The thrill of a brilliant career, and the agony over his passing

If you are any kind of a sports fan, or old enough to have watched any Olympics coverage back when it was on ABC, or any episode of the great Wide World of Sports television series, or just a fan of someone with a way of words, then like me and millions others you are feeling a sense of sadness and remorse.

The great Jim McKay has died. And so too, I fear, has some of the dignity and credibility of sports journalism as an industry.

I never knew him, never got the chance to meet him, never got the chance to ask him about any of the thousands of places he was able to visit as he brought the obscure and the unchartered areas of sports. And certainly that is my loss. I'm not related to him in any way shape or form, and I'm not friends with anyone who is.

Yet it feels like a part of my family died. Perhaps that is one of the many great qualities that he possessed as a television host and reporter. He wasn't talking to camera in a clinical and antiseptic way, and he wasn't announcing. He made it seem as if he was not only engaged in a singular conversation with the viewer, but his prolific writing ability made you feel smarter just for having listened to his use of the language as art as much as description.

I was only 4 years old in 1972, so I have no memory of his signature moment when he anchored ABC's coverage of the Israeli hostage crisis during the Olympics in Munich. I remember a few years ago watching a documentary film called Our Greatest Hopes, Our Worst Fears. It detailed everything about that horrible day when the terrorist group Black September took those athletes hostage and wound up killing them. For someone who had only learned about it as part of history, it was riveting to watch, and particularly riveting was watching McKay's coverage of it.

The moment he stated, "My father used to say our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized. Well tonight, our worst fears have been realized... two were killed yesterday morning in their rooms, nine were killed at the airport tonight... they're all gone." That was the moment that sports lost its innocence. That was the moment that should have signaled a worldwide preparation for terror acts that have followed, but strangely enough has become just a footnote. And from seeing the coverage of McKay's coverage of that fateful day this weekend during the career retrospectives makes me appreciate all the more what a true talent and true humanitarian he was.

I learned this weekend that shortly after that event, none other than Walter Cronkite himself sent McKay a telegram that simply read, "Today you honored yourself, your network and your industry."

Of course, there was much more to McKay than just that transcending event in Munich, and for a lot of people my age and older, he was the face and voice of the Olympics, the triple crown races, the Indy 500, and of course, Wide World. And the fact is that even those younger than me who may not remember him covering the many figure skating events at the winter games, or the gymnastics events at the summer games, or any of his other television appearances at ABC's major golf championship tournament coverage over the years, still know of him through that wonderfully written Wide World opening:

"Spanning the globe, to bring you the constant variety of sports... the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat... the human drama of athletic competition... this is ABC's Wide World of Sports."

And perhaps the bigger reason for this lamenting is the fact that as I look around the sports television landscape, in this era of catchphrases, corporate sponsor promotional tie-ins, and short-attention span highlight packages, there are fewer and fewer sports journalists. This makes his passing all the more sobering.