Like many others, my Saturday afternooons as a kid were filled with the anticipation of Wide World of Sports. As I heard over the weekend, there is no book how to be a sportscaster, but Jim McKay wrote volumes as he helped to develop the art of sportscaster.
The passing of a legend
Over much of the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s, I followed that voice all over the world, spanning the globe, spinning stories for ABC Sports, bringing all manner of odd athletic endeavors (Luge! Barrel jumping! Demolition derby!) to "Wide World of Sports," while remaining cool, calm and collected as TV host of ten Olympic Games.
Nobody who lived through the Black September attack in Munich during the 1972 Summer Olympics will forget what McKay meant to a nation. How hour after endless hour - under the enormous pressure of live television - he never once strayed into hype or hysteria, holding our collective hands as we pondered the fate of 11 Israeli athletes.
And when he finally found out, and told us they were gone, all gone, well, you never forget words like that, or the man who carried them into your home.
Today, there are far more screamers than commentators, a trend I trust he’d find regrettable. Perhaps the stories surrounding the death of this legend, at age 86, will serve to do what all those Saturday and Sunday afternoons did for me - inspire the next generation of broadcast journalists to model at least some of their ways after Jim McKay.
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The Leon Powe show?
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Rangers end a 10 game homestand 5-5
Rangers get one from the fighting Rays
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I watched a little Formula 1 racing Sunday for the first time in a long time. I must say, it was pretty entertaining. Part of it was the fact that they only raced 70 laps. That seems much easier to digest than 200 or 300 laps of Nascar or the IRL. There was side-by-side racing, wrecks, stuff happening in the turns, high speeds on the straightways. All good stuff.
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