting and atmosphere like it again in my life.

  When Aaron came to the plate in the first inning, the crowd was electric, collectively ready to explode. He walked, and it was almost a letdown for fans. In the fourth inning, he came to the plate again, facing Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing. I could feel the buzz in the crowd, and I could hear it in my own voice. As Aaron launched Downing’s pitch high and long over the fence in left-center, I instinctively walked out onto the field, along with dozens of players, and by the time I hit the third-base line, Aaron was jogging toward immortality. I caught up with him just as he was crossing home plate.

  “Henry, you just hit the home run!” I said with my microphone outstretched, trying to keep pace with the champ.

  “Thank God it’s over!” he responded as he took the final steps to home, where he was mobbed by teammates. I just kept on recording the exchanges with his teammates, and, as they stopped the game to present Aaron with a plaque, I was in prime position to interview his parents, who had come down onto the field. I never gave one thought to breaking any media rules or having my credential revoked. I just went with the moment. Not only did I witness history, but I was part of history, with the tape recording chronicling the event and the immediate exclusive reaction from Aaron’s pare
nts and teammates.

  I took a 5:30 a.m. flight back to Sarasota, and, yes, I was on the air the next morning. After my newscast, I started to receive calls from friends who had seen me at home plate. I figured it was my calling card and ticket to a big-market job.

  Later that summer, at the All-Star Game in Pittsburgh, I introduced myself to Aaron and told him about the audio recording I had, including his parents.

  “You’re the guy in the trench coat!” Aaron recalled.

  My audio recording of the game still plays in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Google “Craig Sager Hank Aaron” and you can watch the young twenty-something in a spotless white coat interviewing the Hall of Famer after he crossed home plate. I don’t need to watch it; I was there.

  13

  MOVING ON UP

  My work at WSPB continued, and I was on the air at twenty-four as a small-town celebrity—at least among the high school community that knew me. The package of football games had a sponsor and not only helped elevate the station in the community but actually brought in a few bucks as well. Since football was going so well, I asked Cliff if I could go out and pursue a sponsorship to do a high school basketball game of the week.

  “If you can sell it, we can do it,” he said.

  So I immediately reached out to the schools, and we were able to assemble a great slate of games. I pounded the pavement for a sponsor and finally secured a local bank to cover the costs. Everything was in place.

  But on the Wednesday before our first Friday night broadcast, Cliff came to me and told me we weren’t going to do the games. He said that, while there was a marketable interest in Florida high school football on local radio, he doubted that high school basketball had the same interest, and he thought it would be a ratings disaster. Of course, that was something he could have shared with me long before. After a brief exchange in which I received few satisfactory answers from my boss, I erupted. I moved toward Cliff, grabbed him by the shirt, and lifted him against the wall. (He was a rather small guy.) I cocked my right hand and … stopped. I dropped my hands, turned around, and walked right out of the station.