June 30, 2025 • 33 mins
Jim Lampley, the legendary sports icon of HBO and ABC fame shares stories from his incredible career spanning nearly five decades, as well as some of the most memorable moments from his life in his incredible autobiography, IT HAPPENED! A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Tar Hillborn, sar Hill Bred. When I die' to our
heel dead.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to the Public Library podcast Sorry, here's your host
and podcast librarian, award winning poet, future best selling author,
and host of one of the most listened to radio
shows in America, Helen Little.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Hello, book lovers, I have a special edition of The
Public Library Podcasts with you. I sat down and had
a live conversation with Jim Lampley, the sports icon known
for his time at ABC Sports, CBS Sports, NBC Sports,
and of course HBO Boxing. We attended the same university,
(00:41):
the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, at different times,
and it was an alumni event and I had the
best time talking about his book. It happened a uniquely
lucky life in sports television. And here are excerpts from
our conversation. Enjoy Jim Lampley, Thank you guys also for
(01:04):
being here, and thank you for taking the time to
come through and hang out with all of us and
talk about your book. First of all, I loved it,
and there's so many things I loved about it. I've
dog aired it, I've highlighted, I've wrote in it and like,
But the first question I have to ask you, is
why now? Why now was the time to write the book?
You could have written this book so many different points
(01:26):
of your career, But why was it now is the time.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
That you when it's well, because I had cycled through
pretty much all the other things that I wanted to
do and did to do. I would have stayed.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
At HBO doing boxing matches forever, had that uniquely glorious
broadcast enterprise not been purchased by a bunch of grubby
celphone salesman from Dallas, who, for reasons which defy explanation,
decided to elimit they boxing from the programming catalog at
(02:03):
what they now called MAX changing the name, changing the
name for whatever reason again unimaginable. So that left me
somewhat at loose ends. And I had always wanted to teach.
It had always been in the back of my mind.
When all this is done, when I'm finished getting on
(02:23):
planes and flying around everywhere in the world.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I will go back to Chapel Hill.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
A lot of people ask me recently, people who aren't
Carolina people ask me what is in Belichick's mind? Why
would Belichick, after everything he's done, choose to come back
and coach college football in Chapel Hill, and I said
to all of them, you would have to be a
Tarhil to understand. This is the oldest story in our cult.
(02:52):
He was there when he was a little boy. He
was four, five and six years old in Chapel Hill.
I defy anybody, anyone of any description, to go live
in Chapel Hill for any three or four years of
their lives at any age and then try to get
it out of your system.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
You don't. It does not leave your consciousness or your system. Belichick,
like so many of the rest of us, is back.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Home, and I wanted to leave southern California and come
back home, and fortunately my wife agreed to the enterprise.
At first, it was going to be, okay, I'll go
teach for a semester or two and see what it's like.
And eventually I tired of all of that and stop
(03:37):
teaching after five semesters. Then it was okay, what comes next?
And our Chance and I have been friends ever since.
He was the sports editor of the Daily tar Heel
when I was an undergraduate, and I late in my
undergraduate career, if you want to call it, that had
(03:59):
begun to get involved with WCHL Village Broadcasting, YEP. I
was doing pregame in postgame shows for unc football and
basketball broadcasts.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I was doing the Dean Smith Show.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I was doing a weekly show with Dean on WCHL.
I had a lot of broadcasting experience by the time
I graduated. Long story short, I went from Village Broadcasting
WCHL to the American Broadcasting Company. Now I had a
network perch, and it was supposed to be for one
(04:32):
season only, and eventually it led to all the things
that have been mentioned here with regard to my background
and my credentials. So that's why people, a lot of
people have friends have asked, why does the title of.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
The book say lucky? I said, if you go as
one of four hundred and thirty two guinea pigs to
be interviewed for a gimmick role, which is presented as
being for one year only, and that ultimately leads to
a nearly fifty year career in which you work with
every conceivable network, including HBO, and you go to fourteen Olympics,
(05:10):
and you become the premier boxing announcer in the country, etc.
If you don't understand that that's lucky, you're not being
real with yourself. Okay, so that's why that word is
in the title, and it belongs in the title. But
all of that is a long answer to I wrote
the book because that was the next thing on the list,
(05:30):
and because Chansky told me that I ought to do that.
Then I wrote the book, waiting for Art's editing and input, etc. Etc.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
And he talked to me through the process, and eventually
I got to the end and I said, Art, you know,
I think I'm finished.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Now what do we do? And he said, Jim, you've
written a book and there isn't anything else really for
you to do other than turn this over to the
publisher and hope that they agree with us that the
book is done. And I said, Art, is it a
good book? And he said, no, it's a great book.
And I was deeply appreciative of that, as I have
(06:06):
been for all of his friendship over a fifty year period.
And sure enough the publisher was pleased.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And now here we are who knew that writing the
book is the first step in the process, and then
were the real work begins. But the wonderful part of
the real work is that I get to meet.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
People like you and get compliments from people like you
on the book, So thank you.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
You're very welcome. One of the things that I thought
was interesting you talked about and you alluded to it
in what you just mentioned, the serendipity of your career.
And you and I have actually met before you came
back to WHL. You were a huge star, I'm not
kidding it. And like the fact that he came to
(06:50):
the radio station. For all of us that were working
there was such an amazing deal and you stopped and
talked to every single one of us. You were so
open and kind and.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
As envious because you were still in Chapel Hill. I
was out in the rest.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Of the world and as I was reading this book
and I went through all of these moments that I
went through with you because I'm a big sports fan.
I mean, I'm a nutty sports fan, and I'm like,
I remember that I was there for that. I saw
that I did that. And you know, to hear you
say that this was not my plan, but Chapel Hill
(07:28):
was your plan. That was also my plan, but you,
I won't say, fell into it. The universe set this something, right.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, No, the universe had a plan for me.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Yes, and I got swept up in it, and a
lot of it was involuntary. And as you know from
reading the book, it's not all a steady upward climb.
It's not without moments of extreme difficulty, intrepidation. And you know,
several times I said to myself, well, okay, this particular
(07:58):
ride on the Merry go Round is now probably over
with and I might have to find a real life.
But that never turned out really to be the case
until those grubby cells phone salesman from dallasare not HBO.
But no, I was again lucky, and very lucky all
the way through. Now that becomes part of the book
(08:20):
story as well, as you know, certainly at first not
headed toward being the college age reporter. But the boss
said ABC Sports was a famous legendary executive named Rune Knowledge.
Rue Knowledge was his own guy, and even though his
staffers tried to persuade him that I was not the
(08:41):
right choice for this, Rune said, toward the end of
the process, did we talk to anybody who actually has
been on the air? Did we talk to anybody who
actually has had a microphone in his hand and might
have stood in front of a camera, and Eversoul said
well run. We said that that was not what we
were looking for, and Room said, yeah, I know, But
(09:01):
did we talk to anybody like that? And said, yeah,
there was one guy's one guy in North Carolina, Chapel
Hill graduate who has a lot of experience. Now ever,
Soul knew Room may not have. They're on the initial
evaluation form that Eversoul had filled out in Birmingham, Alabama.
When I went to the screening interview, he had written
(09:21):
four words arrogant, abrasive, alienated, antagonistic that eventually became known
in the college football production truck as the four a's.
Every time I would bitch about something from the sideline
or wherever, the director Andy.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Sinaris would say, there they are the four a's right there, etc.
But it, you know, it became a joke. So I
outlived it.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
And you know, all of that is part and parcel
of why it's lucky. It's unpredictable, but it happened.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
I love the title for that reason, and I know
you get into where that came from, But tell us
a little bit about where it happened came from and
why that became the title of the book.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Well, it happened came from a fight call, and George
Foreman had become late in my HBO boxing broadcast career,
George Foreman had become our expert commentator.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
And why not.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
He was at that time the single most successful television
sales pitchman in the history of the country, selling the
grill that everybody had to own? Did anybody a Foreman grill?
We all did, right, And the minicky mufflers and the
big man suits and all the things off of which
he was making colossal sums of money. When he came
(10:47):
to sit at ringside with Larry Merchant and be and
call the fights with us, And I had known him
a little bit before then, and he became a kind
of soulful big brother to me, became a sort of
spiritual advisor and a life coach because he took an
interest in me, and it was really interesting. George would
(11:10):
always call me young man. And every time he called
me young man, I would find a moment to say, George,
we are less than three months.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Apart, and he would always smile and look at me
and say, yeah, but you're such a young man. So
for George eventually to die suddenly, unexpectedly, two weeks before
the publication date is so ironic my call on the
air of the night November five, nineteen ninety four, that
(11:42):
he beat Michael Moore at age forty five to become
the oldest heavyweight champion ever, an epic accomplishment that sets
him apart forever in the annals of boxing. I was
with the referee Joe Cortes this weekend at the Boxing
Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Upstate New York, and
I said to Cortes, I said, you know, you triggered
(12:02):
the title of the book because Mooror is lying on
the canvas in the tenth round and it's abundantly clear
he's not going to get up. And Cortes is six
seven eight, And I'm thinking, what am I going to
say about this? How do I commemorate this astonishing event?
How do I do it in such a way that
(12:23):
I'm not going to be criticized for my friendship, relationship
on air, broadcasting partnership with George et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. And the two words that came into my
mind from nowhere were it happened. I said it twice,
It happened. It happened forty five year old George Foreman,
twenty years after his lost to Muhammad Ali in zai Eeir.
(12:46):
I don't know if I put it in, but the
fact is so irresistible. Wearing the same trunks he had
worn in Zaieir has knocked out Michael Moore to become
once again the heavyweight champion of the world and the
oldest heavyweight champion of the world. And that call, along
with another call in Tokyo Mike Tyson has been knocked out,
(13:10):
those are the two most famous calls in my boxing
broadcasting career. And when I got ready to write the book,
even before I wrote the book, I knew that the
title would be it happened because for a lot of
the things that took place in my path and in
my journey through this career. That's all you can say
about it. There's no logical reason why it should have happened,
(13:32):
but it happened. There was no logical reason to expect
that in the original interview process for the College Age
Reporter they would eventually veer away from everything they'd said
about it and reach out to choose me. When I
had not intended to even go to the interview because
I was so clearly not the person that they were
looking for. But doctor Wallach said, no, no, you have
(13:53):
to go. They'll figure it out.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
They did, you know, one of my favorite lines. I mean,
I don't even have to look this one up, although
I've dog eared and highlighted and.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Wrote in this book, I love you.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
They can take away your job, but they cannot take
away your talent.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I was fired at ABC Sports basically, or you know, alienated,
made to feel chilly, forced out of ABC Sports in
nineteen eighty seven by a newly arrived chief executive for
the division who arrived at ABC Sports with one particular
pre election about the division, which is, who is Jim
(14:34):
Lampley And why am I paying him all this money?
And how do I get rid of him?
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And he chose as his method for alienating me and
getting rid of me to assign me to boxing because
he was so certain that I would be the.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Wrong cultural fit for boxing. He was so certain that
this small town kid from Hendersonville, North Carolina wouldn't know
anything about the sport that he was sure it would
embarrass me to assign me to boxing. What he didn't know,
of course, that you know is that my double widowed mother,
after my father died when I was five years old,
(15:12):
had taken me into a small private room at a
friend's party in our neighborhood in Hendersonville, North Carolina when
I was six and put me in front of a
tiny television set on a TV dinner tray and said,
sit here, you're going to watch Sugar Ray Robinson against
Bobo Olsen for the middleweight Championship of the World. You're
going to do this because if your father was still alive, this.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Is what he'd be doing and you'd be doing it
with him. And oh, by the way, Sugar Ray Robinson
is my favorite fighter. He dances when he fights. So
from that moment on, I watched Jellette Friday Night fights
all the way through my childhood, well into my teenage years.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
And another thing that Dennis Swanson didn't know was that
the very first live prize fight I ever attended was
Cassius Clay versus Sunny liston Or the heavyweight Championship in
Miami Beach February twenty five, nineteen sixty four. So I
saw that iteration of the biggest upset in boxing history,
and then two and a half decades later, I called
(16:13):
its successor when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
But when Dennis Swanson.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Managed to force me out of ABC Sports, and I
was pretty certain at that moment my network career is over.
You know who else is going to want me under
the same terms. I'm not the college age reporter anymore.
All these shows I've done at.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
ABC Sports, particularly all the crazy wide worlds, the wrist wrestling,
the barrel jumping, the log rolling, the you know, et cetera.
The agony of defeat. Yeah, yet they don't have that
at these other networks. So I'm done. And it was
my agent, Ark Kaminski from Rockville Center, New York, who
said to me, at that moment, Jim, he didn't take
(16:57):
away your talent. He took your job and that's all
he took. Said, trust your talent. People know who you are.
You'll be fine. So I wound up going to CBS.
I wound up first being a station sports director.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
CACBSTV in Los Angeles. I eventually became the primary news
anchor at KCBSTV in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Once you sit on.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
The set and you show what you can do, you know,
then management starts to think, oh, wait, how can we
have more of him?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Well, if he's the news anchor instead of the sports director,
there'll be a lot more of him on the air.
The bottom line was that was a hugely important moment
as Art Kaminsky kept me alive to a large degree
with that one line. He didn't take your talent, he
just took your job.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
That is something to put on the wall for. And
you know what I thought, too, was very interesting about
the moments when they're like, oh, we're gonna mess with
you and put you in boxing breer rabbit. They threw
you into the briar pat right without knowing.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yet like exactly, yeah, yeah, I mean my lifetime hero
was Cassius Clay slash Muhammad Ali. And by the way,
I don't know if you'll get to this, but I
think it's worth saying because it's so meaningful to me
among the many things my mother very ardently taught me
when I was a child, and how this happened with
(18:21):
a woman who was the product of a poor, all
white Irish household in Memphis, whose parents didn't know how
to pronounce the word negro any better than my paternal
grandparents did. How she was the person who a told
me that taught me that her favorite fighter was Sugar
Ray Robinson, and then b ardently taught me anti racism
(18:43):
all the way through my teenage years into my college years, etc.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
If I had, if I had veered in the direction
in which much of the rest of my family went
during those years, I could not have done what I did.
But my mother, day after day, you will not adhere
to that. You will not speak in those terms. You
will not say that word that your grandparents say never.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
And I don't know where it came from, but it
was a tremendous value, monetary value to me, because again,
you couldn't have been successful as a sportscaster the way
I was if you were a racist.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
It goes back to what you're saying in terms of
being set up for what you were intended to do
in this life. And you know clearly this was your path,
whether you chose it or not.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
As and that's where that's where people are right when
they say why do you say lucky? You know clearly
you were prepared for this, but still you look at
all the circumstances and everything that happened lucky that that
was part of it.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
When you're writing a book like this, when you're doing
a memoir autobiography and you're sharing intimate details of your life,
what is that like? Was you know, was it hard
on other members of your face family or were they like,
we already know this story. What was the most challenging
part of putting this book together?
Speaker 4 (20:08):
I didn't get my wife right when I first wrote
the book, okay, And it was a challenging and trying
moment when Deborah read what I had written and came
to me and said, is that really what you want
to say about me? And and I went back and
looked at it, and I thought, oh my god, she's
(20:29):
She's so right. So I had to correct.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
That, and that was humbling. What you wrote is beautiful. Well,
thank you Deborah, for she didn't write it. She just
provided the right stimulus so that I would make I
would not make the kind of mistake that I sometimes
make with regard to thoughtfulness, consideration, real appreciation for a
(20:58):
human being who means so much to your life. So
that was a challenging passage, but she helped me through it,
and I owe her a lot for that. Thank you. Deborah,
I love you.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
I genuinely appreciate that you corrected that section of the
book that had to do with you.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I remember the words you taught me how to love.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Taught me how to love. That's exactly right. And what
I had done before was not along those lines. Yes.
The only other part of the book that was in
any way challenging was I had to decide, am I
going to do notes outline structure, or am I going
(21:41):
to do this the way my mother and my grandmother
used to tell me stories off the cuff, from their hearts,
from their heads in their kitchens when I was growing up.
And I decided to honor my mother and my grandmother
by doing it that way. And I knew that I
(22:02):
would be safe because if I went off the rails,
if I did something unintelligible, if I was blowing it,
Art would tell me, you know, And and so as
the manuscript went along, every once in a while, I
would I would check with Art, Art, you know, am
I staying with the storyline?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yes, you're doing fine.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Am I making the right kind of progress toward you know,
a full intelligible.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Reading of this? Yes, you're doing fine. So he he
helped me to stay on the path, and I wound up.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
I didn't outline anything. I would write for much of
the day until I was pretty sure i'd written enough
to feel like I'd created some progress.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I would go to bed that night and.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
Put my head on the pillow and think about what
I had written that day and talk to myself about
what I needed to write the next day. And then
when I knew what I needed to write the next day,
I would listen to my mother and my grandmother tell
the story that they would have told it, And.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
At the end of the day.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
My autobiography is written to some degree, particularly in my
mother's language, but my grandmother is in there too, because
they were the two people who.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Taught me how to tell stories.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
And they had no way of knowing and will never
know that their influence was in ABC's wide world of sports.
Their influence was in fourteen Olympics. Their influence was on
the air.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
At WCBS or KCBS and KABC, etc. They were with
me every step of the way because of their skills
and their passion and their ability to constantly tell me
stories from their own background and their own perceptions of
the world.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
It is a beautifully told story, and I was able
to follow it because you've always been a master storyteller.
As somebody who was one of the kids sitting there
listening to you tell these stories. You've had some of
the most iconic sports moments ever.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Well maybe the most iconic in American history and culture,
which is the Miracle Area. Well, yeah, I mean, and
that was that was another accident, because that was not
my assignment. My assignment in Lake Placid was I had
at that point had a contract with both news and sports,
(24:28):
and in Lake Placid you had two situations that were
extremely newsworthy. Number One, there were all of these organizational snapoos.
There were people, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people at a
time stranded in freezing parking lots in sub zero temperatures
with tickets that were never going to get them into
(24:49):
the event because.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
There were no buses.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
The contract with the bus company had fallen through, so
thousands of people every day were being dispossessed of their
chance to go to Olympic events because of the absence
of the bus. That was a giant story, along with
other organizational statooss And then, of course, at the same time,
you had Soviet tanks in Afghanistan and a war of
(25:12):
wills going on between Carter administration and Soviet Russia over
how to get the tanks out of Afghanistan, and the
question became is the United States going to blaycott the
nineteen eighty Summer Olympics in Musca. So there are all
these meetings going on in Lake Placid.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
That was my beat. I didn't cover any sports by
and large in Lake Placid because I was doing that
stuff the whole time. And of course there are millions
of Americans who believed they watched the Miracle on Ice
live on TV. They did not.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
I didn't realize that the game was played at five
PMS because nobody expected the United States team to be
a contender. That was a down and out, bedraggled group.
They were not going to be involved in the metal
Hunt in any way, shape or form. But they beat Czechoslovakia,
they beat Germany, they get a tie, a last second
(26:09):
tie with Sweden, and all of a sudden, now this
Friday game on the second weekend of the Olympics amounts
to a semi final between the United States and.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
The Soviet Union. So of course Ourlige ABC and the
Olympic committee.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Go to the organizing committee and say, this game is
scheduled for five.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Pm, and if it takes place at five pm, nobody's
going to see it.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
We're not even on the air at that time. You've
got to move it to eight pm. The Russians said,
no game is scheduled for five. It's always been scheduled
for five. We'll be there to play at five. So
now the game is going to be videotaped. We're going
to do everything possible to suppress the information. But of
course any radio station in the country can blare the
(26:56):
results if.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
They want to.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
And I I am in an edit bay, in a
tape facility in the broadcast center, putting together a compendium
piece that covers all the stories, political and organizational that
I had covered in the preceding weeks. At that moment
in time, in every ABC Sports production facility, whether it
(27:20):
was a truck or a studio, every one of them
had a red phone, and the red phone had a
blinking light on the top, and the red phone did
not ring, but if that light blinked, you knew that
it was run oledge. That was the Orlage phone. I
had worked at ABC for six years I had never
seen an Orlage phone rint and I'm in the edit
(27:43):
bay and all of a sudden, the light goes on.
Producer and tape editor see the light go on. They
both look at me with this look that says, all yours.
You answer, He's not calling us, So I pick it
up and I hear his voice.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I'm looking for Jim Lampley. This is me. What are
you doing? I tell him what I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Dump that and get over to the hockey arena. You
are about to become our biggest asset tonight. And I
said why. He said, because I think something wild. I
think something unusual could take place in the hockey game.
And we have seven minutes booked at the end of
the telecast for an interview. Go get that interview, whoever
it is. And the last thing I said to him
(28:27):
was Rune, I don't have the right credential to get
into hockey.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Now.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
This is eight years after the Munich massacre, right at
that moment in time, getting into an Olympic event with
the wrong credential, you couldn't do it.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Before he put the phone down, he said, you'll get
in clunk. And now the tape editor and the producer
are like, okay, you've got your orders. Go.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
I walked two hundred and fifty yards through deep snow.
I got to the Lake Placid High School Hockey arena.
I went to the door, and the first person I
bumped into was the Lake Placid High School hockey coach,
who was the venue manager and through sheer accident, totally
out of the crackerjack box. I had met him three
days before WOW, and I went to him and I said,
(29:14):
I got to get in. He said, why do you
have to get in? I said, I just have to
get in. I'm have to do an interview at the
end of the evening if something strange happens in the game.
Still not expecting that anything like that is going to happen.
The United States is not going to beat the Soviet team,
which had won every Olympics for several cycles and won
every World championship, which had beaten the American team ten
(29:36):
to three in an exhibition game in Madison Square Garden
seven days before the opening ceremony. And now here I
am getting into the arena trying to find a way
to watch the game. I got up onto ABC camera
platform about forty yards behind where Al Michaels and Ken
Dryden are down on the ice calling the game. And
(29:56):
I stood there for the next two periods and watched
arguably the christ and most unexpected event in American sports history,
something that couldn't happen and did. And at the end,
I went down to the tunnel where the American players
would be coming out of their locker room. And I
(30:19):
stood at one end of the tunnel and it was chaos.
It was a madhouse. Every photographer and reporter imaginable was
there screaming and yelling at the players as they came
out of the dressing room. And they all came out
of a door, and I yell and yell and yell.
I know the jersey numbers, I know the names. I'm yelling,
Hey Bill Baker, Hey Ken Morrow. Can I None of
(30:42):
them hear me. It's chaos, None of them hear me.
The last player to come out is Eruzione.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Mike. Mike. We had the same agent, Art Kaminski, who
was also a hockey agent. I had met him a
few days before. He recognized my voice. He comes over
to me and says, what are you doing. I said,
I've got to get an interview to close the show
tonight and you are absolutely the right person.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Oh, I don't think I can do that. I've got
to go to dinner with Jim Craig and his dad.
I said, guess who's paying for dinner? And so we
wound up standing on the mainstream of Lake Placid in
front of a tiny Italian restaurant, passed eleven o'clock when
the show is just about to go off the air.
Because it was a dinner with Craig and Eruzioni, I
(31:28):
had both. I have the hero goalie and the guy
who scored the most famous goal in the history of hockey.
And just before Jim McKay threw to me for the interview,
Eruzione nudged me in the ribs and said, hey, lamps,
if we had stood here last night, And I turned
around and looked him. There were probably seven or eight
(31:50):
thousand people who had gathered behind us to be a
part of it, right, And Eruzioni nudged me in the
ribs and nodded back. And I looked back and saw
that he said, if we had stood in this same spot,
on this same street twenty four hours ago.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
And I filled in the blanket and said nobody would
have noticed, he said, exactly nobody. Everybody's life had changed
in those twenty four hours. And in the years that followed.
I went to many Olympic gatherings and get together events.
What I would run into both Craig and Eruzione, and
we always had the same dialogue. At some point I
would turn to Mike and say, Mike, you know, through
(32:30):
the miracle of videotape, you are now the leading goal
scorer in the history of hockey. And every time I
said that, Mike would smile and look at me and say,
keeps going in, doesn't it. And it keeps going in
exactly right.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Thank you so much for the book.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
My privilege.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Thank you for sharing your stories your life over the
years with people like me.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
What a privilege.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Can't begin to tell you how.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Much a part of my life you were.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
And I'm so glad that you took the time to
share this so that we have it forever.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
I'm very, very glad I wrote the book.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
I owe it all to our Chansky and to Deborah
who constantly encouraged me and and kept saying, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
You, you you got to keep writing, You're going to
finish the book. Thank you, my darling. I appreciate it,
and thank you to all of you for coming out
and showing h interest tonight. It's very deeply gratifying to
this tar heel. We all share something really really special.
And if God is not a tar heel, why is
(33:40):
Carolina Book.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Carolina another show in the books. Join us for the
next episode of the Public Library Podcast, a place to
check out books.
Tar Hillborn, sar Hill Bred. When I die' to our
heel dead.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to the Public Library podcast Sorry, here's your host
and podcast librarian, award winning poet, future best selling author,
and host of one of the most listened to radio
shows in America, Helen Little.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Hello, book lovers, I have a special edition of The
Public Library Podcasts with you. I sat down and had
a live conversation with Jim Lampley, the sports icon known
for his time at ABC Sports, CBS Sports, NBC Sports,
and of course HBO Boxing. We attended the same university,
(00:41):
the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, at different times,
and it was an alumni event and I had the
best time talking about his book. It happened a uniquely
lucky life in sports television. And here are excerpts from
our conversation. Enjoy Jim Lampley, Thank you guys also for
(01:04):
being here, and thank you for taking the time to
come through and hang out with all of us and
talk about your book. First of all, I loved it,
and there's so many things I loved about it. I've
dog aired it, I've highlighted, I've wrote in it and like,
But the first question I have to ask you, is
why now? Why now was the time to write the book?
You could have written this book so many different points
(01:26):
of your career, But why was it now is the time.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
That you when it's well, because I had cycled through
pretty much all the other things that I wanted to
do and did to do. I would have stayed.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
At HBO doing boxing matches forever, had that uniquely glorious
broadcast enterprise not been purchased by a bunch of grubby
celphone salesman from Dallas, who, for reasons which defy explanation,
decided to elimit they boxing from the programming catalog at
(02:03):
what they now called MAX changing the name, changing the
name for whatever reason again unimaginable. So that left me
somewhat at loose ends. And I had always wanted to teach.
It had always been in the back of my mind.
When all this is done, when I'm finished getting on
(02:23):
planes and flying around everywhere in the world.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I will go back to Chapel Hill.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
A lot of people ask me recently, people who aren't
Carolina people ask me what is in Belichick's mind? Why
would Belichick, after everything he's done, choose to come back
and coach college football in Chapel Hill, and I said
to all of them, you would have to be a
Tarhil to understand. This is the oldest story in our cult.
(02:52):
He was there when he was a little boy. He
was four, five and six years old in Chapel Hill.
I defy anybody, anyone of any description, to go live
in Chapel Hill for any three or four years of
their lives at any age and then try to get
it out of your system.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
You don't. It does not leave your consciousness or your system. Belichick,
like so many of the rest of us, is back.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Home, and I wanted to leave southern California and come
back home, and fortunately my wife agreed to the enterprise.
At first, it was going to be, okay, I'll go
teach for a semester or two and see what it's like.
And eventually I tired of all of that and stop
(03:37):
teaching after five semesters. Then it was okay, what comes next?
And our Chance and I have been friends ever since.
He was the sports editor of the Daily tar Heel
when I was an undergraduate, and I late in my
undergraduate career, if you want to call it, that had
(03:59):
begun to get involved with WCHL Village Broadcasting, YEP. I
was doing pregame in postgame shows for unc football and
basketball broadcasts.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I was doing the Dean Smith Show.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I was doing a weekly show with Dean on WCHL.
I had a lot of broadcasting experience by the time
I graduated. Long story short, I went from Village Broadcasting
WCHL to the American Broadcasting Company. Now I had a
network perch, and it was supposed to be for one
(04:32):
season only, and eventually it led to all the things
that have been mentioned here with regard to my background
and my credentials. So that's why people, a lot of
people have friends have asked, why does the title of.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
The book say lucky? I said, if you go as
one of four hundred and thirty two guinea pigs to
be interviewed for a gimmick role, which is presented as
being for one year only, and that ultimately leads to
a nearly fifty year career in which you work with
every conceivable network, including HBO, and you go to fourteen Olympics,
(05:10):
and you become the premier boxing announcer in the country, etc.
If you don't understand that that's lucky, you're not being
real with yourself. Okay, so that's why that word is
in the title, and it belongs in the title. But
all of that is a long answer to I wrote
the book because that was the next thing on the list,
(05:30):
and because Chansky told me that I ought to do that.
Then I wrote the book, waiting for Art's editing and input, etc. Etc.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
And he talked to me through the process, and eventually
I got to the end and I said, Art, you know,
I think I'm finished.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Now what do we do? And he said, Jim, you've
written a book and there isn't anything else really for
you to do other than turn this over to the
publisher and hope that they agree with us that the
book is done. And I said, Art, is it a
good book? And he said, no, it's a great book.
And I was deeply appreciative of that, as I have
(06:06):
been for all of his friendship over a fifty year period.
And sure enough the publisher was pleased.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And now here we are who knew that writing the
book is the first step in the process, and then
were the real work begins. But the wonderful part of
the real work is that I get to meet.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
People like you and get compliments from people like you
on the book, So thank you.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
You're very welcome. One of the things that I thought
was interesting you talked about and you alluded to it
in what you just mentioned, the serendipity of your career.
And you and I have actually met before you came
back to WHL. You were a huge star, I'm not
kidding it. And like the fact that he came to
(06:50):
the radio station. For all of us that were working
there was such an amazing deal and you stopped and
talked to every single one of us. You were so
open and kind and.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
As envious because you were still in Chapel Hill. I
was out in the rest.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Of the world and as I was reading this book
and I went through all of these moments that I
went through with you because I'm a big sports fan.
I mean, I'm a nutty sports fan, and I'm like,
I remember that I was there for that. I saw
that I did that. And you know, to hear you
say that this was not my plan, but Chapel Hill
(07:28):
was your plan. That was also my plan, but you,
I won't say, fell into it. The universe set this something, right.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, No, the universe had a plan for me.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Yes, and I got swept up in it, and a
lot of it was involuntary. And as you know from
reading the book, it's not all a steady upward climb.
It's not without moments of extreme difficulty, intrepidation. And you know,
several times I said to myself, well, okay, this particular
(07:58):
ride on the Merry go Round is now probably over
with and I might have to find a real life.
But that never turned out really to be the case
until those grubby cells phone salesman from dallasare not HBO.
But no, I was again lucky, and very lucky all
the way through. Now that becomes part of the book
(08:20):
story as well, as you know, certainly at first not
headed toward being the college age reporter. But the boss
said ABC Sports was a famous legendary executive named Rune Knowledge.
Rue Knowledge was his own guy, and even though his
staffers tried to persuade him that I was not the
(08:41):
right choice for this, Rune said, toward the end of
the process, did we talk to anybody who actually has
been on the air? Did we talk to anybody who
actually has had a microphone in his hand and might
have stood in front of a camera, and Eversoul said
well run. We said that that was not what we
were looking for, and Room said, yeah, I know, But
(09:01):
did we talk to anybody like that? And said, yeah,
there was one guy's one guy in North Carolina, Chapel
Hill graduate who has a lot of experience. Now ever,
Soul knew Room may not have. They're on the initial
evaluation form that Eversoul had filled out in Birmingham, Alabama.
When I went to the screening interview, he had written
(09:21):
four words arrogant, abrasive, alienated, antagonistic that eventually became known
in the college football production truck as the four a's.
Every time I would bitch about something from the sideline
or wherever, the director Andy.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Sinaris would say, there they are the four a's right there, etc.
But it, you know, it became a joke. So I
outlived it.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
And you know, all of that is part and parcel
of why it's lucky. It's unpredictable, but it happened.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
I love the title for that reason, and I know
you get into where that came from, But tell us
a little bit about where it happened came from and
why that became the title of the book.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Well, it happened came from a fight call, and George
Foreman had become late in my HBO boxing broadcast career,
George Foreman had become our expert commentator.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
And why not.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
He was at that time the single most successful television
sales pitchman in the history of the country, selling the
grill that everybody had to own? Did anybody a Foreman grill?
We all did, right, And the minicky mufflers and the
big man suits and all the things off of which
he was making colossal sums of money. When he came
(10:47):
to sit at ringside with Larry Merchant and be and
call the fights with us, And I had known him
a little bit before then, and he became a kind
of soulful big brother to me, became a sort of
spiritual advisor and a life coach because he took an
interest in me, and it was really interesting. George would
(11:10):
always call me young man. And every time he called
me young man, I would find a moment to say, George,
we are less than three months.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Apart, and he would always smile and look at me
and say, yeah, but you're such a young man. So
for George eventually to die suddenly, unexpectedly, two weeks before
the publication date is so ironic my call on the
air of the night November five, nineteen ninety four, that
(11:42):
he beat Michael Moore at age forty five to become
the oldest heavyweight champion ever, an epic accomplishment that sets
him apart forever in the annals of boxing. I was
with the referee Joe Cortes this weekend at the Boxing
Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Upstate New York, and
I said to Cortes, I said, you know, you triggered
(12:02):
the title of the book because Mooror is lying on
the canvas in the tenth round and it's abundantly clear
he's not going to get up. And Cortes is six
seven eight, And I'm thinking, what am I going to
say about this? How do I commemorate this astonishing event?
How do I do it in such a way that
(12:23):
I'm not going to be criticized for my friendship, relationship
on air, broadcasting partnership with George et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. And the two words that came into my
mind from nowhere were it happened. I said it twice,
It happened. It happened forty five year old George Foreman,
twenty years after his lost to Muhammad Ali in zai Eeir.
(12:46):
I don't know if I put it in, but the
fact is so irresistible. Wearing the same trunks he had
worn in Zaieir has knocked out Michael Moore to become
once again the heavyweight champion of the world and the
oldest heavyweight champion of the world. And that call, along
with another call in Tokyo Mike Tyson has been knocked out,
(13:10):
those are the two most famous calls in my boxing
broadcasting career. And when I got ready to write the book,
even before I wrote the book, I knew that the
title would be it happened because for a lot of
the things that took place in my path and in
my journey through this career. That's all you can say
about it. There's no logical reason why it should have happened,
(13:32):
but it happened. There was no logical reason to expect
that in the original interview process for the College Age
Reporter they would eventually veer away from everything they'd said
about it and reach out to choose me. When I
had not intended to even go to the interview because
I was so clearly not the person that they were
looking for. But doctor Wallach said, no, no, you have
(13:53):
to go. They'll figure it out.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
They did, you know, one of my favorite lines. I mean,
I don't even have to look this one up, although
I've dog eared and highlighted and.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Wrote in this book, I love you.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
They can take away your job, but they cannot take
away your talent.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I was fired at ABC Sports basically, or you know, alienated,
made to feel chilly, forced out of ABC Sports in
nineteen eighty seven by a newly arrived chief executive for
the division who arrived at ABC Sports with one particular
pre election about the division, which is, who is Jim
(14:34):
Lampley And why am I paying him all this money?
And how do I get rid of him?
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And he chose as his method for alienating me and
getting rid of me to assign me to boxing because
he was so certain that I would be the.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Wrong cultural fit for boxing. He was so certain that
this small town kid from Hendersonville, North Carolina wouldn't know
anything about the sport that he was sure it would
embarrass me to assign me to boxing. What he didn't know,
of course, that you know is that my double widowed mother,
after my father died when I was five years old,
(15:12):
had taken me into a small private room at a
friend's party in our neighborhood in Hendersonville, North Carolina when
I was six and put me in front of a
tiny television set on a TV dinner tray and said,
sit here, you're going to watch Sugar Ray Robinson against
Bobo Olsen for the middleweight Championship of the World. You're
going to do this because if your father was still alive, this.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Is what he'd be doing and you'd be doing it
with him. And oh, by the way, Sugar Ray Robinson
is my favorite fighter. He dances when he fights. So
from that moment on, I watched Jellette Friday Night fights
all the way through my childhood, well into my teenage years.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
And another thing that Dennis Swanson didn't know was that
the very first live prize fight I ever attended was
Cassius Clay versus Sunny liston Or the heavyweight Championship in
Miami Beach February twenty five, nineteen sixty four. So I
saw that iteration of the biggest upset in boxing history,
and then two and a half decades later, I called
(16:13):
its successor when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
But when Dennis Swanson.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Managed to force me out of ABC Sports, and I
was pretty certain at that moment my network career is over.
You know who else is going to want me under
the same terms. I'm not the college age reporter anymore.
All these shows I've done at.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
ABC Sports, particularly all the crazy wide worlds, the wrist wrestling,
the barrel jumping, the log rolling, the you know, et cetera.
The agony of defeat. Yeah, yet they don't have that
at these other networks. So I'm done. And it was
my agent, Ark Kaminski from Rockville Center, New York, who
said to me, at that moment, Jim, he didn't take
(16:57):
away your talent. He took your job and that's all
he took. Said, trust your talent. People know who you are.
You'll be fine. So I wound up going to CBS.
I wound up first being a station sports director.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
CACBSTV in Los Angeles. I eventually became the primary news
anchor at KCBSTV in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Once you sit on.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
The set and you show what you can do, you know,
then management starts to think, oh, wait, how can we
have more of him?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Well, if he's the news anchor instead of the sports director,
there'll be a lot more of him on the air.
The bottom line was that was a hugely important moment
as Art Kaminsky kept me alive to a large degree
with that one line. He didn't take your talent, he
just took your job.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
That is something to put on the wall for. And
you know what I thought, too, was very interesting about
the moments when they're like, oh, we're gonna mess with
you and put you in boxing breer rabbit. They threw
you into the briar pat right without knowing.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yet like exactly, yeah, yeah, I mean my lifetime hero
was Cassius Clay slash Muhammad Ali. And by the way,
I don't know if you'll get to this, but I
think it's worth saying because it's so meaningful to me
among the many things my mother very ardently taught me
when I was a child, and how this happened with
(18:21):
a woman who was the product of a poor, all
white Irish household in Memphis, whose parents didn't know how
to pronounce the word negro any better than my paternal
grandparents did. How she was the person who a told
me that taught me that her favorite fighter was Sugar
Ray Robinson, and then b ardently taught me anti racism
(18:43):
all the way through my teenage years into my college years, etc.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
If I had, if I had veered in the direction
in which much of the rest of my family went
during those years, I could not have done what I did.
But my mother, day after day, you will not adhere
to that. You will not speak in those terms. You
will not say that word that your grandparents say never.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
And I don't know where it came from, but it
was a tremendous value, monetary value to me, because again,
you couldn't have been successful as a sportscaster the way
I was if you were a racist.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
It goes back to what you're saying in terms of
being set up for what you were intended to do
in this life. And you know clearly this was your path,
whether you chose it or not.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
As and that's where that's where people are right when
they say why do you say lucky? You know clearly
you were prepared for this, but still you look at
all the circumstances and everything that happened lucky that that
was part of it.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
When you're writing a book like this, when you're doing
a memoir autobiography and you're sharing intimate details of your life,
what is that like? Was you know, was it hard
on other members of your face family or were they like,
we already know this story. What was the most challenging
part of putting this book together?
Speaker 4 (20:08):
I didn't get my wife right when I first wrote
the book, okay, And it was a challenging and trying
moment when Deborah read what I had written and came
to me and said, is that really what you want
to say about me? And and I went back and
looked at it, and I thought, oh my god, she's
(20:29):
She's so right. So I had to correct.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
That, and that was humbling. What you wrote is beautiful. Well,
thank you Deborah, for she didn't write it. She just
provided the right stimulus so that I would make I
would not make the kind of mistake that I sometimes
make with regard to thoughtfulness, consideration, real appreciation for a
(20:58):
human being who means so much to your life. So
that was a challenging passage, but she helped me through it,
and I owe her a lot for that. Thank you. Deborah,
I love you.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
I genuinely appreciate that you corrected that section of the
book that had to do with you.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I remember the words you taught me how to love.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Taught me how to love. That's exactly right. And what
I had done before was not along those lines. Yes.
The only other part of the book that was in
any way challenging was I had to decide, am I
going to do notes outline structure, or am I going
(21:41):
to do this the way my mother and my grandmother
used to tell me stories off the cuff, from their hearts,
from their heads in their kitchens when I was growing up.
And I decided to honor my mother and my grandmother
by doing it that way. And I knew that I
(22:02):
would be safe because if I went off the rails,
if I did something unintelligible, if I was blowing it,
Art would tell me, you know, And and so as
the manuscript went along, every once in a while, I
would I would check with Art, Art, you know, am
I staying with the storyline?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yes, you're doing fine.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Am I making the right kind of progress toward you know,
a full intelligible.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Reading of this? Yes, you're doing fine. So he he
helped me to stay on the path, and I wound up.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
I didn't outline anything. I would write for much of
the day until I was pretty sure i'd written enough
to feel like I'd created some progress.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I would go to bed that night and.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
Put my head on the pillow and think about what
I had written that day and talk to myself about
what I needed to write the next day. And then
when I knew what I needed to write the next day,
I would listen to my mother and my grandmother tell
the story that they would have told it, And.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
At the end of the day.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
My autobiography is written to some degree, particularly in my
mother's language, but my grandmother is in there too, because
they were the two people who.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Taught me how to tell stories.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
And they had no way of knowing and will never
know that their influence was in ABC's wide world of sports.
Their influence was in fourteen Olympics. Their influence was on
the air.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
At WCBS or KCBS and KABC, etc. They were with
me every step of the way because of their skills
and their passion and their ability to constantly tell me
stories from their own background and their own perceptions of
the world.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
It is a beautifully told story, and I was able
to follow it because you've always been a master storyteller.
As somebody who was one of the kids sitting there
listening to you tell these stories. You've had some of
the most iconic sports moments ever.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Well maybe the most iconic in American history and culture,
which is the Miracle Area. Well, yeah, I mean, and
that was that was another accident, because that was not
my assignment. My assignment in Lake Placid was I had
at that point had a contract with both news and sports,
(24:28):
and in Lake Placid you had two situations that were
extremely newsworthy. Number One, there were all of these organizational snapoos.
There were people, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people at a
time stranded in freezing parking lots in sub zero temperatures
with tickets that were never going to get them into
(24:49):
the event because.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
There were no buses.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
The contract with the bus company had fallen through, so
thousands of people every day were being dispossessed of their
chance to go to Olympic events because of the absence
of the bus. That was a giant story, along with
other organizational statooss And then, of course, at the same time,
you had Soviet tanks in Afghanistan and a war of
(25:12):
wills going on between Carter administration and Soviet Russia over
how to get the tanks out of Afghanistan, and the
question became is the United States going to blaycott the
nineteen eighty Summer Olympics in Musca. So there are all
these meetings going on in Lake Placid.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
That was my beat. I didn't cover any sports by
and large in Lake Placid because I was doing that
stuff the whole time. And of course there are millions
of Americans who believed they watched the Miracle on Ice
live on TV. They did not.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
I didn't realize that the game was played at five
PMS because nobody expected the United States team to be
a contender. That was a down and out, bedraggled group.
They were not going to be involved in the metal
Hunt in any way, shape or form. But they beat Czechoslovakia,
they beat Germany, they get a tie, a last second
(26:09):
tie with Sweden, and all of a sudden, now this
Friday game on the second weekend of the Olympics amounts
to a semi final between the United States and.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
The Soviet Union. So of course Ourlige ABC and the
Olympic committee.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Go to the organizing committee and say, this game is
scheduled for five.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Pm, and if it takes place at five pm, nobody's
going to see it.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
We're not even on the air at that time. You've
got to move it to eight pm. The Russians said,
no game is scheduled for five. It's always been scheduled
for five. We'll be there to play at five. So
now the game is going to be videotaped. We're going
to do everything possible to suppress the information. But of
course any radio station in the country can blare the
(26:56):
results if.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
They want to.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
And I I am in an edit bay, in a
tape facility in the broadcast center, putting together a compendium
piece that covers all the stories, political and organizational that
I had covered in the preceding weeks. At that moment
in time, in every ABC Sports production facility, whether it
(27:20):
was a truck or a studio, every one of them
had a red phone, and the red phone had a
blinking light on the top, and the red phone did
not ring, but if that light blinked, you knew that
it was run oledge. That was the Orlage phone. I
had worked at ABC for six years I had never
seen an Orlage phone rint and I'm in the edit
(27:43):
bay and all of a sudden, the light goes on.
Producer and tape editor see the light go on. They
both look at me with this look that says, all yours.
You answer, He's not calling us, So I pick it
up and I hear his voice.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I'm looking for Jim Lampley. This is me. What are
you doing? I tell him what I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Dump that and get over to the hockey arena. You
are about to become our biggest asset tonight. And I
said why. He said, because I think something wild. I
think something unusual could take place in the hockey game.
And we have seven minutes booked at the end of
the telecast for an interview. Go get that interview, whoever
it is. And the last thing I said to him
(28:27):
was Rune, I don't have the right credential to get
into hockey.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Now.
Speaker 4 (28:31):
This is eight years after the Munich massacre, right at
that moment in time, getting into an Olympic event with
the wrong credential, you couldn't do it.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Before he put the phone down, he said, you'll get
in clunk. And now the tape editor and the producer
are like, okay, you've got your orders. Go.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
I walked two hundred and fifty yards through deep snow.
I got to the Lake Placid High School Hockey arena.
I went to the door, and the first person I
bumped into was the Lake Placid High School hockey coach,
who was the venue manager and through sheer accident, totally
out of the crackerjack box. I had met him three
days before WOW, and I went to him and I said,
(29:14):
I got to get in. He said, why do you
have to get in? I said, I just have to
get in. I'm have to do an interview at the
end of the evening if something strange happens in the game.
Still not expecting that anything like that is going to happen.
The United States is not going to beat the Soviet team,
which had won every Olympics for several cycles and won
every World championship, which had beaten the American team ten
(29:36):
to three in an exhibition game in Madison Square Garden
seven days before the opening ceremony. And now here I
am getting into the arena trying to find a way
to watch the game. I got up onto ABC camera
platform about forty yards behind where Al Michaels and Ken
Dryden are down on the ice calling the game. And
(29:56):
I stood there for the next two periods and watched
arguably the christ and most unexpected event in American sports history,
something that couldn't happen and did. And at the end,
I went down to the tunnel where the American players
would be coming out of their locker room. And I
(30:19):
stood at one end of the tunnel and it was chaos.
It was a madhouse. Every photographer and reporter imaginable was
there screaming and yelling at the players as they came
out of the dressing room. And they all came out
of a door, and I yell and yell and yell.
I know the jersey numbers, I know the names. I'm yelling,
Hey Bill Baker, Hey Ken Morrow. Can I None of
(30:42):
them hear me. It's chaos, None of them hear me.
The last player to come out is Eruzione.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Mike. Mike. We had the same agent, Art Kaminski, who
was also a hockey agent. I had met him a
few days before. He recognized my voice. He comes over
to me and says, what are you doing. I said,
I've got to get an interview to close the show
tonight and you are absolutely the right person.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Oh, I don't think I can do that. I've got
to go to dinner with Jim Craig and his dad.
I said, guess who's paying for dinner? And so we
wound up standing on the mainstream of Lake Placid in
front of a tiny Italian restaurant, passed eleven o'clock when
the show is just about to go off the air.
Because it was a dinner with Craig and Eruzioni, I
(31:28):
had both. I have the hero goalie and the guy
who scored the most famous goal in the history of hockey.
And just before Jim McKay threw to me for the interview,
Eruzione nudged me in the ribs and said, hey, lamps,
if we had stood here last night, And I turned
around and looked him. There were probably seven or eight
(31:50):
thousand people who had gathered behind us to be a
part of it, right, And Eruzioni nudged me in the
ribs and nodded back. And I looked back and saw
that he said, if we had stood in this same spot,
on this same street twenty four hours ago.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
And I filled in the blanket and said nobody would
have noticed, he said, exactly nobody. Everybody's life had changed
in those twenty four hours. And in the years that followed.
I went to many Olympic gatherings and get together events.
What I would run into both Craig and Eruzione, and
we always had the same dialogue. At some point I
would turn to Mike and say, Mike, you know, through
(32:30):
the miracle of videotape, you are now the leading goal
scorer in the history of hockey. And every time I
said that, Mike would smile and look at me and say,
keeps going in, doesn't it. And it keeps going in
exactly right.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Thank you so much for the book.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
My privilege.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Thank you for sharing your stories your life over the
years with people like me.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
What a privilege.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Can't begin to tell you how.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Much a part of my life you were.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
And I'm so glad that you took the time to
share this so that we have it forever.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
I'm very, very glad I wrote the book.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
I owe it all to our Chansky and to Deborah
who constantly encouraged me and and kept saying, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
You, you you got to keep writing, You're going to
finish the book. Thank you, my darling. I appreciate it,
and thank you to all of you for coming out
and showing h interest tonight. It's very deeply gratifying to
this tar heel. We all share something really really special.
And if God is not a tar heel, why is
(33:40):
Carolina Book.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Carolina another show in the books. Join us for the
next episode of the Public Library Podcast, a place to
check out books.
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