Role of a Lifetime

by James Brown

  “Hey, can you come over here for a minute?” he called. The young man paused and followed, as Unseld introduced himself and sat the young boy on his knee. Unseld spoke with him about life for a few minutes, while the other players undoubtedly watched from the bus, which was delayed from departing. I could see the Bullets trainer readying the bus to depart, but I knew that he would never give the word to leave as long as the Bullets team captain was sitting outside. Unseld gave the boy an autograph and a hug, and the young fellow, whose shoulders were slumped just minutes before, stood straighter before my eyes that evening, as he walked off into the depths of the stadium, his confidence restored.

  It was a great example of the truism that we all are role models, and all can positively impact someone, if we just take the time to do so. Whatever our sphere of influence—NBA Hall of Famer, neighbor, parent, or co-worker.

  I was not the only person moonlighting from Xerox; others were as well, but they weren’t doing it in such an open and highly visible way. My immediate supervisor kept tabs not only on what I was doing at Xerox, but also on all the other jobs I was covering as well. I think he resented the other things I was doing, and I think he resented that Jay Nussbaum was helping facilitate my second career—Jay’s only caveat being that I still had to make my sales numbers with Xerox, which was not only reasonable, but appropriate. I had to continue to meet or exceed my expected numbers, and I always did. But for some reason, my supervisor at Xerox at the time began to make life more difficult for me in the office. As a result I ended up leaving Xerox in 1979, after spending almost seven years with the company, and took a job with Eastman Kodak.

  I worked around eighteen months for Kodak, and was confronted at that time with a dilemma. They wanted me to move to their corporate headquarters in Rochester, New York. Leaving the Washington area would put a significant crimp, if not end altogether, my fledgling broadcasting career. Instead, I accepted an offer to join a minority-owned software development firm, Raven Systems, where I spent the next year.

  I continued to moonlight with TVS and the other networks, as well as doing some occasional freelance work for Channel 9, the CBS affiliate. I received a call from Marty Aronoff, the sports producer at Channel 9, at two in the afternoon one day, while I was sitting at my desk in my office. Up until that point I had done fill-in work, like public affairs segments on weekends. This day, however, Aronoff informed me that the regular sportscaster, the wildly popular Glenn Brenner, was ill, and the weekend sports anchor, longtime Washington Redskins voice Frank Herzog, was out of town. They were in a bind, so they called me to see if I would do the sports segment on the six o’clock news broadcast. They must not have realized just how desperate that made them seem. I had never done it once—weekend or late night or even for practice—never. And so I hurriedly agreed to do it and hung up, before they realized what they were asking.

  I arrived and Aronoff told me that he would type my script for me. “What you’ll do,” he said, “is to read the script that we’ve got for you, and when you get to the asterisks in the script, look down at the monitor on your desk. There you will see the highlights that are playing for the viewers.” I had it, I assured him.

  I took my place on the set, but was so nervous and cotton mouthed I could barely speak when the anchor tried to transition to me. I had no idea how to gracefully segue into the piece, so I merely started running through the script, and when I hit the asterisks, I looked down and began voicing over the highlights, as instructed. I was great. I was really getting animated: “The Bullets played the Knicks last night, and here you’ll see a long jumper from—”

  I glanced over at the monitor to see the highlights, and all I could see was the top of my head. I slowed my reading… and stopped. I looked up toward the camera. As it turns out, they’d had a tape malfunction and here I was, still on camera, with no videotaped highlights being played for the viewers. Just my face. And so, I smiled.

  “Hi, there,” I said into the camera. I had nothing else. Somehow, I stammered through the rest of the broadcast, and actually reached the point where I had run over my segment time. They were giving me the cut sign. For those of you keeping score, that makes both “what to do when the highlight tape malfunctions” and “this is what the cut sign looks like” as two things they did not cover with me before the broadcast. I had no idea what they were doing with their now increasingly frantic hand signals, and just kept speaking into the camera.

  The producer finally whispered to the camera operator, who began turning the camera away from me and back to the anchor. All I knew was that I hadn’t finished the piece, and with the camera turning away for some unknown reason, I began climbing over the desk to stay in the picture.

  I was awful and should have, by rights, been fired on the spot. Instead, for some reason, somebody saw something worth redeeming in me.

  I was still doing the color commentary for the Bullets alongside Frank Herzog. Frank was also working at Channel 9, at the time when I was doing some freelance work there, and in 1981 he left to join the ABC affiliate, and asked me to come over as his weekend anchor and weekday reporter at Channel 7. These were dizzying times for me. So much was happening in my personal life and career, and I was wrestling with what to do about the offer. It seemed like the answer I had been seeking in my prayers, but I was still reluctant to leave the business setting that had been so good to me already.

  I sought out Mike Trainer for input. Mike was an attorney who was the manager of Sugar Ray Leonard at the time. I told Mike of my concerns in leaving the business world for broadcasting, which at the time seemed to be such a tenuous existence. Mike took a fatherly tone with me, and hit me right between the eyes with his very frank advice.

  “It sounds to me that what you’re looking for is a guarantee in life. You’re looking for an absolute safety net, that if it doesn’t work out in broadcasting, you’ve got a place to land. It doesn’t work that way; that’s not life.”

  He paused to make sure that I was grasping it all.

  “You’re only as good as your ability to perform or create value and have an asset that others see as being valuable. You’ve got to get out of that scholarship frame of mind.”

  I was trying to be methodical and deliberate in my decision-making process but sometimes there comes a point when you have to embrace risk and your dreams.

  I accepted the position and adopted a free-agent mentality in evaluating all my offers from that time forward. After I made the move to a career of full-time broadcasting, someone at CBS saw me doing a college basketball game for TVS, which was regionally syndicated on NBC. Because CBS had just acquired the rights to March Madness, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, they were looking for additional announcers to use for the first weekend of games in the spring of 1982. I was blessed that Ted Shaker, an executive producer at CBS, liked my work, and they added me to do more than just the four games of that opening round, and I was able to broadcast some NBA games for them.

  While I was at the ABC affiliate, Channel 7, I asked repeatedly about a contract. Upon hiring, they had offered me a contract, and despite Mike Trainer’s advice, I still wanted whatever guarantee in my new life that I could get. No contract. Months went by, and they continued to offer to get me one, but could never deliver it. As a result of my working as the weekend reporter, and college basketball analyst for CBS as well as some NBA games, my exposure within CBS was increasing. I was concerned about working for the dual networks, and didn’t want it to negatively impact me down the line, so I kept asking for that contract from the ABC affiliate. For whatever reason—maybe they weren’t sure that I was going to pan out—they never provided one.

  After six months, the CBS affiliate at Channel 9 offered me a full-time position. They were going to create a sports segment on the five o’clock news show and wanted me to be on it. My agent was thrilled, and pointed out that it would probably be in my best interests to be with the CBS affiliate, since I was wearing the CBS jacket to broadc
ast NCAA and NBA basketball games on weekends. We figured a time was coming when ABC might not like that arrangement. Still, I wanted to talk with the local ABC affiliate to see if they were going to give me a contract and had any further thoughts on my future with them. I enjoyed the people and the management, but was unclear as to their long-term plans for me. As my agent pointed out, it was their failure to give me a contract, despite months on the job, which was even giving me the opportunity to go to CBS.

  “Can’t I at least go speak to ABC?” I asked. “No,” he advised. He thought I should take the CBS deal without alerting ABC to the possibility. I ended up taking his advice, and that ended up being a tumultuous time for me. It didn’t feel like that was the right way to go about it, and I should have followed my instincts on that. Things were not as clear as I had hoped in trying to access what was before me. The only thing that seemed clear was confusion. I sought a clear voice, and a clear direction—but none seemed to come. I realized though, later, that my instincts may have been the voice I was searching for in the chaos. Channel 7 had never given me the contract they had promised when I had repeatedly asked them for a mutual commitment that we could enter into, but even with that my instincts pointed me toward what I knew to be the right thing to do. To talk to them. I didn’t follow those instincts and as a result things got messy.

  Not surprisingly, as soon as Channel 7 got wind of my impending departure, they immediately pulled me off the air. Everything happened too quickly, before I even had a chance to speak with management at the station who had given me my first full-time position. Sometime later, I was with the owner of Channel 7, Joseph Albritton, and had a chance to explain what had happened and to apologize. As I anticipated, he was gracious about my departure, despite how poorly I had engineered it. I was grateful, because although that was the right move, it was the wrong way for me to have handled it, and I didn’t want to have burned any bridges in the industry.

  In 1984 I began working with CBS full time, broadcasting on a daily basis as well as doing a sports anthology show on the weekend CBS Sports Spectacular, where I covered everything from rock climbing to, eventually, the Tour DuPont bicycle race.

  Through it all, I have had a desire to press ahead and learn from life and its ups and downs, and that has caused me to add Psalm 91 to my daily prayers. Every morning I go through a list of prayers, many of them prayers of supplication, asking for help and protection over those I know personally or know about. However, much of my prayer time is focused on the condition of my heart, and whether I am seeking God with all of it. Psalm 91 is, to me, a prayer for comfort and deliverance, and a reminder that God is with us at all times—in the good and not so good moments of our lives.

  He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

  I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

  Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence.

  He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

  You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.

  A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.

  You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.

  If you make the Most High your dwelling—even the LORD, who is my refuge—then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.

  For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

  You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

  “Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

  He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.

  With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

  (Psalm 91 NIV)

  And to that, I can only say, “Thank you.” He has certainly delivered me through the challenges and chaos of career changes, the responsibilities and challenges of fatherhood, and the many trials of my life thus far.

  Through all of that, He watched over me as I stumbled, then picked me up and sent me out into another day.

  And tomorrow is another day.

  CHAPTER 8

  LESSONS FROM ALBERTVILLE

  I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  I was now at Channel 9, the CBS affiliate in DC, and was still doing extra games and other assignments as they came up for CBS, as well as broadcasting games for TVS. I stayed there for about two years as I recall, when CBS, the parent company, made me an offer to join their sports network. With that, I came on board as a full-time analyst, doing college and NBA basketball games, as well as various anthology shows. Hubie Brown was the A-team analyst, while I was the B-team analyst.

  After a short period of time, Executive Producer Ted Shaker took me aside to tell me that although my work was great, with my lack of big-time athletic credentials, my best hope for longevity with them and in this business was more than likely as a play-by-play announcer, not an analyst. There would always be star players retiring, or fired coaches looking for work, all of whom would have greater name recognition with the public with the real possibility of pushing me out of a job every year. If, however, I became a talented play-by-play announcer or a studio anchor, my future could be brighter, more secure, and longer. Since Shaker was the one who gave me the opportunity to expand my role at CBS, I took his advice to heart.

  I applied myself diligently to both endeavors—commentator or analyst and play-by-play announcer. Some time thereafter, I had an opportunity to do the play-by-play broadcast for a game in the National Football League.

  My first NFL game was, well, to put it bluntly, not my finest hour. I had spent a great deal of time boning up on football—after all, I was a basketball guy. Ted Shaker and Senior Producer Ed Goren took the time to fully brief me on all of the guidelines that would help me with the broadcast: take my time, use the clock in the booth not the stadium clock, relax, and so forth. The Atlanta Falcons were playing in Tampa, and both the Buccaneers and Falcons were not expected to do well that year. While the rest of the nation was probably watching Philadelphia, Dallas, or San Francisco, our game was being broadcast into very few homes—hence the reason why I was chosen to do it—and probably had a viewing audience consisting only of “a couple of houses in Tampa and the TV trucks at the stadium,” we joked. And even the folks in those houses and the TV trucks probably wished they were watching the Eagles, Cowboys, or 49ers instead.

  However, after the first half I got to feeling my oats, thinking that these play-by-play duties weren’t all that difficult. I had settled into the role. It wasn’t a surprise—the way I approach things, my preparation had been laborious, and it was paying off in aces. In fact, I got so comfortable, that midway through the third quarter, I heard myself say, “It’s third down with seven yards to go for the Buccaneers. They come to the line with two backs in the backfield. Steve Deberg takes the snap and hands off to James Wilder. Wilder hits a big hole off-tackle! He’s at the thirty-five, the forty! He’s at the forty-five, the fifty, the fifty-five! And he’s finally brought down at the sixty-yard line!”

  The producer shrieked into my headset from his place in the TV trucks outside: “THERE IS NO SIXTY-YARD LINE! Go to commercial!”

  Flustered, I looked to the stadium clock for the time, so that I could make the transition to commercial and save the little bit of any di
gnity that still remained. “And so, it’s first and ten for the Bucs at the thirty-five of Atlanta, and with eight minutes and -ninety-nine seconds left in the third quarter, we’re going to take a station break.” I was in a downward spiral, so rattled I couldn’t even read the game clock, or at least remember that it would go above fifty-nine seconds.

  Not only did they not fire me, but I bounced back well enough from that debacle with my continuing work, because after a period of time I was asked if I would prefer to be the main studio host for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Show, or the lead play-by-play announcer for college basketball. Being a team player, I indicated that either position would be a dream come true, and I was honored that I was being considered. I would let them sort it out based on their needs. I did tell them that my preference would be to become the lead play-by-play announcer, but that really I would be just as pleased with the other role.

  I was then asked, “And, of course, you would be the first African-American lead play-by-play announcer of a major sport at a network. How would you handle that?” I was startled. I hadn’t seen that question coming, or realized that my race still mattered here in the late 1980s.

  “Hopefully with the same degree of excellence that I’ve handled my body of work that has led you in approaching me with this opportunity.”

  I got neither job. They selected Jim Nantz, a good friend of mine and a superb announcer, as the play-by-play announcer for college basketball, and Pat O’Brien as the studio host for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Show.

  I got the news that I had been passed over for both opportunities and was crushed. When I regrouped from that setback I found myself on the verge of giving serious consideration to leaving the business. I figured that if I couldn’t move ahead in that sport—college basketball—that I had actually played and therefore knew best, what were the chances that I would get an opportunity in anything else? Again, the path I had assumed was clearly mine to follow—wasn’t.