Once, in San Diego against the Chargers in Duane Thomas’s first game against his former teammates, I decided to implement the system. Good time for play action. Right on the money. Screen pass would be effective here. Bam. Cowboys were driving the length of the field and my partner Brad Sham was giving me the stink-eye and wondering what was up with me. Finally, in the red zone, Ermal let me know that Roger was going to throw a slant pass to tight end Mike Ditka. I suggested as much over the air, but Roger audibled and handed the ball off to Walt Garrison for the score. I think I managed to muster up the proper level of enthusiasm, but a bit of confusion and frustration at having my streak ended may have crept into my tone. I looked over at Ermal and he shrugged. I guess that’s what makes sports so great—the unpredictability of it all.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to predict how things would go for me at ABC. That Texas–Texas A&M game in 1975 had set my sights pretty high. I figured that getting that assignment meant that I would no longer be the fourth play-by-play guy for the network. The same year I was hired, ABC also brought Jim Lampley on board. Management had undertaken what they called a talent search and plucked him out of graduate school at the University of North Carolina. At twenty-six he was eight years younger than me, youthful looking, and the network hoped that he’d attract a younger audience to its college football telecasts. Back then, collegiate games got nowhere near the ratings that they do now. Also, because of NCAA restrictions, far fewer games were available and so ABC essentially had the only game in town during the regular season. Bowl games weren’t under the NCAA’s control so both NBC and CBS broadcast them. That meant that there weren’t a whole lot of jobs for broadcasters.
Keith Jackson was the network’s number one guy and was widely thought of as the voice of college football. I’ve no problem with that assessment. Keith was a truly great play-by-play man and any fan of college football can probably still hear him saying things like “big uglies” and “Whoa, Nellie,” and “He’s a biggun!” Chris Schenkel was number two, and another young up-and-comer by the name of Al Michaels was in the number three slot. Talk about a Murderer’s Row of on-air talent. I was in good company, but still I believed that I had the skills to be at the top of that heap. I aspired to be at the top and worked hard to get there, but I never felt like Chuck Howard was in my corner, even though he had picked me, or that I was “his” guy. It wasn’t as if I were sitting on the bench, so to speak; I was out there, but in basketball terms I wasn’t the go-to guy, the scorer everyone counted on. That was made very evident. I never got to go to the Olympics when ABC had the rights to them.
That stung.
A lot.
I really wanted to do those broadcasts. Just as athletes in many sports pointed to the games as the pinnacle of their careers, so did most broadcasters I knew. Why? For one thing to be a part of a worldwide phenomenon. Casual sports fans, non–sports fans, and dyed-in-the-wool sports fanatics all tuned in. The Olympics provided broadcasters with opportunities to cover sports that normally didn’t get a lot of recognition and offered you a chance to do some wonderful human interest pieces. Getting the assignment was a kind of pat-on-the-back validation that you were doing a good job and the company valued your contributions.
I also felt like I’d demonstrated my loyalty to the company and had demonstrated my versatility and willingness to do what it took to get the job done. I’d rearranged schedules, asked for and received favors from Tex Schramm and others to accommodate ABC’s requests. Sometimes those things were recognized, but more often they were overlooked. And through it all the implication was clear: I was expendable and I should be grateful for what I had. I didn’t like hearing that, but what could I say? If you want to succeed you sometimes have to swallow a lot of stuff. I suppose that’s the lesson to be learned—though I wouldn’t be doing this book if I took those words too literally: don’t hang on to regrets for too long. I also know this: everybody has them.
Perhaps this is true even for those who got to call the Olympics for ABC. One of my favorite stories about Keith Jackson is set in Memphis, Tennessee, in December 1979. I was working sidelines at the Liberty Bowl between Penn State and Tulane University. Keith was doing the play-by-play along with his longtime partner and former Notre Dame head coach Ara Parseghian. We were at another Holiday Inn—the glamour of those stays had worn off since I first saw that welcome sign in Ohio back in 1975—and a few of us had gathered in Keith’s suite. (He had a couch in his room and none of us others did.) We were gathered together having a few drinks and talking. With the 1980 Winter Olympic games approaching in Lake Placid, New York, talk naturally turned to that. Ara asked Keith if he was going to do ice hockey—one of the signature events of the games given the participation of the Soviet Union, renowned as masters on ice.
Keith narrowed his gaze and shook his head, his bulldog jowls wagging slightly. “Oh no, sir,” he said in that wonderful voice of his. “There’s a young man out of West Allis, Wisconsin, by the name of Eric Heiden. A speed skater. A marvel on ice. Has a chance to win five gold medals and I believe he will do it. He’s going to become the most decorated speed skater in the history of the sport. Let somebody else do ice hockey. I’m going to be there to describe every stroke of those speed skating races!”
Now, I’m not saying that Keith was even considered or offered the ice hockey announcing. All I know is that Al Michaels’s “Do you believe in miracles?” call has gone down in the history books as one of the most iconic utterances in sports broadcasting. Both of those men went on to do pretty well for themselves. Eric Heiden did win those five gold medals. Funny that in most circles he’s far less known than the other two. He’s still the only skater to win all five events—sprints to long distance—at a single games, let alone in an Olympic career.
In the end, my Olympic moment was still to come, and when it did for the first time in 1992, Paul Wylie, bless his heart, paid me a real tribute in Albertville. After the conclusion of the competitive portion of the event, the skaters received their medals. They take two laps of the ice surface in the Skate of Champions. Kristi Yamaguchi was up in the booth with Scott and me. The first lap, Paul looked up at us and waved. The second time around, we caught one another’s eye. As he skated toward us, he lifted his silver medal over his head and bunched up its ribbon in his fist. He then executed a perfect bowling motion with the medal.
Chapter Six
Beyond Borders
If my desire to reach the top ranking of ABC’s college football play-by-play men went unmet, then I at least earned a consolation prize that topped what Bowling for Dollars offered: I got to travel internationally to cover sporting events for the network. Ever since I was a young boy and heard those voices over the radio bringing stories to me from the far reaches of the United States and beyond, I had dreamed of traveling to see other countries and cultures.
In the fall of 1979, I received a call from Chuck Howard. ABC was going to televise a portion of the World Junior Boxing Championship from Yokohama, Japan. I was told that I was to go there to commentate. I was over the moon to have this first opportunity to travel overseas to do a broadcast. Even better, this international event would be featured as a segment on ABC Sports’ award-winning Wide World of Sports. In my mind, if any show occupied the top ranking of sports programming year to year in this country, it was Wide World. In its run from 1961 to 1988, the show won eleven Emmy Awards, a prestigious Peabody Award, and was named by Time magazine as one of the one hundred most influential shows in television.
Its original host, Jim McKay, was the best storyteller on television. He won two Emmy Awards—one for sports and the other for news coverage. The two intersected in 1972 at the Munich Olympics when terrorists took eleven Israeli athletes as hostages. Jim was there to cover the gymnastic events but was pressed into greater service when the events unfolded. Roone Arledge at ABC quickly realized he needed someone with the right qualities to be on the ground to cover the incident. Chris Schenkel was hosting the
Games but didn’t possess the storytelling chops to cover what was now a very serious international news story.
Jim was lounging by the pool when the call came. He hustled over to the studio, put on his pants and jacket, and stayed on the air for the next fourteen hours straight. When the crisis came to an end with the execution of all eleven of the athletes, Jim uttered words that went down in history: “When I was a kid my father used to say ‘Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.’ Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They have now said there were eleven hostages; two were killed in their rooms this morn—yesterday morning; nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.”
An anthology show, Wide World was conceived on the premise that many sports from around the world didn’t get airtime in the States. Some of what it first broadcast became staples of sports programming—the Indianapolis 500, Formula One racing, the British Open golf tournament, among them. Others were more obscure—Irish hurling (a lacrosse–field hockey hybrid), curling, jai-alai, wrist wrestling, logrolling, and a host of others. I loved the show and its wide range of subjects; the intellectual curiosity reflected my own and many others’ about the rest of the world.
As it turned out, the boxing assignment didn’t turn out to be a very big deal, but in January 1980, a Cold War battle was going to be waged. The United States was sending a team of amateur boxers to the Soviet Union to take on their squad. A four-person team went over, including me. Terry Jastrow was there, as well as a young production assistant by the name of David Dinkins, Jr. His father would eventually become mayor of New York. Our technical work was farmed out to a crew from Sweden. The most fascinating member of our entourage was a young man named Igor Rostov. Igor’s perfect English, good looks, and ease with us foreigners had me convinced he was a KGB agent. He swore to us that he’d never been out of the motherland, but that didn’t add up.
We stayed at the Metropole Hotel, just off Red Square. I understood why that famous place was named for the color. It was holding its breath: the foul odors that emanated from the Metropole stank of long-ignored laundry and cabbage. Come to think of it, that’s what the food tasted like as well. It became clear to me that the Russians were as paranoid about us as we were about them. Everywhere I turned, I saw Soviet security personnel; every time I came back to the hotel I had to present my passport at the front desk before being issued a card to allow me on the elevator. Once when I was at the elevator a babushka woman checked my card and passport before allowing me on board as she presented me with an enormous metal key. It would have been impossible to hide the key in a pocket, and it took some effort just to put it in the lock to my sparse room.
Even more involved was the method by which I could make a call home. I had asked upon checking in if such a thing was possible. Easy, I was told. The front desk would call the phone service company requesting an overseas call. When the call was approved, the phone service would call the front desk and state what time and date the call could be made. I was checking in on a Sunday. The clerk dialed the number and a lengthy conversation ensued. Many minutes and consonants later, I was told the soonest time available was Wednesday between 4 P.M. and 8 P.M. I took it. Again, the whole passport check ensued but eventually I got a chance to speak with Dick Hitt, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald. I’m sure the KGB loved every second of our conversation, especially the parts about the Cowboys.
Once again, politics and sports intertwined. While I was there, I had a lengthy lunch with the producer Terry Jastrow and Igor Rostov. We sat at a large window watching an icy parade of overcoat-clad Russians scuttling past, burrowed in their furs. As Terry and I shared memories of a Texas upbringing, Igor, reminding us again that he was born in Russia and had never been outside its borders, chimed in from time to time in perfectly colloquial English. He was convinced that the United States was going to invade the Soviet Union. “I’d bet my life on it,” he said, employing the euphemism perfectly and seemingly without irony. We tried to convince him that the United States had no such intentions. We just wanted to live in peace. We invited him to visit America to see for himself how we all lived. He declined, feverishly. What could he find in the United States that his homeland couldn’t provide? He also added, nodding at the pedestrians outside, that every one of those people lost someone in World War II. Most Americans had not. They knew about sacrifice. We did not.
I thought of all the long lines I’d seen for provisions but didn’t say anything. It somehow felt un-American to agree with any part of Igor’s assessment.
The next day, our world changed. President Carter announced that the United States would not participate in the Moscow Olympics due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Suddenly, our little band of twelve boxers became the focus of the news/sports world. ABC had a very substantial news presence in Moscow but because this was a story about the fallout of the president’s decision, they asked me to step in. I was to interview these twelve young men. They all happened to be African American and shared similar stories of coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds; each dreamed of Olympic glory and what it might have meant as a means to improve their future prospects.
When I told them that it appeared as if those dreams would be left unrealized, that all the hard work they’d put in might ultimately be for naught, they looked alternately confused, crestfallen, and angry. I couldn’t blame them; I thought that President Carter had made an awful decision. Why use these athletes as pawns? Why dash the hopes and dreams of hundreds of other athletes?
We were still going to cover the bouts. Terry asked me if I would like to comment on the recent out-of-the-ring developments. I told him I would and worked feverishly that week to develop an essay that I delivered on camera to be included at the conclusion of our broadcast. I said much of what I stated above—wrong choice, ill-advised denial of opportunity, and wrongheaded mixing of politics and sports.
A few weeks after it aired, I got a call from one of our ABC vice presidents—we had more than a few. I was eager to hear what he had to say; maybe I’d made my mark this time. I had, but as it turned out it was more like I’d been doglike in marking my territory. The vice president told me that he’d gotten a call from someone at the White House. The man had expressed in no uncertain terms his displeasure with my remarks. As it was relayed to me, the White House staffer said it was as if I “had been pissing in the face of the president.”
There was no fallout from that call, but the message was delivered. I was dismayed. I consoled myself with this thought: at least I wasn’t an Olympic athlete who would have to wait four more years for, or perhaps never get, a chance to be in the spotlight.
I only had to wait two months before being in the spotlight; again, not a place that worked to my advantage. Boxing was on the menu again—the U.S. team versus the East Germans in a small city north of Berlin. ABC promoted the heck out of it—the first sporting event ever televised live from East Germany to the United States. The American public seemed to have an insatiable appetite for these story lines about communist bad guys versus democratic good guys. It was good theater, and with the recent decision to forgo the Olympics, a new narrative thread was emerging: let’s take a closer look at life behind the Iron Curtain; let’s give viewers a chance to see what they won’t be able to in Moscow.
For years, in covering events all over Europe, ABC had used a man named Kurt Fuchs as an interpreter and driver. He greeted me at the Berlin airport and was as gregarious and charming as I’d been told he would be. He carried both an Austrian and a West German passport, and used whichever one was best in a given situation. He took us through Checkpoint Charlie, the gap in the wall dividing East and West Germany, with little difficulty—an hourlong process. We began our car trip to Schwerin, an hour’s drive north. Now, I’d lived in Texas for quite a while and traveled through a variety of no-man’s-lands covering sports there and across the country, but that ride was memorable for being so unremarkable. The road was arro
w straight, the scenery flat and endless farmland without any sign of life—animal or human. It was mind-numbing. My stay in the Hotel Stadstschwerin would numb the rest of me. The tiny bed wouldn’t accommodate my five-nine frame and I slept with one leg dangling off it.
Didn’t matter. I was excited to have my third overseas assignment in ten weeks. My colleagues had another take, wondering who they had pissed off to get sent to this godforsaken place. I had my rose-colored glasses on but wisely kept my views to myself. The broadcast went flawlessly. I was excited by the fact that this wasn’t going into the can to be diced up later as TV spam. The matches were on Sunday night and they were going to be shown that same day back in the United States, in the afternoon due to the time zone differences. By 10 P.M. we were on the road back to Berlin and then on to the comforts of home. Kurt drove and Radio Luxembourg provided the sound track, the best of 1950s to ’70s rock and roll—almost like I was back in Austin in my early days of DJing.
That’s when the house of shits reestablished itself. We got to Checkpoint Charlie at three in the morning. A shroud of fog and mist hung over the lights illuminating our entry point into normal civilization. Through panes of glass dripping with moisture, I watched as Kurt spoke to the guards outside the car. German was always harsh-sounding, but there was an even more bitter tone to it. Kurt’s voice rose—he was an avowed critic of the East German communists. From out of the dim lights near an outbuilding men came toward the car. The Vopos, the East German police, charged at us. They surrounded the car, yanked open the back door of the sedan, and ordered us out.
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