George Clooney tried out for his hometown Cincinnati Reds, Mike Tyson’s lingering childhood trauma prompted his return to the ring at 58, and as for Bob Dylan, well, his famed abhorrence of money is really more of a guideline than a strict rule.
Such are the random, insightful nuggets I learned while dining with Jim Lampley, the broadcasting legend, raconteur and author of the new memoir, It Happened! A Uniquely Lucky Life in Sports Television.
Now 76, with a full head of graying hair and his unmistakable smile intact, Lampley has been promoting the fascinating work across the US.
But rather than a formal interview with the Daily Mail, Lampley’s publicist and fellow Boxing Hall of Fame inductee Fred Sternberg arranged an intimate dinner at a busy Manhattan steakhouse that became the stage for a sequence of tales, all equally engaging and eclectic.
Lampley once filmed a cameo for the 2001 Ocean’s Eleven remake, where he said Clooney confessed to his humiliating Reds tryout.
‘[Clooney] toppled backwards trying to escape a curveball that dropped in for a strike on the outside part of the plate,’ he recalled.
A few years later, Lampley started his own production company, bought the rights to Dylan’s 2004 book, Chronicles, and took several meetings with the folk singer in hopes of producing an adaption for HBO.
‘The only question I can ever remember Bob asking about the project, two or three times, was, “How much money am I going to make?”‘
Jim Lampley poses with his new ring and photo on the wall after the induction ceremony at the International Boxing Hall of Fame induction events on June 14, 2015 in Canastota, New York
George Clooney tried, and failed, to get a contract offer from his hometown Cincinnati Reds, while Bob Dylan was singularly focused on how much money he could earn with Jim Lampley
Lampley, sportscaster and HBO commentator, talks with promoter and boxer Oscar de la Hoya prior to the fight between defending champion Bernard Hopkins and Howard Eastman
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Ultimately the project didn’t go anywhere.
‘I asked HBO to gently and lovingly kick me in the teeth,’ Lampley said. ‘Which they did.’
And therein lies the charm of his stories, which are humorous and self-deprecating, even as he drops one headline name after another.
Of course, Lampley’s proximity to some of the most interesting people and events of the last 50 years is no surprise. Few play-by-play announcers can approach his distinguished resume or breadth of experience across the greatest sporting events of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
As a teenager in Miami, his mother – and inspiration for his book – Peggy Lampley, drove him to watch an underdog Cassius Clay stun heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in 1964.
A decade later, Lampley began his career as a college football sideline reporter when he won a nationwide ABC talent search. Since then, he’s covered everything from the World Series to the Super Bowl and Wimbledon to the Indianapolis 500 – not to mention his 30-year reign as HBO’s undisputed voice of boxing.
And it was in the latter role that Lampley befriended a fading Tyson, who at 58 years old remains one of the most complicated figures in sports after his controversial decision to fight Jake Paul for a reported $20 million.
‘For Mike, any legitimate, heartfelt deprivation puts him back in the tenement apartment in Brooklyn waiting for his mother to come home from the corner bar,’ Lampley said, pointing to Tyson’s traumatic childhood in Brownsville. ‘So the notion that somebody cooks up a scheme by which Mike is going to make another eight-figure sum of money, there’s no way he’s going to say no.’
Though, it hasn’t been all checkered flags and Champagne rooms for Lampley, who was forced into far less glamorous assignments with ABC’s Wide World of Sports. He’s also been tasked with covering wrist wrestling championships, lumberjack events and, worst of all, he says, a cheerleading competition in Daytona Beach.
Lampley interviews Mike Tyson at the Houston Field house on Feb. 16, 1986
HBO Boxing’s Larry Merchant, Lennox Lewis and Lampley (left to right) are seen together
Joe Theismann, Tom Landry, Al Michaels, Lampley, Frank Gifford, Don Meredith and OJ Simpson at the press conference for Super Bowl XIX, for ABC Sports in 1985
There have also been tragedies along the way.
Lampley was at the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, where eight members of the Palestinian militant organization Black September killed 11 Israeli Olympians.
At the time, millions of Americans were riveted by Jim McKay’s 14-hour broadcast on ABC Sports, culminating with his solemn words: ‘Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.’
The broadcast remains an essential moment in sports history due, in part, to ABC producer Roone Arledge, whose off-screen maneuvering was witnessed, studied and committed to memory by then 26-year-old Lampley.
‘[Chris] Schenkel was the primetime host,’ Lampley said in his inescapable anchor-toned delivery. ‘Schenkel had been the primetime host in Mexico City [in 1968]. He was still the primetime host in Munich.’
‘When they learn what’s going on in the Olympic Village, Arledge calls in a subordinate named Jeff Mason, coordinating Olympics producer,’ Lampley continued. ‘He says, “Jeff, I have a complicated assignment for you. I need you to go out and undertake a diligent search for Chris… and I need you not to find him. And then I need you to find out where McKay is and put him in the chair.”‘
And with that, the affable Schenkel – ABC’s top anchor – was replaced with McKay’s dignified gravitas.
‘That succession took place at that moment because Roone knew that Chris’s personality was utterly and completely wrong for that and that McKay was fundamentally a newsman,’ Lampley said. ‘”Put McKay in the chair.” That’s Arledge’s genius.’
After 14 hours on air, Jim McKay told viewers the tragic news: ‘They’re all gone’
Chris Shenkel (right) was supposed to be the lead anchor, until Arledge went with McKay (left)
Armed police drop into position on a terrace directly above the apartments where the Israeli hostages were being surrounded by the militant group, Black September
Legendary ABC producer Roone Arledge was the man who replaced Shenkel with McKay
Even when he wasn’t working, Lampley still had a knack for gaining entry to the biggest sporting events, due in no small part to his celebrity status. As his wife, Debra, said, Lampley is ‘the right level of famous’ – which is to say he receives some perks without any major drawbacks.
Take Oct. 18, 1977, when he witnessed Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson’s historic three-homer performance in Game 6 of the World Series. As Lampley explains in ‘It Happened!’, those tickets were provided by none other than Mr. October himself.
But for all of his good fortune, Lampley considers himself most lucky to have learned under Arledge, the canonized creator of Monday Night Football, not to mention McKay and fellow ABC Sports legend Howard Cosell, both of whom regarded the younger announcer as a threat.
‘It was unique for me to work in that environment, with all of those people already with their personas, already who they were, and managing to perform well enough to survive that culture and to not be demolished,’ Lampley said. ‘This is despite the fact that Cosell hated me and McKay hated me.’
Lampley immediately picked up on our surprise, not at the famously competitive Cosell disliking a younger announcer, but at the venerable McKay feeling that way as well.
‘You would have thought that McKay would be big enough,’ Lampley said. ‘You know, elevated enough… No way.’
He also worked at ABC and NBC with O.J. Simpson, whom he befriended until 1994, when Lampley became convinced the Buffalo Bills legend was guilty of murdering ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Howard Cosell, Don King, Roone Arledge and George Forman at press conference in the 1970s
Larry Holmes (left) lands a jab against challenger and former champ Muhammad Ali in 1980
Ali attempted to mount a comeback against Holmes, but was outclassed by the younger man
But for as much time as Lampley has spent ringside, courtside and in the booth, he’s had nearly as much firsthand experience with the biggest names in music, film, business and politics.
Lampley was golfing buddies with Hollywood hero Jack Nicholson, befriended Simpson’s co-creator James L. Brooks and even spent some time with then New York real estate developer Donald Trump, although he can’t say they were ever real acquaintances.
And as is so often the case in these elite circles, Lampley’s A-list friends would often introduce him to an even higher echelon of socialites, like the time Arledge invited him and Mick Jagger to watch Muhammad Ali’s 1980 loss to Larry Holmes on closed-circuit television.
‘Closing stage of his career, Ali is fighting the necessary passion play against Larry Holmes,’ Lampley said ahead of dessert. ‘And Holmes, [Ali’s] former sparring partner, is now going to wipe the canvas with him and become the heavyweight champion, and the fight is not mercifully brief.’
Lampley describes himself as ‘lucky’ to have lived the life he’s lived for the last 75 years
The viewing took place on the 16th floor at ABC, where guests slowly began imploring referee Richard Green to stop the fight all the way in Las Vegas.
Ali’s corner would throw in the towel after 10 rounds, but not before Jagger offered a perfect synopsis of what the crowd of 30-somethings were witnessing.
‘I feel this little poke at the bottom of my rib cage,’ Lampley said. ‘I look down and it’s Mick. And Mick says, “Do you know what we’re watching, Lamps?”
‘I said, “No, Mick, what are we watching?”
‘”It’s the end of our youth,”‘ Lampley said, quoting Jagger. ‘That’s the greatest line of commentary: “It’s the end of our youth.” Because so many from the Baby Boomer generation had dated themselves by [Ali].’
Yes, Lampley is, himself, a Baby Boomer. But like his recently deceased friend George Foreman, whose 1994 upset of Michael Moorer is referenced by the title of It Happened!, Lampley has remained relevant for decades.
Announcers don’t have expiration dates, and as long as they know how to tell the right story in the most interesting way possible, there will always be an audience willing to listen.
And for that, Lampley remains eternally grateful.
As he wrote about his memoir in the book’s prologue, ‘It’s the story of how my life constantly and repeatedly rescued itself from self-destruction and left me with identities and encounters that are in some ways unique for an American sportscaster.’
The long-time voice of ABC’s Wide World of Sports and HBO Boxing, Lampley currently serves as an analyst and commentator for PPV.com. His autobiography, ‘It Happened!’, will be released on April 15. Meanwhile, the soon-to-be 76-year-old will be calling the action from Times Square with Devin Haney, Ryan Garcia and Teofimo Lopez featured in a triple-header on May 2.