Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [205]
There had never been anything like the Friday Night Fights studio show; it brought SportsCenter production quality to boxing highlights and analysis. At the time I remember telling a columnist that it felt like that Cheers episode when Norm got the job as a beer taster.
I remember running into Mike Tyson for the first time at a fight in Vegas. He approached me and said, “You shouldn’t talk about my personal life on the air.” I said, “Mike, it’s nothing personal; my job is to comment on the news. When you make news outside the ring and I’m asked about it point-blank, I have to comment. I always try to be fair.” He said that he’d watched me when I was a kid on Public Access in New York when he was living on Second Avenue, and that he had no real beef with me, but that he just wanted his personal life left alone.
And then after about a year and a half of just doing Friday Night Fights, I thought, “Okay, I’m twenty-six years old, it’s probably time to get serious.” To be totally honest, I didn’t find much of the boxing on ESPN to be particularly compelling. I was more interested in what was going on with the Yankees, the Giants, and the Knicks. So I left the Tuesday Night series the following year.
GARY MILLER:
I always hated mascots, and it seemed like they were always around because of all the commercials we were doing. I almost got in a fistfight with Herbie the Husker [the University of Nebraska mascot]. We were sitting in the background because the mascots are always hanging out, doing handstands or just walking around, and we were in the cafeteria getting ready to do a commercial. Herbie was sitting across from me, and I just start ripping into him. Mascots are unbelievable because they won’t speak under any condition, no matter what I would say to them. Like one time I told Billy the Marlin, “God, I’d give anything for a harpoon right now,” but he would only shake his head. So with Herbie the Husker, I said, “I wish I had a combine I could drive in here.” And he literally got very upset but wouldn’t say anything. A female anchor had to intervene and tell him to settle down. The more upset he got, the more I just kept razzing him; he’s such a ridiculous mascot anyway. One SportsCenter commercial that I really wish I had done was when Charley [Steiner] got to punch the Syracuse Orange. That would have been great.
KEITH OLBERMANN:
When interleague play was proposed by Bud Selig, USA Today people called and asked me, having heard on the air that I disagreed with the concept, to write an op-ed for them for Baseball Weekly. And they said it would be on a page opposite somebody who was for it. I said, “Okay, fine.” So I just stated my case and sent it in to them, and when I opened the newspaper later in the week, to my horror, I was the con, the pro was Bud Selig, and it was a speech to the owners announcing it that had simply been transcribed. So there was the official statement of the commissioner of baseball, and speaking against the proposal was me.
One day, I guess every month or so, they bring in somebody who will be coming in for business meetings and have them meet with the staff, or you’d be invited to have lunch in the cafeteria, whatever, two hundred people at a time, or something like that. And one day it was the commissioner, and I didn’t go—I had something to do in the midday—so I didn’t come in to work until the regular time. And on my desk was a handwritten note that said, “Dear Keith: I stopped by in hopes of defending myself. Sorry to find you out. We’ll have to pick up this conversation later. Bud Selig.” I just thought, “This really gives me an idea of just exactly where we stand in this industry.” It’s not like he came to Bristol, believe me, to leave that note, but I know that he was going nowhere near my desk and yet came over to make sure I got the message that a battle had been joined.