Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [52]
Oh, man, it almost took over for a while. You had to be in on the culture, but the references that would show up on air! Just very subtle things like, Chargers-Giants and the Giants won, and you could hear the tone of voice and the sigh, and “no, they didn’t cover,” and what’s going on in the studio is one anchor and another shaking his head, you know, and directors getting into their ears and saying, “Yeah, it killed me.” We actually ended up doing a show called NFL Line by Line, and it was exactly that. Chris was the main anchor, and Paul Maguire was on it, and Fred Muzzy produced it, and it was nothing but a half-hour analysis going into the weekend of what the point spreads were. We dropped that show when we really started competing for an NFL contract.
BOB PRONOVOST:
There was a promotion going on in San Diego one time, and the game started half an hour before it was listed on the wires. Some of the guys who used to bet realized the Giants had scored six runs in the first inning before the game was supposed to start. So everybody got on the phone and called their bookies. Now the great moral of this story is that 6–0 Giants became 7–4 Giants, and then it was tied and actually went into extra innings. The Padres wound up winning the game and everybody lost.
Berman was doing SportsCenter that night, and I was the one who had to tell him in his ear that the Padres had beaten the Giants. I think he said something like, “And in a game that had a little less than passing interest around here, the Padres have beaten the Giants.” You could hear the whole place go, “Oh, my God,” as they said good-bye to their weekly salary.
Were we stupid? What can I tell you? You learn your lesson and move on. But that was something. It’s like going to Vegas and being told you’re going to get a twenty, and the only way you’ll lose is if the dealer has a twenty-one. And that’s what happened.
SAL MARCHIANO:
There were nights when they gave partial scores because guys had bet on games, and there were a lot of times when there were second and third meanings to the scores, like if a guy had bet on the game and he had the right side, he would be giddy, or if he was behind, there would be some ribbing that the audience couldn’t get. I heard, and don’t know if it’s confirmed, that the Connecticut State Police actually had recordings of people betting using the office phones.
ROGER WERNER:
The company was on a razor’s edge—liquidation or continuing operations; what’s it going to be? It was almost a coin toss. We did the analysis on both sides, and I concluded there was a business there but it was going to take five years, and over $100 million to make it work. There were no easy fixes. Miraculously, the Getty board said okay. Stu Evey may have been a character, but to his credit, he kept the cash flowing from the Getty board. He kept the whole thing going.
But when we went out to board meetings in L.A., we would literally be on call 24/7. I would get calls at two in the morning, and Evey would say, “Roger, goddammit, you’re the worst manager I’ve ever had. You fucked this up, you did that…,” you know. He’d get raw, and launch into some tirade immediately. He’d wake you up out of a sound sleep and say, “Ah, hello, who is this?” I mean, it was just ridiculous. But that’s what Chet lived with for that first year and a half. It was ugly.
STEVE BORNSTEIN:
Evey was a difficult man. Impossible. I didn’t work directly for him, but I certainly heard from him, and he was always difficult. I don’t think he speaks well of me, because he thinks I ignored him and I don’t give him the credit he thinks he deserves. I did ignore him, so that part’s accurate.
I always used to say Bristol was an hour too far away—from everywhere, particularly New York City. I had made a deal with Evey that the day that we actually turned a profit, when the company was no longer hemorrhaging money, he would buy us a helicopter. Until