You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television (28 page)

When the World Series finally resumed Friday night, October 27, there was an odd vibe. After all, no one had been down this road before. There was this transition we had to make—from a natural disaster story back to sports. People were going to be interested in the resumption of the Series on a number of levels. Some viewers would be focused on how the area itself had rebounded. Others would be curious as to what the quality of play would be like following a week-and-a-half hiatus. It felt strange to be back at Candlestick Park. In a nice touch, multiple ceremonial first pitches were thrown out simultaneously by many of the earthquake night’s first responders.

Game 3 was an Oakland rout. Then in Game 4, the A’s were leading 8–0 by the sixth inning. The Giants mounted a comeback to get it to 8–6, and with one on and two out in the seventh, Kevin Mitchell hit a drive to the warning track in left. It would have tied the game but was caught two feet from the fence by Rickey Henderson. The Giants never got any closer, the A’s finished off the sweep, and we all finally went home.

Home from the most unusual World Series of all.

IT WAS AROUND THAT
time—the end of the 1980s—that sports television began to change in significant ways. The prime example was a decade-old cable network out of a small town in Connecticut, devoted entirely to sports and gaining traction. After years of broadcasting marginal and off-the-wall events, the network was bidding for and gaining rights to some major packages. It was called ESPN—Entertainment and Sports Programming Network—and 80 percent of it was owned by Capital Cities, the parent company of ABC.

There wasn’t a lot of intermingling at that time, in good measure because the ABC network had a lot of unionized personnel, especially on the technical side, and ESPN was a nonunion shop. And again, we were ABC, the
network
that went to
every
television home. And the ABC brand, created by Roone Arledge—the entity that carried
Monday Night Football
and
Wide World of Sports
and the Olympic Games—well, the feeling was that it couldn’t be overtaken or even challenged by some cable network that aired aerobics shows and kickboxing events and billiards tournaments. At least that was the sense.

Meanwhile, broadcast rights fees for sports properties were soaring and the bidding process was becoming more and more competitive. The two biggest properties that ABC was involved in the bidding for at that point were baseball and the Olympics. The NFL package still had a few years to run.

I loved covering the Olympics. In Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, in 1984 and Calgary, Alberta, in 1988, there had been no miracles or even medals for the United States hockey team, but Ken Dryden and I were reunited and added some more great memories. I was also the play-by-play (stride-by-stride?) announcer for figure skating in Sarajevo and called the gold medal performances of Katarina Witt and Scott Hamilton and the iconic ice-dancing performances of Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean.

Meanwhile in Calgary, this was the first Olympic Games under our “new management.” Cap Cities was now in charge but Roone Arledge, despite being solely the head of ABC News but no longer ABC Sports, would executive-produce the Games.

A couple of nights before the competition began, Arledge and some of the new top brass put together a small dinner to introduce the Cap Cities board members and top investors to some of the ABC announcers and event analysts. I was invited along with Jim McKay, Keith Jackson, and a few other on-air folks. I wound up being seated next to none other than Warren Buffett, who at that point, wasn’t 5 percent as well-known as he is today.

Buffett was totally interested in every aspect of the broadcast, asking dozens of questions, and at one point was intrigued when I told him how ABC had been able to “influence” the hockey schedule so that the USA-USSR game in Calgary would not be played on the opening night of the hockey tournament, as was originally scheduled. The Americans, I explained to Buffett, had been lined up to meet the Soviets in the opener because the pairings had been determined by the results of an international tournament that had been held in Europe months earlier. If the U.S. team had suffered a one-sided defeat to the Soviets, it would have severely impacted their chances of advancing to the medal round and, most important for ABC, would have created little or no interest in hockey for the rest of the Olympics, with a concurrent decline in ratings. Instead ABC had worked with (leaned on?) the governing bodies and so a few weeks before the torch would be lighted in Calgary, the schedule came out and the U.S. team would face, in the opener, not the Soviet Union—but Austria. The U.S.-Soviet matchup had been pushed back to Game 3. If there was a line on the game, the United States would have been favored by about five goals. (The United States would win the game, 10–6.)

Buffett was fascinated by this and wanted to know how ABC could have pulled this off. I explained that we had an executive by the name of Bob Iger, whom I’d started with at ABC Sports in the mid-seventies, and who knew how to navigate his way through this complex maze and get the job done. Buffett was impressed. Years later, when we reminisced about this, Iger would tell me that ABC had to provide certain “concessions” to a variety of muckety-mucks to get this done, including guaranteeing an upgrade of certain restroom facilities in Calgary. Hey, whatever it takes! Some two decades later, of course, Bob would become the exalted CEO of the Walt Disney Company, which had bought out Capital Cities in the late nineties.

Anyway, ABC failed to get the rights to the 1992 or 1994 Olympics, but went down to the wire with CBS and NBC in bidding for the rights to televise the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta. My contract at the time stated that if ABC had won the bid, I would be the prime-time Olympic host. Jim McKay was going to be moving into an emeritus role and I was going to do most of the heavy lifting for ABC. It was a role I coveted, so, obviously, I followed the rights negotiations very closely.

The bidding dragged on and on. NBC made a last bid of $456 million. (Yes, things had come a long way from ABC paying $1.5 million to broadcast the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.) And this was after NBC had paid $401 million for the Barcelona Games in 1992 and lost money, a reported $100 million. But the thinking was that Atlanta—a domestic Olympics in the Eastern Time Zone—would lead to a bigger buildup, higher ratings, and more advertisers and sponsors.

Still, ABC got last crack—if they bid about $10 million higher than NBC, they would win the rights to the Games. But ABC decided to pass. That one stung. And not just for me. NBC ended up making a nice profit, so, aside from the personal disappointment, it was a mistake for my company. And NBC hasn’t relinquished the rights to the Olympics since—though eventually, that ended up serving me well. More on that a little later.

Meanwhile, after the 1989 World Series, CBS had gained exclusive network rights to Major League Baseball—the Game of the Week, the All-Star Game, and the playoffs and World Series—for almost $2 billion. The next year, ESPN got in the mix by making a deal to show regular season games as well. ESPN’s deal worked out well. CBS’s lost half a billion dollars. So in 1994, ABC and NBC returned to the game—though this time under an odd new venture that was called “The Baseball Network.” The idea was that Major League Baseball would share revenue from the deal with the networks. The upshot—particularly when the World Series was canceled in 1994 due to the strike—was another disaster.

Since the Baseball Network was created as part of a two-year deal, with the plan for NBC to host the World Series in 1994, and ABC in 1995, someone had the bright idea after the strike to split the 1995 Series between the two networks. So, as the Atlanta Braves got set to meet the Cleveland Indians, ABC was going to broadcast Games 1, 4, and 5; NBC was going to broadcast Games 2, 3 and 6; and ABC—by virtue of winning a coin flip—had the rights to Game 7.

The competition between the networks could be so juvenile that ABC didn’t want to promote NBC’s game and NBC didn’t want to promote ABC’s telecasts. In the middle of Game 1 in Atlanta, I was handed a promo to read.
Join us here on ABC for Game Four in Cleveland on Wednesday night and for Game Five, if necessary, Thursday.
With no mention of Games 2 and 3 on NBC.

It was ridiculous—and the Rascal couldn’t help himself. “By the way,” I said after reading the promo, “if you’re wondering about Games Two and Three, I can’t tell you exactly where you can see them, but here’s a hint: Last night, Bob Costas, Bob Uecker, and Joe Morgan [NBC’s broadcast team] were spotted in underground Atlanta.” When it was NBC’s turn, Bob Costas (an honorary first cousin to the Rascal) made a similar reference to our ABC crew.

It was a close, back-and-forth World Series, with every game except one decided by one run. The Braves won the first two games at home. Then the Indians won two of three in Cleveland. It was wonderful to be back doing postseason baseball. Tim McCarver, Jim Palmer, and I were back together and having a blast. Curt Gowdy Jr., the son of my friend and mentor, was our producer. Everyone headed back to Atlanta with the Braves leading three games to two. Game 6 was an NBC game. If Cleveland won, my gang would do the decisive Game 7, which would be a great thrill. If Atlanta won, it was all over.

McCarver, Palmer, and I went the ballpark for batting practice and to schmooze before the game. Then we went back to the Ritz-Carlton in the Buckhead section of Atlanta to watch the game together on NBC and prepare for what we hoped would be our Game 7. Tom Glavine, though, had other ideas. The Braves’ lefty pitched a gem, combining with Mark Wohlers on a one-hitter. Dave Justice hit a home run in the sixth, which was all the offense Atlanta needed. The Braves won the game, 1–0, and the Series, four games to two.

By ten thirty that night, it was clear that we wouldn’t be calling Game 7 of the World Series. And I was also learning that ABC wouldn’t be bidding for the next MLB contract. So, for all intents, my baseball career was most likely over, at least for the foreseeable future. The next morning, I left for the airport to fly to Minneapolis for
Monday Night Football
. The car picked me up at the hotel and cruised down Interstate 75. Within minutes, we were going through downtown. Another minute later, I looked to my left and what did I see? Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium, where I would
not
be calling Game 7 of the World Series that night. Then a few hundred yards south, I looked out the window again and what did I see? The under-construction Olympic Stadium (later to be turned into Turner Field), where I would
not
be hosting the Opening Ceremony of the 1996 Summer Games.

Nobody will ever have to throw me a pity party, nor would I want one. On balance I have nothing to complain about. I’ve been blessed in innumerable ways. Sometimes, things are just totally out of your control. But when people ask me about any disappointments in my career, I tell this story.

CHAPTER 15

O.J.

B
EFORE WE WORKED TOGETHER
at the 1984 Olympics I’d met O. J. Simpson a couple of times in passing. I’d be covering all the track and field events and O.J. had been signed on as the analyst for the men’s sprints. The venue for track and field was the Los Angeles Coliseum, the same facility where O.J. had starred for USC in a spectacular college football career punctuated by a Heisman Trophy. Simpson had also been a track star, a member of the USC 4x110 yard relay team that had broken the world record in 1967. He came to the Olympic role with great credibility.

O.J. and I worked together in that spring and summer of 1984 at the Olympic Trials in Los Angeles, as well as at another track and field event in May in San Jose, to develop some familiarity with the U.S. athletes and get a chance to work together on the air. It was in San Jose that O.J. introduced me to the young woman he was dating at the time and would later marry. Her name was Nicole Brown.

At the Olympics, O.J. was an excellent broadcast partner. He was professional. He had an easy manner and a winning personality. He was insightful. He was prepared and never showed up a second late. We called Carl Lewis’s races—as well as that women’s sprint relay on the final day when Wilma Rudolph was nowhere to be found. And beyond working well together, O.J. and I developed a nice friendship that lasted well after the assignment.

Two years later, the family and I made the move from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. After our crazy first week there, things settled down—Linda and I had met and gotten married in Los Angeles, we knew the area, and we’d visited frequently through the years. And when we moved to the Brentwood section of the city, I had a ready-made tennis partner in O. J. Simpson. Before his knees turned him into a golfer, O.J. and I would play tennis two or three times a week, always on the court at his house, which was just a few blocks from ours. Every few months, Linda and I would go out to dinner with O.J. and Nicole. Even when O.J. switched to golf in the early nineties, I was still a regular on his backyard court. Often my new opponent would be O.J.’s former teammate both at USC and with the Buffalo Bills, one Al Cowlings.

People in the neighborhood raved about O.J. He was gregarious, accessible, engaging, and always walked around with a smile. In Brentwood, everyone knew O.J. and he never stood on ceremony or had any airs about him. He might as well have been running for office. Part of what would make the O.J. story so explosive was that it was so totally at odds and dramatically contrary with the image he had worked so hard to cultivate all those years.

On Saturday, June 11, 1994, I was in New York covering the Belmont Stakes for ABC—Tabasco Cat was the winner—and then flew from JFK back to Los Angeles the next afternoon. I got home around six o’clock early Sunday evening. A few months before, I was starting to get smitten with golf and had joined the Bel-Air Country Club. Now, in mid-June, I knew that golf was becoming a very, very serious addiction. Of course, having been on the road for several days, I couldn’t wait to wake up on Monday morning and get right out to the course. I needed a game. I called a couple of guys but they wouldn’t be available. Then I thought about O.J., who was a member of nearby Riviera Country Club.
I’ll play anywhere. I just need a game.
I rang O.J.’s house but hung up when it went to the answering machine. I couldn’t wait around for a return call. Good move, as it turned out. A year later, in the trial when they were trying to determine O.J.’s whereabouts that night, any message probably would have been played back in court. No thanks.