Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [204]
KEITH OLBERMANN:
I had a story in ’97 that we worked all damn day on, that Mario Lemieux, who had been treated for Hodgkin’s successfully and was exhausted, was going to take at least a year off. They [Pittsburgh Penguins] had already made a personnel move to obtain a player to at least fill his spot on the roster. I stumbled onto this story by a guy who was a source of mine who knew people around Mario and had this sort of secondhand, so we were bidding all day for a second source. We finally got the player they had traded for to replace Lemieux in the lineup. I had this blockbuster lead story that was essentially of my own work, and whatever we had on beforehand—I presume it was a Sunday night baseball game—I was thinking, “Get this over with. Come on. We got a big story. Let’s do it before the AP gets it.” It was moments like that that were particularly thrilling. You knew you were coming on with something that almost nobody else had, literally, and certainly none of the civilians watching had any idea was the case. If you could pause long enough after saying, “Mario Lemieux will retire for at least one season and possibly more from the Pittsburgh Penguins, ESPN has learned tonight,” you could almost hear the wind being sucked out of Bristol, Connecticut, by everybody gasping, especially in Pittsburgh. To drop a bombshell like that on people was a privilege and a great thrill.
JIMMY ROBERTS:
After the ’97 Masters, the Golf Channel, CNN, and a couple others were all in this room that the Masters allowed us to set up in to do interviews with the winner. When Tiger came in, he said no to the others but did the interview with me. I had a very good relationship with him at the time, but I’m sure a lot of it had to do with the fact that he loved ESPN. He was a big fan.
It was the “get.” As a journalist, you know how great it feels when you get something that nobody else can get.
HOWIE SCHWAB:
I was actually with Charley Steiner for the Holyfield-Tyson ear-bite fight. What I loved about Charley was he always had fun, but that night was wild. We were in the press area, watching the fight on big screens, and I didn’t realize what had happened at first and then I saw the replay of the bite, and we were like, “Did he really do that?” Then I started laughing because I had Holyfield in round three. I had ten bucks at 25-to-1, so the next day I had to cash my ticket before I flew out. There was a riot at the hotel and there was absolute insanity, but fortunately I was able to cash it.
CHARLEY STEINER:
A year before that fight, I had gone to Howard Katz’s office and said, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m tired of making excuses for Mike Tyson and trying to defend a sport that is going to shit.” I had been ESPN’s boxing guy since ’88, and he asked me to give it just one more year. So I did the fight, and when it was over said something to the effect that “Evander Holyfield and a portion of his right ear were rushed to the hospital tonight… in separate cars.” Those were my parting words to boxing. I got back from Vegas that Monday, saw Howard, and he said, “Say no more. You’re done with boxing.” I told him I always wanted to do baseball, and that was that.
BRIAN KENNY, Anchor:
I told the guys that I was an amateur fighter who trained at D’Amato’s Gym, alongside Mike Tyson, and was fighting myself in all these boxing clubs. So I said, “You should use me this way.” Charley Steiner had just stepped away from boxing, so I was like, “I’m your guy.”
They said, “Hey, can you do some auditions?” So I auditioned with Teddy Atlas and Max Kellerman, the first two guys that got the jobs for Friday Night Fights. Afterward, they were stunned. They were like, “Wow, you really know your stuff. Have you done this before?” And I was thinking, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you people!”
MAX KELLERMAN, Boxing Analyst:
Basically, my first year at