So long Jim

It may be hard for some to believe but there was a time when there were not TV channels that played a variety of sports shows 24 hours a day 7 days a week. In a time before cable was popular and when we had to actually get up and turn the channel and fiddle with extraneous antenna to make the over the air picture come in better, sports programming was few and far between in certain times of the year. But there was one show where one could always get a sports 'fix' and that show was ABC's Wide World of Sports.

The show would always show something, be it some guy on ice skates jumping over barrels, judo exhibitions, or cliff diving in Acapulco and I could lose myself in it for a few hours. Sometimes the sporting events were not to my taste or looked stupid but the host of that show always did his best to make whatever they were showing interesting. And more times than not he succeeded. That host, Jim McKay, died yesterday. Jim brought a certain lyrical quality to the shows he hosted and commented on. He dug beneath the surface of whatever event he was calling and as a result we learned that sometimes sports are much more than men and women competing against one another, or against themselves, we learned that sometimes sports are a metaphor for a bigger struggle and it can humanize us and our alleged enemies.

I'll always remember Jim for the way he called so many Olympiads. ABC used to have the monopoly on the Olympic games here in the USA and I grew up watching Jim and the rest of the folks at ABC bringing us the games. I guess it's Jim's fault that I got hooked on watching the games and that's why I sit through NBC's insipid jingoistic coverage of the games today.

I'll miss you Jim. Thanks for all your years of hard work and for showing us the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat so many times.