You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television (11 page)

In any case, while the Big Red Machine went on to win the World Series in 1975 and 1976, I would be in San Francisco. It was a very hard decision—I was walking away from what I knew would be one of the great teams in the history of baseball.

But San Francisco had made me the offer I couldn’t refuse.

CHAPTER 7

The Giants of Candlestick, and the Wizard of Westwood

B
Y THE EARLY 1970S
, the marriage between sports and television was evolving and strengthening. More and more games were being televised—on the three networks and local TV as well—and the fit was working. Fans could see their favorite teams more often—without fighting traffic, or paying for parking, or waiting in line at a concession stand, or having their view blocked by someone who wouldn’t get down in front. Instant replay and other innovations were enhancing the experience. And television sets were improving. The pictures were sharper, and in 1972, for the first time, more Americans bought color TVs than black-and-white sets.

Television networks and local stations were adding more sports programming. And they were paying for it. By the seventies, the broadcast rights fees for leagues, primarily the NFL and Major League Baseball, were steadily increasing. Same for the Olympics. ABC had paid $1.5 million to air the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo—and then for the Munich Games eight years later, the rights fee multiplied by six to $7.5 million. That was a lot of money then, but also provided a lot of inventory—dozens, sometimes even hundreds of hours of airtime. And sports programming was still generally cheaper than developing original shows that might or might not become hits. Local stations were carving out more and more deals with teams in their markets.

On a personal level, I loved it. There would be more sports programming to watch, more jobs in the industry. But as far as my particular job was concerned, I would be doing play-by-play for the Giants both on radio and television. At that time, television play-by-play wasn’t radically different from radio play-by-play. Replays were generally just slowing down the same few seconds of action that we had just seen live. And graphics would be added. In the seventies, there were a number of team broadcasters, for instance Vin Scully with the Dodgers and Chick Hearn with the Lakers, who regularly did TV and radio simulcasts—the same audio was being provided simultaneously by the same announcer for both mediums. (To this day, Vinny still simulcasts a couple of innings for the Dodgers.)

I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy that on television less is usually more. What I mean by that is that on radio, verbs are very important, because the audience can’t see the game. But on television, the viewers are absorbing the action with their own eyes and in effect, the verbs are being played out visually in their brains. If an announcer says, “he swings and
rips
one into right field for a base hit” but at home you see it as more of a soft line drive, it’s disconcerting. What I try to do on TV instead is strike the right tone, and match the words to the action without necessarily using a lot of verbs. Often, ellipses or captions can suffice. You don’t have to be nearly as descriptively complete as you do on radio.

One distinct difference since the advent of television: You can only appreciate the exploits of athletes from the pre-television age through written accounts and stories that have been passed down. There’s little or no archival visual coverage. It’s almost impossible to go back and look at more than snippets of what somebody like Jim Thorpe did. From time to time, you might see a grainy film clip, but that’s it. When I’m asked to name the greatest athlete of all time, I’ve long answered Thorpe. Here was a man with so much talent and skill and durability that he played professional football and baseball, and won Olympic medals. How differently would we think about Jim Thorpe today if his whole career had been played out on television?

WE MOVED FROM CINCINNATI
to the Bay Area in late November 1973, and before I had even announced one game for the Giants, an additional opportunity came along. Dick Enberg had been the play-by-play man for UCLA basketball on KTLA, a local station in Los Angeles (the same station where I’d worked during a couple of summers in college). Under John Wooden, the Bruins had become the greatest dynasty in the history of college basketball. Enberg was being hired to work for NBC full-time and would no longer be able to do UCLA games on local Los Angeles television. KTLA was owned by Golden West Broadcasting, the Gene Autry enterprise that also owned KSFO—the station in San Francisco for which I’d be announcing the Giants games in the spring. With Dick leaving, suddenly the UCLA job was open. A Golden West executive called me and asked if I’d be interested in that job. UCLA basketball? John Wooden? A team that would enter the season with already the longest win streak ever? I said, I’d love it.

For me, it worked very well logistically. Because of the team’s popularity, UCLA played the majority—and nearly all of its nonconference games—at home, primarily on back-to-back Friday and Saturday nights. With that schedule, I could fly down from the Bay Area on Fridays around noon, work the game, stay overnight (my folks were living in Los Angeles, so I could see them as well), work the Saturday night game, and then take a midnight flight back home. I could do two games with only one night away from the family. And the travel to road games typically kept me on the West Coast and included a weekend when the Bruins would visit Stanford and Cal—games I could drive to from home.

Sports television was growing, but there was still concern in some quarters that if games were televised live, the gate would suffer. So even though Pauley Pavilion, UCLA’s home gym, was packed for every game, the home games were televised on tape delay. I would do the games live to tape, but the broadcast wouldn’t start until 11
P
.
M
. Still, even at that hour, the ratings were spectacular. We once saw research that UCLA Friday night home games were outdrawing Johnny Carson and
The Tonight Show
by something like five-to-one. On the road, the games would air live.

But before I could officially inherit the job, I had to get the blessings of UCLA athletic director J. D. Morgan and Coach Wooden himself. A month before the season would begin, I flew to Los Angeles to go to a practice and meet Morgan and Wooden. I met Morgan in his office, and then he walked me over to Pauley Pavilion, where the Bruins would be practicing. We sat down in the second row of the bleachers. The team had just come onto the court to limber up, and drills would begin in a few minutes. At that point, Coach Wooden came over and sat down next to me. We hit it off right away. Wooden was a huge baseball fan and knew my background. And as a southern Indiana native, he knew all about the Cincinnati Reds. So, while his players continued to loosen up, we sat there talking not about basketball, but mostly about Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Sparky Anderson, and the Big Red Machine. I got the job.

UCLA came into the 1973–74 season with a 75-game winning streak. The team’s roster included Keith (later to change his name to Jamaal) Wilkes, Dave Meyers, the freshman Marques Johnson, and a very free-spirited center—Bill Walton. You can’t overstate the greatness of that group. And it all began with the man who, for my money, was the greatest coach in the history of sports, John Robert Wooden.

In early January 1974, UCLA made its annual trip to the state of Washington. The Bruins beat the University of Washington Huskies on a Saturday night in Seattle, and the next day we took a commercial flight across the state to Spokane, which was followed up by a ninety-minute bus ride to Pullman, the home of Washington State University. The following night, the Bruins would play the Cougars. When the bus rolled into Pullman but before we would check into the hotel, Coach Wooden had the driver head straight to the Cougars’ arena. He wanted the players to stretch their legs and go through a light practice. After about twenty-five minutes on the court, the players went back to the locker room to shower and change back to their street clothes. The weather that early evening was miserable—rain was turning to sleet. I was leaning against the wall in a corner of the locker room when Coach Wooden gathered the team, laid out what the following day’s schedule would be, and said, “Boys, now it’s very cold and damp outside. I want you to make sure you dry your hair very thoroughly. I don’t want anyone to get sick.”

I laughed to myself. Coach Wooden was clearly a father figure to so many of the players in that room. But at that moment, he wasn’t just their father. He was also their mother.

The Bruins beat Washington State, but that night Bill Walton injured his back. Walton has said that game, and that injury, was the start of a lifetime of back issues. UCLA won the game and would go on to defeat California, Stanford, and Iowa to run their record that season to 13-0, and their overall winning streak to 88 games. The Bruins had not lost in nearly three years, with that last defeat coming at the hands of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

The next stop, ironically, would be South Bend on Saturday, January 19, 1974. Though Walton played with a back brace, UCLA led by 11 points with less than four minutes to play. Then Notre Dame reeled off 12 straight points and won, 71–70. The longest winning streak in college basketball history was over. It was a nationally televised game on NBC, which meant I didn’t call it. Behind the mic, in one of his first NBC assignments, was Dick Enberg.

In an odd schedule twist, the Bruins would play Notre Dame again the following Saturday night at Pauley Pavilion. The Irish were coached by Digger Phelps. I broadcast that game not only locally in Los Angeles, but on the TVS Network, run by Eddie Einhorn. Eddie ran what turned out to be a very successful operation, later became an executive at CBS Sports, and then along with Jerry Reinsdorf, bought the Chicago White Sox in 1981. So the Bruins were attempting to start a new winning streak, and did, rolling to a 94–75 victory. My broadcast partner on that game, by the way, was one Tommy Hawkins, who’d been with the Los Angeles Lakers during my ill-fated twenty-minute adventure as Chick Hearn’s sidekick. Meanwhile, Einhorn was a real character. He reminded me a lot of Chuck Barris. In fact, on that night, with a huge national television audience tuned in, Eddie decided that I would interview
him
at halftime. Why? He wanted to announce the recent birth of his daughter. When you own the store, you can do whatever you wish.

I had also done some TVS games for Einhorn in a couple of the off-seasons when I was with the Reds. In fact, on two games, both in Olean, New York, on back-to-back weekends at St Bonaventure University, my partner was Butch Van Breda Kolff, the Lakers coach who, a few years earlier, had been the man assigned to tell me at Los Angeles International Airport that I was not to board that flight to Boston. Bill was dabbling in broadcasting in between coaching jobs with the Phoenix Suns, in the NBA, and Memphis Tams, in the American Basketball Association. One unforgettable memory I have about working with Van Breda Kolff was the fact that on both weekends the temperature hovered around zero. We went out to dinner, and Butch had no parka, no overcoat, no scarf, and no hat—just a sweater. I’m shivering to death, and looked at him and said, “Are you kidding?” And he said, “Why travel around with a coat? You can go right from the car to the arena or the restaurant to the hotel. You’re outside for fifteen seconds.” You never know where your life lessons will come from.

In March 1973, I went to South Bend to broadcast a Notre Dame–South Carolina game for TVS. One of the stars for the Gamecocks was Mike Dunleavy, who’d go on to coach four NBA teams. Forty years later, he’d be a frequent golf partner of mine in Los Angeles. And who did Einhorn pair me with for
that
game? None other than Hot Rod Hundley, the man who had succeeded me as Chick Hearn’s partner with the Lakers. People in my career (and life, too) keep coming and going and coming and going. And then reappearing. I love it.

I worked two years of UCLA basketball for KTLA, and the 1974–75 season turned out to be John Wooden’s last. The coach had not shown his hand all season in regard to possible retirement, and in fact said nothing until after the Bruins had won another national championship, Wooden’s tenth, defeating Kentucky, 92–85, in the NCAA Tournament Championship Game. John Wooden was one of the most remarkable people I’ve had the great pleasure to know. He was honest, moral, encouraging, and inspiring. When he died in 2010 at the age of ninety-nine, he had left an indelible mark. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run into through the years—and not just his players—who have talked about the everlasting impact he had on their lives. In 2003, when UCLA named the court at Pauley Pavilion in John and his late wife Nell’s honor, the Nell and John Wooden Court, I was asked to emcee the luncheon that preceded the dedication. Coach had insisted that Nell’s name precede his. Of course. He was the quintessential gentleman. Always, “Ladies first.” I said to the gathering, “For my money, he’s the greatest coach in any sport,
ever
—but don’t just take my word for it. The
Sporting News
named him the greatest coach of all time as well.” I looked at John, and he had his head bowed. For a man of such singular accomplishment, he was always genuinely modest. He was remarkably humble and rarely comfortable with praise, which came often. Looking down at his table that day, I continued. “Coach,” I said, “it’s
your
own fault. You didn’t have to go out and win those ten national championships.”

NOW IT’S MARCH 1974.
The San Francisco Giants are about to go to spring training, and I’m going back to baseball. Linda, Steven, and I had moved into a home we loved in Menlo Park, not far from the Stanford campus in Palo Alto. Linda was pregnant with our baby due in July. We were living in the middle of Silicon Valley during its nascent days.

The Giants were a mediocre team playing in one of the worst stadiums ever constructed, Candlestick Park. And it seemed to me early on that there was a malaise that was affecting the whole franchise. The owner was Horace Stoneham. He’d moved the team west from the Polo Grounds in New York sixteen years earlier, and now it was pretty clear he was beginning to run out of money. The team was so-so, attendance was terrible, and it affected almost everyone in the entire organization. I would spend too many nights in the broadcast booth at Candlestick, freezing my butt off, announcing a game with a crowd that would often number less than five thousand. Meanwhile, the Reds were in contention, playing to packed houses, and on their way to consecutive World Series titles in 1975 and ’76, while Marty Brennaman had succeeded me in Cincinnati. In a way, how could I not think about what I had left behind? By the way, Howsam and Wagner wound up hitting the jackpot. Marty Brennaman is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and has now been the voice of the Reds for more than forty seasons.