Jim McKay

Most people are going with the standard headshot of Jim McKay when talking about him, but I don’t like that. He was a broadcaster who loved being at the event. This picture does him justice

I wanted to marinate my thoughts on the passing of broadcasting legend Jim McKay.

When I first heard of his death, I was deeply saddened, like a member of my family had passed away and almost moved to tears, seriously. I kept saying to myself, “wow, Jim McKay.”

He brought a level of professionalism to sports journalism that is missing in today’s environment.

McKay covered everything from the Olympics, horse racing, auto racing and everything in between. I’m only 27 and may not have been around for the majority of his career, but I’ll mention two moments when I realized his worth.

The first time is when I saw a documentary on his life called “Jim McKay: My World in My Words,” which I seriously, seriously recommend viewing. I saw this in 2003 after I graduated from college and had my English degree and had no idea what I wanted to do with it. I saw the life that Jim led and the respect that he had for everyone and every sport.

That’s the thing that McKay brought to sports. Respect.

I watched the documentary with some friends and we joked about how McKay would cover things like barrel jumping and ski jumping and other alternative sports and respected it greatly. We said that he could cover an opening envelopes competition and make it sound like Game 7 of the World Series.

What we meant is that he understood the significance of the athletes in the sports that he was covering. He may not have been the biggest fan of the Little League World Series, but he knew that there was somebody out there who thought the world of it and he respected that.

Today, you have these talking heads on TV who openly distain the events that they’re covering because it isn’t important to them. McKay wouldn’t have that. He realized that he wasn’t the show. People weren’t there to see him perform.

I just wished that the professionals who cover sports realize that they are journalist and they should respect the product that they’re covering like McKay did.

The second moment I remember from McKay was when I was in a bar in Atlanta preparing to watch an England match in the 2006 World Cup and the opening shot was of McKay welcoming everyone to the broadcast.

Now, if you know soccer fans in America, we’re a pretty critical group of people who aren’t accepting of outsiders in general, especially broadcasters. However, when we saw Jim, it was OK, because he was just like a member of your family. You know that he appreciated the moment.

Another thing, I look at the passing of our great literary and auditors of sports from Dick Schaap to Ralph Wiley to Shirley Povich and the dignified way that they practiced journalism.

You may have read or listened to these gentlemen and disagreed with them, but you respected their work. They earned their stripes to state their opinion/

I look at these “journalists” on various TV networks or read them in papers and know that they haven’t earned what McKay earned.

That man practiced his art and just didn’t sit in some studio and get fed information from stats people and interns and producers. He was out on the field getting his reports.

McKay also covered golf, I forgot about that. There are dozens of other things that he covered that I won’t even get into in this post.

Once again, another thing. He had the ability to cover everything and it wasn’t looked at as a bad thing. I think that we’ve compartmentalized our sports broadcasting in a bad way.

Did you know that Peter Gammons has covered the NHL and college basketball? That David Aldridge, the sideline reporter for NBA basketball on TNT, has covered the U.S. Open for tennis and the Indianapolis 500?

People like McKay and the other guys I mentioned above made me want to know something about every sport, even if I’m not a fan of it. The problem is that the media and those “journalists” disrespect fans and make it seem like we only like one thing. That a soccer fan can’t like baseball or a tennis fan can’t like auto racing.

I know this was supposed to be about the life and times of Jim McKay. There are some great tributes to his life out there, including this excellent page by ESPN here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?id=3431230&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab3pos1

However, I’ll remember him for bringing some class to sports broadcasting that is sorely missing.