One of the best-known sportscasters of the 1970s died today:
Jim McKay, the genial ABC sports broadcaster who hosted 10 Olympic Games for the network over 28 years and the celebrated sports anthology series “Wide World of Sports“ for its first 25, died Saturday at his country estate in the horse country of Monkton, Md. He was 86.
He died of natural causes, said LeslieAnne Wade, a spokeswoman for CBS Sports where McKay’s son, Sean McManus, is the president.
McManus said that his father, who hosted and commented on Triple Crown races for ABC, might have only one regret: missing Big Brown’s chance on Saturday to be the first winner of the Triple Crown since 1978.
Jim McKay was a short, stocky optimist who left a feeling of trust. In a business in which hype was the norm, he became a calm, low-key story teller, leaving analysis and brickbats to such co-workers as Dick Button, Peggy Fleming, Donna de Varona and Bill Hartack.
Emotion occasionally slipped through objectivity. After an American athlete had won a gold medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, McKay said: “If I said I was an objective reporter, I’d be lying through my teeth. I think when an American wins, you’re excited. And why not?” No matter. As Peter Alfano wrote in The New York Times during those Olympics, television allowed McKay “to play Uncle Sam for two weeks.”
McKay’s sincerity came through. Bob Costas of NBC Sports, a younger-generation sports broadcaster, once said:
“Jim McKay had a very important quality. You never felt what he expressed wasn’t genuine. You never felt his reaction was, ‘What’s called for here is a tear.’ You never had a sense that he professed to be moved and when they went to a commercial he blew his nose.”
That’s a genuineness you really don’t see from sportscasters anymore.
