September 24, 1921, 100 years ago: James Kenneth McManus is born in Philadelphia, and spent his teenage years in Baltimore. We knew him as Jim McKay. He was the voice of the Olympics on ABC, the Triple Crown horse races, the U.S. and British Open golf tournaments, and the host of ABC Wide World of Sports for its entire run, from 1961 to 1998.
He spoke WWOS' opening narration, written by ABC staff writer Stanley Ralph Ross, who would later write for the Batman series and co-create The New Adventures of Wonder Woman: "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport. The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat. The human drama of athletic competition. This is ABC Wide World of Sports."
He was the anchor for the 1st nationally-televised Olympic Games coverage, by CBS of the 1960 Olympics in Rome. ABC hired him in time for Tokyo in 1964, then both the Winter and the Summer Games: Grenoble and Mexico City in 1968, Sapporo and Munich in 1972, Innsbruck and Montreal in 1976, Lake Placid in 1980 (but not Moscow, as the U.S. boycotted), and Sarajevo and Los Angeles in 1984.
He got to cover such great moments as the Gold Medals won by Peggy Fleming in '68, Dorothy Hamill in '76, the U.S. hockey team in '80, and just about every American athlete, or so it seemed, in '84 as the Soviet Union and East Germany avenged the '80 boycott by boycotting. But he also had to cover the controversy of the Tommie Smith and John Carlos gesture in '68, and the Munich Massacre in '72, with his unforgettable words on the fate of the Israeli hostages taken by the Palestinian thugs: "They're all gone."
In 1988, ABC assigned him to cover the Winter Games in Calgary, but they haven't done the Olympics since: NBC got the Summer Games in Seoul, and have broadcast the Summer Games ever since. CBS got the Winter Games in Albertville in 1992, and NBC got them for Nagano in 1998, and have broadcast the Winter Games ever since.
In his memoir, The Real McKay: My Wide World of Sports, published in 1998, he said that the two best sports were golf and horse racing, because they are the sports with the best stories. His choices were wrong -- as we have established, golf is not a sport -- but his reason was wonderful.
He also said in that memoir, "I have tried to make my job not just the description of what was happening at the moment but a search for excellence and an exploration of the human character in action." He succeeded.
Whenever I see NBC cover the Olympics, or the Triple Crown horse races, I miss Jim McKay. He died on June 7, 2008, at his farm in Monkton, Baltimore County, Maryland. He was 86 years old, and survived by his wife, the former Margaret Dempsey, and their children, Sean and Mary McManus. Sean McManus was a longtime executive at CBS, serving from 2005 to 2011 as President of both CBS News and CBS Sports.
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