Play by Play

by Verne Lundquist

  The good news is that I don’t regret turning down Fox’s overtures. I took a substantial pay cut as a result of my diminished role at CBS. I was working more but being paid less since those NFL advertising revenues weren’t rolling in. I think that had I gone to Fox, I would have had at least one regret.

  One of my earliest assignments with CBS following the announcement that we would no longer cover the NFL was to do the narration and on-camera work for a nonsports project. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day CBS did a piece on Lynn “Buck” Compton. There was a sports connection because Buck played baseball at UCLA and was a teammate of Jackie Robinson. He left school to join the U.S. Army and was a member of the 101st Airborne Division. He parachuted in during Operation Overlord—the code name for the Normandy invasion. He performed heroically and was later a member of the unit depicted in Band of Brothers. He later became an attorney and prosecuted Robert Kennedy’s killer Sirhan Sirhan. I got to travel to France and in addition to doing the voice-over work, I did on camera segments at various places where he’d acted heroically.

  I rank that special as number two on my list of all-time favorite productions I’ve been involved in. As I said, striking that balance between entertainment and information is crucial in becoming an effective communicator. I’m pleased that I was able to be a part of that examination of history. That memory takes the sting out of another from that period. I did a tennis tournament at Stratton Mountain in Vermont. My partner was Mary Carillo. The only trouble was, in doing the taped opening, I called her Mary Catillo. Twice. Mary has one of the great minds in all of sports broadcasting, and I’ve always greatly admired her work. I think she finally forgave me for violating that cardinal rule of broadcasting. She joked that if she was an NFL football player I would have gotten it right the first time.

  With no more NFL games on the horizon for me, my brain space was going to be occupied with other sports and other names. As it turned out, I wound up enjoying greatly my time in NFL exile.

  Chapter 10

  Live from Lillehammer It’s Verne and Scott Meet Tonya and Nancy

  I’m grateful that Mary Carillo was able to forgive me for not getting her name right. She understood that we all make mistakes, and as egregious as mine was, she still found a way to let me know that we could move on and have a good working relationship. And we did, though we didn’t do many events together. Holding a grudge would have been unproductive and unhealthy. How do I know that? Because for a long time after I was let go by Chuck Howard and ABC in 1982, I often fantasized about what I would say if I ever saw that man again. I’m not a violent person by nature; when I considered all the perceived injustices I suffered at the hands of ABC and Chuck, I could work myself into a real lather. I may not have wanted to literally cut him off at the knees, but to do so verbally would have given me great satisfaction.

  Shortly after learning that we’d lost the NFL, I was in Los Angeles International Airport. I was on one of the long escalators heading to baggage claim. Something caught my eye. A man on the floor below was wearing lime green slacks. I also caught a flash of white and tan—a bit of ankle and white Gucci loafers. I thought, Only one man in America dresses like that. Sure enough, my nemesis Chuck Howard was waiting to claim his bags. He was with another man I recognized. Chet Forte, the great director of Monday Night Football, was with him. Our paths had crossed but I didn’t know him well.

  My mind reeled. Here was my chance. I could really give Chuck a piece of my mind. I’d had great success with CBS. Enough time had passed that my revenge dish was quite cold despite my hot emotions. Plus, I’d be able to lay into him in front of one of his peers.

  Delicious.

  I walked up to Chuck, juggling malicious metaphors as I did. Which weapon would I play first?

  “Hi, Chuck.” I nodded like a gunslinger. “Hi, Chet.”

  Chuck greeted me. Before I could draw my weapon, he said, “You know, Verne, this is a business where you have to make judgment calls. Sometimes we make mistakes. I made a huge mistake with you. I want to apologize for not keeping you on the staff.”

  All my anger and resentment washed out of me. I dropped my weapons. I thanked him for his apology. I left my entire “why me” whining baggage there unclaimed. I didn’t spend any time ruing what might have been or chastising myself for a waste of time and energy. That would have defeated the purpose of the chance encounter. I fairly skipped through the airport to a waiting vehicle that took me to my hotel. Life was good.

  I felt the same about my career prospects. Sure, I had to take a substantial pay cut, but Nancy and I would be more than fine. We tried to spend as much time together as possible, even when I was on the road working, and with my Sundays likely open, we’d be able to spend even more time together. As it turned out, that wasn’t quite the case. CBS had a Sunday afternoon time slot to fill and they engaged in a counterprogramming effort that proved to be successful: figure skating.

  As it so happened, my unlikely love affair with figure skating had begun even before we lost NFL football, but it deepened into something greater as a result. It also gave me an opportunity to work on a regular basis with Scott Hamilton, a man I still respect, admire, and love. Since I’ve stepped away from the regular broadcasting duties in the last year and half, I’ve been asked many times, “If you had one chance to do one event before you die, what would it be?” People expect that I’d want to call the Super Bowl or I’d want to call the college football championship or I’d want to be at the tower at 18 at Augusta. And none of those things is true. I mean, I’ve had a very, very, very full career and very rewarding, but if somebody pinned me down and said, “One more event,” I would say I’d like to do another Winter Olympics. And I would like to do it with Scott Hamilton.

  I didn’t always love figure skating, but I did always aspire to cover the Olympics. In the summer of 1989, when I was first given my Olympic assignment for the 1992 Olympic games, I worried I wasn’t being utilized in the way I thought made the most sense. Given that I lived in Steamboat Springs and had become good friends with the resort’s director of skiing, Billy Kidd—the first American ever to medal in an Olympic alpine skiing event—it made sense to me that I’d be covering the downhill, the giant slalom, and the slalom. I had the interest and the aptitude and that should have been enough.

  It wasn’t. When I got the call and learned that I was to cover figure skating, I could barely keep the disdain out of my voice. Tim Ryan, who had done skiing before and with Billy Kidd, got the assignment I wanted. That didn’t take the sting out of their decision. Nancy spoke up as the voice of reason: “You know what? Calm down. You’re going to love it because of your equal respect for athleticism and music and your involvement in both, and this combines the best of both, because the music is so important and the athleticism should never, ever be understated. These young people do amazing things, and they do it all by themselves on a sheet of ice that’s very long, and they’re on a four-inch blade.”

  So I calmed down. I got Scott’s number and talked to him. He was quite pleasant and enthusiastic. We were going to meet in Colorado Springs at the 1989 Junior World Championships. With the exception of going to a skating rink once as a kid, I’d never seen a competition. All I remembered was people going around in slow circles while calliope music played. I got to Colorado Springs and went to the old World Arena, at the Broadmoor Hotel. The arena has been razed but reminded me of a large warehouse. I walked into its dim interior and there was a rectangle of light ahead of me. I got to the edge of the rink and it was crowded with young skaters practicing. What I can’t ever forget was a young guy skating backward toward where I was standing. He was moving at a high rate of speed and I had visions of him crashing into the boards. Instead, four feet from the edge of the ice, he extended one leg behind him and then stabbed the tip of his boot into the ice. The next thing I knew he was rising off the surface, spinning three times in the air, and landing what seemed to me yards away from where he too
k off.

  The young man, it turns out, was Elvis Stojko of Canada. He went on to become a three-time world champion, two-time Olympic silver medalist, and seven-time Canadian champion. He was renowned for his athleticism and still is. He introduced me to the sport up close and personal and I was mesmerized.

  Scott joined me and began my skating education. I pointed out before that Frank Glieber gave me great advice about studying film and learning the rules. That all worked for me, but having an understanding and knowledgeable partner can make up for any deficiencies you might still have. I was used to working with highly accomplished athletes, and Scott was certainly that, but he was also an impassioned advocate for his sport. He was a great believer that the theatrical elements of the sport—costumes and music primarily—shouldn’t ever overshadow the grace and athleticism on display. Scott won four straight U.S. and world championships from 1981 to 1984. He also won the Olympic gold medal in 1984, capping off a remarkable run.

  One reason I admired Scott was his perseverance. At the age of two he displayed mysterious symptoms of a condition that took a long time to be adequately diagnosed. The most obvious symptom was that he stopped growing. When he was winning all those championships, he was only five feet two and weighed just over 100 pounds. By the time we worked together, he added another two inches in height and a few more pounds. Scott didn’t have the most telegenic voice—his condition and size affected his vocal cords—but he more than made up for that with his enthusiasm and expertise. He first really made a name for himself in 1980 when he finished third at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. He made the Olympic team and in recognition of his accomplishment his fellow Olympians selected him to carry the U.S. flag in the opening ceremonies.

  Scott not only had to overcome that rough start due to health concerns, but he almost had to give up the sport because his parents couldn’t afford the high cost of training. Scott was adopted by two professors, Dorothy and Ernest Hamilton, who taught at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Frank and Helen Lorraine helped out financially and Scott would later work with them to find funding for other skaters and the sport itself. Not long after Scott and I first worked together, he was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.

  Despite Scott’s tutelage I made a hash of that first broadcast. Scott explained to me that there were only six jumps in the sport. Only one of them had a forward takeoff—the axel. For the rest the skater turned around and faced backward before launching. I got that straight, but I had a hard time recognizing a triple from a double jump. That became apparent when I conducted a postcompetition interview with a young American named Jessica Mills. I asked her the most basic questions, and erred in stating that she had completed all her triples when she hadn’t. That interview never made it on air.

  It was a good thing that we still had two years until the Olympics in Albertville, France. To familiarize us with some of the competitors from the rest of the world, CBS sent us to the European Championships, being held in Leningrad. I was sad that Nancy couldn’t join us. We’d spent our honeymoon cruising through Eastern Europe and Russia. That was in 1982 when hotels in the Soviet Union weren’t really up to tourist standards. By the time Scott and I got there in 1990, the hotel where Nancy and I had briefly dropped in had been upgraded but was still little better than an economy motel in the States.

  What the Soviet Union lacked in pleasant accommodations it more than made up for by their excellence in figure skating. The connection between ice skating and dance, particularly the ballet, and the Soviet Union has been well documented. Soviet skaters dominated the podium in all the events. Names that would become familiar to viewers in the United States—Viktor Petrenko won the men’s competition and Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov the pairs’—rolled off Scott’s tongue.

  The event was held at Yubileyny Arena, site of the volleyball match I’d covered years earlier. The atmosphere wasn’t as raucous, but, boy, those Russian fans crowded in there and responded with great gusto to the performances. I was amazed by how highly regarded Scott was. We arrived at the arena, got our credentials, and Scott then spent the next twenty-five minutes signing autographs as he made his way to our commentary location. Folks shouted his name and lined up for autographs. He refused no one. He stopped for photographs and was as gracious as could be. Keep in mind that I’d just spent four years working with Terry Bradshaw and Dan Fouts—Hall of Famers both—and the reception that Scott received from non-American skating fans was greater than what those two received in stadiums throughout the NFL.

  It was there that Scott and I developed our rapport both on and off the air. More important, Scott devised a system that enabled us to function very well as a broadcast team. He watched all the practices and memorized the competitors’ routines. Once the music began and the familiar slashing sound of skates on ice started, I knew I was in good hands. I would do my spare bit and when an important element was coming up, Scott would place his hand on my forearm. That was my cue to be quiet and let him take over. I was happy to cede the stage to Scott and let him describe it. I would jump back in with some bit of storytelling: “So-and-so’s mother drove her a hundred and forty miles round-trip to the rink for training each day.” People still laugh about my inserts.

  Scott and I spent ten days in Leningrad and I learned so much about the sport in that short span. Scott introduced me to a woman who proved to be an invaluable resource. Tamara Moskvina spoke seven languages, competed in both ladies’ singles and pairs, made the Russian Olympic team, and was then a highly regarded coach. Among the things I learned was that the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry was nothing compared to the one between skaters and coaches from Leningrad and Moscow.

  In March 1990, the stakes were higher when we traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia, for the World Championships. We were joined by a third on-air commentator. Sandra Bezic was the ice-dancing aficionado who worked with us. Scott confessed to me that he had little interest in the ice-dancing competition. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was also televising the event. Scott pointed across the ice to their broadcast post and pointed out a young woman by the name of Tracy Wilson. Like Sandra, Tracy was a former skater and we’d eventually work together at CBS. She won a bronze in ice-dancing at the ’88 games in Calgary.

  Scott and I did a few more events before we finally went to France for the Games. I was like a seven-year-old kid who’d just gotten a puppy. Nancy was with me and we sat in the third row for the opening ceremonies. I didn’t know whether to gawk at Prince Albert of Monaco, who sat a few seats in front of us, or the brilliant presentation that one of the founders of Cirque du Soleil had created. You just about needed to be a circus performer to fit into the tiny hotel rooms we were booked into. Albertville was a small host city, and the only two suites in the place were reserved for Scott and CBS News’ Charles Kuralt. Katarina Witt, the West German skater who was in some people’s minds the last of the elegant ladies of figure skating, had been hired to provide commentary, but with her limited English, she was there more for name recognition and to add some glamour to the booth.

  Besides all of us hanging out at a lovely hotel bar each night after the skating concluded, I remember feeling out of my depth. I think that most of us on the production side did as well. Scott, Tracy, and Katarina weren’t really aware of this, but CBS struggled to get a fix on how to present skating to the American public. We hadn’t covered the Olympics since 1960 when Tex Shramm was the executive producer. We had a bit of new-kids-on-the-block anxiety. As I’ve said, I see myself as a storyteller, and the success of a multisport, multivenue, multimillion-dollar venture like covering the Olympics comes down to creating some cohesive narrative to tie together all the different elements of the Games. This was the Olympics during which I first met Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, but of course the real drama with them was still a couple of years down the road. I do recall, with some slight embarrassment, and a sense of someone being prescient, that CBS promoted one of the U.S. pai
rs figure skating teams as the “waitress and the truck driver.”

  In truth, Rocky Marval did drive a truck—he owned a trucking firm with his brother—and Calla Urbanski did work as a waitress and a barmaid to support herself while skating. Still, the idea that we were hoping to lure people to the event by featuring skaters who had little chance to medal strikes a wrong note with me more so now than it did at the time. We were a business operation, to be sure, and earning ratings was the way to get the advertising dollars. But those promotions of Rocky and Calla, the attempt to make them into household names and stars in some way, was a part of the business that made me uncomfortable.

  What I remember most wasn’t the action on the ice. We had a wonderful time hanging out at the hotel bar afterward. We all needed a few drinks. Katarina’s spotty English proved to be a real liability. At first she was reduced to taping a one-minute introduction to each of the events. It became clear that those bits were beyond the scope of her language skills. Management decided to put her in the studio with Tim McCarver and Paula Zahn. I love Katarina, and it pains me to say this, but she really was little more than set decoration. She was put in an impossible situation but soldiered on and was delightful company, especially when one night she resisted the charms of Jim Lampley.

  For our part, Scott and I muddled through. Even before the first event, Scott said to me, “You do realize that I’m the first guy to analyze Olympic figure skating besides Dick Button?” Dick Button was a fixture on American television as the Voice of Figure Skating. He was much beloved. I told Scott that I knew that was true, and I also understood that I was taking over the role of the much-beloved Jim McKay.