09
Jun
| The McKay Way |
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| Written by Jack Ebling | |
| Monday, 09 June 2008 | |
 It was an American institution. So was he.
When ABC’s Wide World of Sports debuted with the Drake and Penn Relays in April 1961, we were a very different nation. Few of us had been to Petaluma, Calif., or West Islip, N.Y., or any of the other spots we came to love on Saturday afternoons. We knew almost nothing about Moscow and our mortal enemies of the day or Munich and a massacre to come. That all changed with mastermind Roone Arledge and master of sports ceremonies Jim McKay. When McKay died Saturday at age 86 at his Maryland farm, ABC made the Belmont Stakes a Wide World of Sports special in his honor. It had all the elements of a show that ran each week for 37 years - all the thrill of victory and agony of defeat. It didn't have McKay, though. Originally a cops reporter from Baltimore, his nose for news, ear for poetry and sense of decency were the real Triple Crown. He introduced us to A.J. Foyt, to Arnie and Jack and to the joy of competition. He told the story and never became it. And when we needed him most, McKay was the one who handled the '72 Olympic slaughter; for 16 hours with the touch of a neurosurgeon. The following day, he received a telegram from CBS Evening News anchor/icon Walter Cronkite. You were a great credit to your medium . . . and to yourself; That salute meant as much to McKay as any praise he ever received. He son, Sean McManus, went on to lead CBS Sports. And McKay was lent to NBC when Olympics rights changed. But he was as much a part of ABC as Howard Cosell or Keith Jackson. As much as McKay loved thoroughbred racing, he was never in a hurry. He was a storyteller with a journalist's core. Humor, yes. Hyperbole, no. So it's only appropriate he stamped one of the five most important broadcasts in television history, the killing of 11 Israeli athletes by Arab terrorists, with three words. They're all gone, McKay said, not needing a prompter or a producer's prodding. Today, they're all coming back, the memories from Williamsport and the Great Wall of China, of Olga and Ryun and Vinko Bogataj, who never stopped sliding down the mountain. If there's a mountaintop for media, this much we know: A lucky few will find McKay waiting when they get there. |
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