I just learned this afternoon that legendary sportscaster Jim McKay died last weekend at the age of 86. He will be missed.
If I had to attribute my love of sports to any one person it would be McKay. In the days before ESPN there weren't a lot of television options for a bored kid on a Saturday afternoon. So on those days, I'd frequently turn into the Wide World of Sports. Sometimes it would be covering sports I had no interest in (boxing, racing), but frequently enough it would slide into the fun or bizarre that it kept my attention. Cliff diving, pool, sports you'd frequently only see during the Olympics, it was all covered in the Wide World of Sports. And McKay projected both reverence and joy in whatever sport he was covering. As a kid, who knew something could be both fun and important?
I was around 6 months old during the 1972 Summer Olympics, so I did not get to witness first-hand his coverage of the hostage situation. But I've seen him oversee coverage of many other Olympic games, and without even reading the reports could know that he covered things perfectly.
I miss the Wide World of Sports, the same way I miss MTV. Both shows forced you to sit through the bad so as to guarantee you'd not miss the good. They gave you little tastes of things, and if you liked what you were tasting you could go elsewhere to savor them in larger portions. There are no television smorgasbords anymore, just hundreds of stations filled with focus-grouped programming.
So, goodbye, Jim McKay. You'll be missed for what you brought to the wide world of sports, and that can never be replaced.
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