- [Announcer] Artworks This Week is made by MPT, to serve all of our diverse communities, and is made possible by the generous support of our members.

Thank you.

- [Host] He raised the standards for a fledgling medium known as television and helped us see that sports could be viewed as a metaphor for life.

- The thrill of victory.

And the agony of defeat.

The Olympic Games are excitement and thrills and world records.

Nine were killed at the airport tonight.

They're all gone.

- [Michaels] Do you believe in miracles?

- We sit down for a chat with the legendary Marylander, Jim McKay.

It's coming up next on Artworks This Week .

(funky music) [Rhea Feikin] Welcome to Artworks This Week , the program that lets you meet and experience some of the most creative people, shows, and exhibits in the region.

Our salon today is filled with the art of Richard Lasner from an exhibit entitled "Italian Seductions, Iris prints of photographs," which is on loan to us from the Creative Partners Gallery in Bethesda, Maryland, and we'll let you study these lushly tone portraits of Italy more closely later in the show.

Today, we have a very special guest that we would like to have spend some time with us, a Marylander whom we are all very proud of and one that all of you are very familiar with.

He is the first sportscaster to ever win an Emmy, and today he has 13. and today he has 13.

In fact, he really was more than a sportscaster.

He was a master storyteller.

His way with words conveyed the real drama that exists in every human endeavor, which is why we have him with us today on Artworks This Week .

His sports stories really were poetry in motion, and we're going to show some of them to you thanks to a lovely program done earlier this year by HBO Sports with assistance by ABC Sports, and we are delighted to have him with us today.

Thank you so much, Jim.

- Great to see you again, Rhea.

- You know, I really have to tell you.

I am thrilled that you're here and thrilled that I'm getting a chance to talk with you, and that's no stuff.

That's the truth.

- Only thrill I know is the thrill of victory.

No, thank you.

- We're gonna get to that.

- Yeah.

- I want to start at the beginning.

In 1947, you were a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun, and then the Sun invested in Baltimore's first TV station, which was WMAR-TV, and you became the first on-camera personality, and I have always wanted to ask you was that something you volunteered for or were you just chosen?

- [Jim] No, actually, as you say, I was a reporter on the Evening Sun, and I sat right across from now my wife of 55 years Margaret, who was a much more clever reporter than I ever was, but these two assistant managing editors came in one day.

They said come upstairs at four o'clock.

I said why?

They said sh, sh.

So at four o'clock, I went up.

It was kind of like a place with old boxes around, and they said, "We are going to put a television station on the air, and we're going on the air in two weeks."

The opposition, the Hearst paper, to know about it, because they're gonna put a station on too, and we want to be on the air first.

So that was my introduction to television.

- Well, did you ever think that this thing called television would be a serious medium?

- You know, I think both Margaret and I had an idea that it was gonna be a pretty big thing, just to be honest about it.

It seemed like such an obvious thing to us.

I know there was a lot of people in our business, in the newspaper business.

Absurd idea.

Undignified way to present the news.

You know, just things like that, but it's happened.

- It did really happen, and you worked here for a while, and then you went on to New York, and you did a program at CBS.

What was that program like?

- It was called, at the suggestion of the program director up there, "The Real McKay."

You know, of course, my name is McManus as you know, but for some reason or other, they wanted to use a different name, and it was McKay, and they got the, like the real McCoy, The Real McKay, and that was my first show.

It was an entertainment, a variety show with interviews.

It was on for an hour and a half every day.

- Well then, after that, after that came your big break, and really, Jim, in your own words, we have something that I think tells what happened.

- Okay.

- [Writer] I wrote about a brand new show of the sort that had not been seen before, about great and small events around the world.

Events that would touch your emotions rather than tell you the statistics.

It turned out like this.

- [McKay] Spanning the globe to bring you the constant- - [Writer] The words became part of our American language.

- [McKay] The thrill of victory.

And the agony of defeat.

- [Writer] Used in newspaper headlines across the country.

- [McKay] The human drama of athletic competitions.

- [Writer] On a billboard in Oklahoma, a podiatrist even bragged that he could cure the agony of de-feet.

- [McKay] This ABC's Wide World of Sports.

- So who came up with that?

The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.

- Roone Arledge and I, and Roone of course was the man with the glasses and the curly hair you saw earlier in that piece.

Roone Arledge.

It was really very shortly before the show was going on the air.

Sat down in an engineer's equipment room actually, and we kicked it around a while and had a couple of ideas, and, you know, we could both contribute to the ideas, but I wrote the words.

That's part of my business.

I always like to write the words, and it's been used ever since.

For the first, actually for the first few months, the first summer the Wide World was on there was something different, and neither one of us liked it, so it was when the show came back on in January.

It's been on just about ever since, until recently.

It's been used.

- Great words.

They were just great words, and we're gonna be talking to you about a lot of other things, and we are gonna be right back, and next time back, we're gonna be talking about the Olympics.

- [McKay] After they won the gold medal, I asked Captain Mike Eruzione how they did it, since he himself had said they didn't have the talent.

He said, "We did it, because we love each other."

(medieval music playing) - We're back with Jim McKay, who was a pioneer in the early annals of television history.

The Olympics really made Jim one of the world's most recognizable personalities.

I mean, 12 Olympics in six countries.

That's really a lot, and I know that all of them were very special to you Jim.

All of them were memorable, I'm sure, but none more so than the 1972 Munich Olympics.

but none more so than the 1972 Munich Olympics.

I am sure that that is a time that has a lot of memories that are quite painful to you, but if we can go back on the day of.

Do you remember how your day started?

- My day started, I guess was 6:30 in the morning when my phone rang, and it was a... ...a man named Mason who was the associate producer on the on the Olympics at that time, and he said Jim, terrorists have broken into the Israeli team headquarters.

Geoff Mason said, and they have killed one man, and they're threatening to kill another person every hour.

Get on your horse.

We're going on the air in 45 minutes.

So that is the way it began.

As soon as I got out there, they put a mic on me.

In those days, they hung a mic over your head, and next thing I know, we were on the air for 16 hours in a row.

- 16 hours, that's right.

Your coverage though, of the terrorist attacks on the Israeli athletes.

I don't think, Jim, will ever be remembered by anybody who was there and who heard them, and actually we have some clips of those horrific moments.

I'd like to show them.

- Dawn this morning when Arab terrorists armed with submachine guns went to the headquarters of the Israeli team and immediately killed one man.

They've been holding 14 others hostage since then, and the latest report is that one more has been killed.

- Was that the first time that terrorism was seen worldwide on television?

- I think it was.

I can't think of anything else.

And I thought...

I wondered sometimes whether thoughts began to be generated in the kind of warped minds of people around the world at that time of that's a great way to get attention.

- Well, you really knew that all the hostages had been killed, but you waited before you broadcasted.

That was your decision.

Why?

- It was actually, Roone's decision and my decision together.

He got on my little IFB thing that you and I wear normally, and he said Jim, we know what's happened, but we've gotta be absolutely sure and double and triple check it, so that I knew it for quite a while before.

He said okay, Jim, we're sure about it.

- Well, wasn't there also a family that you were concerned about?

- Well, yes.

One of the men who was killed was David Berger, a young weightlifter from Shaker Heights, Ohio, and we knew that his mother and father Dr. and Mrs. Berger were watching, and I thought, I'm gonna be the guy that tells them whether their son's alive or dead, and of course, it was the worst in the end.

I think maybe the greatest compliment I ever got was some years later.

We did a piece on Dr. and Mrs. Berger.

I didn't do the piece, but it was for our show, and they described their, all their feelings and so forth, and at the end he said, "I've always thought so often of a man, I've never met who did it, Jim McKay."

He said, "Jim McKay is a mensch," and as you know, that's a Jewish word for a real man.

You can't get a better compliment than that.

- Absolutely.

I'd like to take a look at that painful announcement that you had to make.

- Sure.

Just gotten the final word.

You know, when I was a kid, my father used to say, "Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized."

Our worst fears have been realized tonight.

They have now said, "That there were 11 hostages.

Two were killed in their rooms this morning, yesterday morning.

Nine were killed at the airport tonight."

They're all gone.

- I...it's hard, I'm sure, even to this day for you to watch that and hear that.

You said that innocence died that day, and have the Olympics been changed forever since then?

- In a sense everything was changed... - In a sense everything was changed in that this, as I said, was the beginning of terrorism as we know it today, and I think there was a fear that began then that's somewhere inside of all of us all the time now.

- You went on the air for 16 hours with absolutely no preparation, and probably, you probably weren't really thinking so much about what you were going to say as just speaking from your heart.

- It's a combination of both.

Inside, you know that you're a reporter, and you're very, very careful of the words you say, and that they're correct.

By the same token, it was difficult to hold in emotion and only allow, I guess you would call it a professional amount of emotion to show through, so that people would know what it was like to be there.

I remember, I thought of Walter Cronkite the day that President Kennedy was killed, and it was just an instant, we almost broke up, but that said it all.

- Yeah, yeah.

I really don't want to leave the Olympics on a sad note, because you had so many incredible moments with the Olympics.

So, I want to take a look at something I bet is one of your favorite memories of the Olympics.

- [McKay] All remember the goal for the ages.

- [Michaels] Do you believe in miracles?

Yes!

Unbelievable.

- [McKay] Our control room exploded with cheers as Roone Arledge shouted above the den guys, guys, we're trying to put on a TV show here.

After they won the gold medal, I asked Captain Mike Eruzione how they did it, since he himself had said, "They didn't have the talent."

He said, "We did it, because we love each other," and because they had character of the kind that enables a person or a team to exceed their capabilities, to believe while the world didn't, to score, in my opinion, the greatest sports offset of all time.

- That was such an incredible moment, and you spoke about it so beautifully, but while you were watching that, how do you feel?

You've seen some such incredible moments as that.

- Oh, those kids were just so terrific, and you know, Mike Eruzione, their captain, was he was probably four or five years older than the rest.

He had played a little Minor League professional hockey, but he was a great leader, and you know, when he called them all up there onto the stands, it's one of moments we all remember, of course as with Al Michaels call when he said, "Do you believe in miracles?

Yes."

This impossible dream comes true.

- It was a fabulous, they're always great moments.

I mean, we were talking before.

I cry every year when I watch the Olympics.

I mean, it's just touching.

How did you keep from crying in those moments?

- I'm not very good at keeping from crying.

My wife Margaret could tell you that.

You know, she didn't say it, but somebody said, "I cry at bad weather forecasts," but... No.

It was an incredible moment.

For example, I think of, you never know where it's going to happen in the Olympics.

For example, at the moment his name doesn't even come to me, but the young man who was a Greco-Roman wrestler, a farm boy from Wyoming, and he beat the previously undefeated world champion from the Soviet union.

You know, our guy, he was just kind of a big overweight kid, but it was really powerful kind of body, but the Soviet was sleek and slim and wonderful and undefeated, but he lost.

Even the best do.

- Yeah, well, I'm sure that sometimes you can think about these moments and talk about them, and every time you talk about one, you probably remember another, because there have been such wonderful times for you in the Olympics.

- Well, yeah, there have been.

- And in the rest of your life.

So we're not gonna leave that out, Jim.

- Okay.

- When we come back, we're gonna really get up close and personal with Jim McKay.

(inspiring music) (crowd clapping) [Rhea] We're joined today by one of the most formidable names in broadcasting history, Jim McKay.

Jim, you were always more interested in the athlete than the trophies.

I think that's true, and you won a lot of trophies.

About 13 Emmy's, is that the right amount?

- That's right.

- And yet, I think that since you were more interested in the athlete than the sport, we're more interested in you than your awards so.

I'm gonna talk about you for awhile.

People say that, "You are a great storyteller, and that was what made you different."

Is that true?

- Well, that's what Margaret says, and a lot of people have said that I guess, but I've always loved telling a story.

You know, at the drop of a hat I'll tell a story, and the more, I guess the more emotional it is, if true, then the more I like.

- People have said, "You're really good, because you talk about the human side of sports.

That you looked at all sports through the eyes of the competitor, and that was a really unusual thing."

Now was that a conscious decision on your part, or is it just because that's the way you are as a person?

- Well, I just, I don't try to be myself when I'm on the air.

I simply am, I guess.

I don't have a persona as they call it.

That's about where it is.

- Well, but this interest, I want to go with this.

You have such an interest in people, and you were interested in the people who are athletes more than the fact that they're athletes, I think.

- Well, you can go all the way back to the great Edward R. Murrow.

He covered all the most intricate worldwide stories, and yet the thing that made him the most popular was a show on Friday night called "Person to Person," in which he visited people's homes and apartments and said, "That's a lovely thing on the wall over there," and that was the reason for.

Getting inside somebody's house, that's, you know, somebody well-known particularly, that's another special thing.

- But I think, we all just love to learn about other people, and you made that possible.

You've always loved horse racing, and you covered the Preakness, and you covered the Belmont and the Derby.

You're a member of the Jockey Club, and I was always curious about why you loved horse racing, and you said this about it, and I think it explains it.

- [McKay] The thoroughbreds.

They fascinate me, because they perform with the purest motivation of any athlete.

They receive no paycheck.

The cheers of the crowd are more frightening than encouraging.

They have no choice in the decisions made for them.

Yet, they don't run mechanically or without interest.

Why do they try so hard?

- Does that pretty well say your interests?

- You know, they're so fascinating.

I would have been more of a believer that circumstances, and environment, and all those things make us what we are more than our genes, but in the case of these animals, it has been bred into them for 300 years that all they want to do is finish in front of the other horse.

Then to want to win, and some of them, just like human beings, want to win so much more than any other horse does.

That's that difference right there.

- That makes the difference, and isn't that probably true of all athletes and all people?

- [McKay] Oh, it is.

All people.

- It's that something that makes that little bit of difference.

[McKay] Mm-hmm.

- What's the affinity between the horse and the jockey?

Is that important?

- Well, I think it is.

I think it is, and they sense something.

Heaven knows what it is, but I'll say Laffit Pincay has always been one of my favorite riders along with Bill Shoemaker and the great, great Eddie Arcaro, but...

There is this relationship.

The woman jockey who's just about to make a comeback now, Julie Krone.

- Right.

- She has that same understanding of a horse.

It surprises me that there have not been more great women jockeys so far, because including (indistinct)... Women have a much better relationship with horses than men do.

We never realized that until 30 years ago or so.

It was all men, but women do have that rapport.

It's almost a motherly kind of thing.

- Right, but boy, you need so much strength to be a jockey.

I mean, they are such extraordinary athletes and so strong of mind and body.

- Yeah, every so often I'm annoyed.

Somebody will say well, they're not athletes.

They just sit there and ride the horse.

You see, even just seeing them in the jockey room, you'll understand.

These are extremely muscular, taught, real athletes.

- Yeah, and you are a big supporter of Maryland racing, and the founder of the Maryland Million.

So, you care a lot about horse racing in Maryland obviously.

- I do, and the greatest horse race I ever saw was in Maryland, "Sunday Silence" and "Easy Goer" in the Preakness.

I mean, when they came down the stretch, their heads were bobbing together.

Their legs were moving together.

They literally looked like a, each looked like a shadow of the other.

In the end of course, it was "Sunday Silence," who died not too long ago in Japan, who was the winner of that race.

That was the best race, I ever saw.

- Really?

Really?

In the HBO special, Jim, your family talked about your tendency toward insecurity, and this is what they said about it.

- Okay.

- Ironically enough, my father is not the most secure individual in the world, and he needs someone to say "He did a good job."

- My mother would often have to tell him several times, "That was very good, Jim.

You looked great, Jim.

Those words were perfect, Jim."

- I think that is the job of almost every wife.

Inside every man, Inside every man, they want someone to tell them they're just wonderful.

- They're so beautiful.

- Mary and Sean, yeah.

- Your love for Margaret also is so apparent all the time when you speak of her.

- That's just the way it is.

Sean, you know, I'll always remember.

He's very highly intelligent and very clever and very funny guy in a very subtle way, but I did get him one time.

He was about 16, I guess.

We're having dinner, the family dinner, and I'm telling one of my long stories, and he said, "Dad, dad please, please stop talking," and I said Sean, just remember one thing.

When I stop talking, you stop eating.

(laughter) That's the only time, I ever got him.

- That's really fabulous.

Is there anything that you can think of that you would have liked to have done in your life besides be a broadcaster?

- Well, I really like, I can't say that I like to write more, but I love to write, and I've always written my own stuff, and it would be difficult for me to read a script written by somebody else.

I've done a few things like, you know, documentaries and things like that, but even there, I always have to put my own words.

- Put your own words.

All right.

Finally, after a wonderful, wonderful career, you decided for all intents and purposes to at least retire from all the traveling, and this is what you said about it.

- I'm Jim McKay.

When live on air sports began, we'd been married for 14 years.

Now, it's more than 50.

It's time for the farm.

And Margaret.

- And so now you have that.

You're on the farm.

You're with Margaret, and it's peaceful, huh?

- So fortunate.

Margaret and I are here on the farm.

Our daughter is here in Maryland.

She's a counselor by profession and helps people, and Sean of course, is the president of CBS Sports, and we get to see him and his two adorable little kids, you know, age four and two, Maggie and Jackson, and of course, Mary's son, James, and of course, Mary's son, James, who's our favorite for 22 years now.

who's our favorite for 22 years now.

He's down at Virginia Tech.

- Well, you have had such an incredible career, and we have really just touched on a little bit of it, but you must be, I hope, very proud of all that you have done and enjoy looking back on it.

- I've enjoyed being with you.

- Well, I have to tell you that I've been honored, because you are not only a great broadcaster, you are a great man, and it's just been an absolute pleasure for all of us here at MPT.

- Thank you very much.

- I hope that you have really enjoyed this special edition of Artworks This Week with Jim McKay, and I know I really had a wonderful time.

We're gonna be back next week with our regular edition of Artworks This Week , and until then, we wish you some very creative moments.

Enjoy the arts.

Goodbye.

(funky music) - If you would like more information on something you've seen on Artworks This Week , go to our website at mpt.org or send us an email at mptartworks@mpt.org.

- [Announcer] Artworks This Week is made by MPT, to serve all of our diverse communities, and is made possible by the generous support of our members.

Thank you.