SPORTS BROADCASTING - THE WAY IT WAS

USA Today writer Mike Lopresti, in writing about Scotty Pippens' comment that Lebron James may be even better than Michael Jordan, had some funny lines in his column on the current hot topic.

First; please remember this is James 8th season; and Jordan played forever.

My favorite Lopresti line in the piece was his reflection on the media: "Something has to keep the talk shows going round. They'd want to rank Michelangelo halfway through the Sistine Chapel."

Maybe not as funny as the allegation that the Pope supposedly came in to the chapel when the artist was just about finished, looked up at the ceiling, and said, "You know Mike, actually I was thinking of something in a flat white!" - but, it'll do.

Anyway, Lopresti's comment was right on. The guys over at ESPN could do an hour and a half on "boxers vs tighty whiteys".

And, then repeat the segment 27 times that day.

We are truly the recipients of "way too much" sports communications including silly comparisons such as the one above. It's not just on our local Channel 9 that we hear sports information repeated over and over. Folks, it's become an epidemic.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this overkill is ESPN who allegedy charges cable companies about 4 times the average fee and the cable companies are lined up for them like the Wallendas - fighting to get to the top of the pyramid formation.

The result of this sad tale is that our cable bill goes up exponentially too.

I read another piece about the sudden retirement of a media giant - Dick Ebersoll, a sports media figure with class. Ebersoll interrupted an interview with a Sports Illustrated reporter, went up to the offices of his boss, and resigned after 22 years of running NBC's sports division.Some claim it was over money, Friends say, "That's bull hockey!"

His impact on our sports viewing was phenomenal and was not limited to his creation and marketing of Sunday Night Football. He was much more than a talking head or a money changer in the temple.

He was an artist.

Upon his return downstairs, when questioned by SI writer Joe Posnanski about his decision to retire, he replied, "The most important thing to me was to tell stories".

And boy, did he ever. And he made a few bucks in the process.He was also involved with the start of Saturday Night Live.

The man lived in a creative world, one that was right brain driven

Now, it seems sports is much more about - "show me the money"; and thats not just the NFL/NBA owners and their players.

I'm not on a mission here. Yes, I regret that we've allowed ourselves to become ruled by number crunchers, but I'm optimistic that some day we sports fanatics will wake up and say we're not going to accept mediocrity from our sports news sources any longer.

My optimism is also based on the market place's ability to produce a product that will take us back to the story telling of our youth.

Rosey Rowswell, a skinny, long nosed semi-hunchbacked Pittsburgh Pirate announcer, could do more for Pirate fans by reading a teletype printer than all the announcing folks who followed.

Rosey used a teletype because neither the Pirates nor the radio station that employed him was sending him to the stadiums where the Pirates were playing away games.

He was sitting downstairs in WWSW's studio - unable to see the game - but, he was able to see it in his mind - simply based on word clues on the tape in front of him like "The batter hit a high fly ball to right field."

Rosey turned those few words into a paragraph that had us sitting on the edge of our seats.

Many times his impromtu editing was accompanied by the shout, "Close the window Aunt Minnie - Here it comes" - followed by the sound of breaking glass. And, you immediately knew Ralph Kiner had pulled one home run ahead of Johnny Mize.(or something like that.)

Occasionally, before the home run was confirmed on the teletype - and Rosey got ahead of himself - he might be forced to quickly repair Minnie's window and say either, "I'll be darned. The ball curved foul at the very last minute" or, "That was the most amazing catch I've ever witnessed."

Now, that was a story teller.

And "old Ish" here, with his ear pressed against the Philco radio speaker, had no clue what was going on. He was busy complaining to his Mom: "You know, I could enjoy this a whole lot more if they would just get rid of all that clicking noise when Rosey's broadcasting the game."

Like Ebersol, Rosey's mission was to tell a story, and in the process he made this old guy a baseball fan for life.

Maybe we ought to take up a collection and send a teletype machine over to ESPN.