You Let Some Girl Beat You? Page 21

  I knew that at some point I would have to become a father as well as a mother to my two little towheads, who looked a lot like Don as a child, and I figured there was no time like the present. While I was on the road, Darren had taken the all-purpose tool to school as something cool to show his friends. The school, however, wasn’t amused and pointed out their no-knife policy.

  “It was my fault,” I told the principal. “I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”

  “I understand completely,” she said after learning that Darren was in a new home and a new school after recently losing his father. Darren was also shy. He was quiet and often let his older brother, D.J., speak up for him.

  D.J. was like Don, and Darren was more like me. I worried about being gone with everything the kids had been through, but it was unavoidable. I was the breadwinner now. I had to make a living the only way I knew how, which at this point in my life would undoubtedly involve broadcasting or basketball; and the idea of a pro women’s league had been on the rebound.

  Women’s basketball remained a small sorority where everyone knew each other, so I wasn’t surprised when the ABL contacted me about coming on as an adviser of their new women’s league. However, in the course of discussions, I began hearing that the commissioner of the NBA was thinking of forming a women’s league under the NBA umbrella, so I informed the ABL I would have to pass on their offer.

  I was intrigued with the idea of the WNBA, which was a natural progression spawned, oddly enough, from failure. After taking Gold again in ’88 Olympics, the U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team came in third in ’92; and they were greatly overshadowed by the now all-pro men’s Dream Team. So in a much-prayed for act of evenhandedness, USA basketball decided to do something similar with the women. They persuaded Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer to swap her university gig for a paid year coaching Lisa Leslie, Teresa Edwards, Dawn Staley, Katrina McClain, Rebecca Lobo, and Sheryl Swoopes, to name a few.

  In 1995, they ended up going 60-0. Nothing like that had ever happened before. They were the original women’s Dream Team in my opinion, and a sure way to win the Gold at the next Olympic Games. But more than that, it confirmed the NBA Commissioner’s suspicion that the time was ripe for a WNBA league.

  In early April of 1996, the NBA Board of Governors officially approved the formation of the WNBA, which was announced at a press conference, with the face of the league, Rebecca Lobo, Lisa Leslie, and Sheryl Swoopes, in attendance. The exposure they garnered in the upcoming ’96 Olympics in Atlanta, where 30,000 fans screamed for more, helped further launch the new league.

  I’d been asked to coach or be the GM of several teams, but that presented another time commitment conundrum, so I was grateful when NBC signed me to a six-year deal to broadcast the games, instead. I had Dick Ebersol to thank.

  Dick had been a good friend. The summer that Don died, Cooperstown invited me to attend the Hall of Fame induction, where they planned to honor Don posthumously. I needed to go, since many players were unable to fly out for the funeral. They expressed their condolences and told me wonderful stories about my husband that I’d never heard. Their memories brought him back to me for a short time. It was during the flight back that I met Dick, who had worked with Don when he was broadcasting ABC Monday Night Baseball. They were buddies, and Ebersol was now the President of NBC Sports.

  Dick was the Olympics Shaman, heading up U.S. Olympics programming since the ’88 games in Seoul. During the plane ride, I had hoped to convince him to hire me for the ’96 Olympics in Atlanta. But when I dropped out of the ’94 Goodwill Games because Don had just died, TNT hired Cheryl Miller. Now it was even more natural that the ’96 broadcasting gig should go to Cheryl, since her brother Reggie was on that team; and go to her it did.

  By invitation from NBA Commissioner, David Stern, I went to the Olympic Games, along with Juliene Simpson and several other past Olympians, to be introduced at half-time. Juliene and I walked to the Georgia Dome to watch the games, cutting through the Olympic park from the Ritz Carlton, where we were staying. One evening, after we’d returned to the hotel, Juliene was awakened in the middle of the night when her husband, Michael, called, frantic. All over the East Coast, the news was reporting that a bomb had gone off in the Olympic park, and he wanted to make sure his wife was okay. It had detonated fifteen minutes after we’d arrived back at the hotel. We were lucky.

  And my luck didn’t stop there. When I returned home, Dick Ebersol called me to do the NBC Hoop It Up Three on Three event in Dallas, which opened the door to my covering the WNBA games now. As with so many things that had happened in my life, it was all about coming full circle.

  The first game pitted the New York Liberty against the LA Sparks at the Western Forum in Inglewood. It was nationally televised by NBC, with over 14,000 fans in attendance. No one had expected ticket sales would be so high, and they had to open up parts of the Forum to allow for the overflow. The League president at the time, Val Ackerman, threw the toss. The two teams tipped-off, while Hannah Storm broadcast the play-by-play, and I did color. It was the first time a major television network had paired two women to cover an event. Like me, she also had Dick Ebersol to thank. Dick also insisted that as many women work behind the camera as in front appointing Iron Man producer, Lisa Lax, to call the shots in the truck.

  Hannah and I announced the action, and the country watched as a whole new generation of female basketball players seemed poised for a type of job security that had been elusive for decades.

  With eight teams, everybody was excited. The plus was the greater sense of credibility under the umbrella of the NBA. They had sponsors, TV networks, and infrastructure already in place. Of course, the birth of one league meant the demise of the other. The ABL folded after lasting three years just as the WBL had, and this left many of the ABL players jumping ship to climb aboard the new league.

  In the West, there was Phoenix, L.A/Sacramento, and Utah. The East had New York, Charlotte, Cleveland, and Houston. Like the nascent perceptions, the league would evolve and grow. Teams would move, players would be traded, and I would continue to broadcast, bringing at least one of my children with me every time I went on the road. It was a great way to have one-on-one time with each of them.

  At home in Southern California, the local games aired on Prime Ticket (Fox Sports channel) where Chick Hearn called the action, with me as his wingman. Chick had come over from the Lakers, where he had worked with Stu Lantz for so many years that he would often refer to me as Stu. We would be tossing to a commercial break and he’d say, “Some game, huh, Stu?” And I would just smile.

  If Vin Scully was the voice of baseball, Chick Hearn was the voice of basketball. He had coined the term “Air-ball,” along with a dozen other ‘Hearnisms’ like, “20-foot lay-up,” which he used to describe a jump shot by Jamaal Wilkes. Others were “put him in the popcorn machine,” and “put mustard on the hotdog.” When the game was finished he’d say “The game’s in the refrigerator, the door’s closed, the lights are out, the eggs are cooling, the butter’s getting hard, and the Jello’s jiggling.” He’d say the whole thing every time and never miss a beat.

  Chick had earned his nickname while playing AAU basketball at Bradley when teammates surprised him with a shoebox containing not shoes, but a dead baby chick. By the time I had the honor of working with him, he had seen more practical jokes than he could count. He’d been working for decades in a business populated with men. I figured being called Stu occasionally was a small sacrifice to work with one of the greats.

  Chick had a hard time with names, in general, and specifically the women’s names because he wasn’t as familiar with the WNBA as he was with the NBA. There was a huge Chinese player on the Sparks team, Zheng Haixia, and Chick spent the first few seasons getting her name right. After awhile, he wouldn’t even try, instead calling her “The Big Chinese girl.” One time we did five takes on a toss to a commercial so that Chick could say her name. Each time he called her “The Big Chinese Girl
.” Another was Mwadi Mabika, which is pronounced like it sounds, yet he butchered it. But then, Chick had trouble saying quesadilla. He was lovable and wonderful, a hard worker, and I sensed that he liked me as much as I liked him.

  He sure knew the game—the men’s game. One of the consistent complaints I heard from Sparks’ fans was that Chick would always call the players “girls.”

  “But they are girls to him. He’s in his 80s,” I’d explain. Women are okay with calling each other” ‘girls,” but they don’t want to hear men say it. I knew it was never malicious with Chick. To him it was the “girls’ game.”

  “The word ‘women’ has two syllables,’ I’d tell the fans. “It’s just easier for him.”

  One time, I’d just flown in on the red-eye after broadcasting a WNBA away game for NBC, when Chick and I prepared to do the weekend game. I had Drew with me, who was about five, sitting behind us. During half time we were supposed to show the highlight reel from the first half, which I was to cover as the color announcer. Halftime came and Chick started talking about something, I can’t remember what. After a few minutes, Susan Stratton, long-time Lakers producer, whispered into my headset, “Annie, whenever you get a chance, just break in there so we can do the highlight reel.” But there was no way I was going to interrupt Chick.

  “Don’t forget about the highlight reel,” Susan finally said to Chick in the headphone.

  So Chick turned to me. “Okay, Annie, they’re telling me we got to do this darn highlight reel.”

  He was old school, that Chick. Now he had a woman in his left ear and a woman in his right, and he was calling a bunch of other women’s plays down on the court. I’m sure growing up, he never dreamt such a thing could happen.

  I never believed it couldn’t.

  Regardless of whom I was working with, or whether I was covering the women’s games or the men’s, when it came to doing the color, I was careful not to compare the players’ instincts, reactions, or decisions to my own in similar instances.

  I had learned from the best.

  “If I thought the guy shoulda thrown a knuckle ball,” Donnie used to say, “I’d never add ‘cuz that’s what I woulda done.’” He knew you could talk about your days as a player, but you couldn’t compare plays.

  “Kid could benefit from learning the two-foot jump stop,” I’d say, instead of criticizing her for not passing the ball before she’d gotten to a certain position. I knew the players and coaches were reviewing the tapes from the televised games as learning tools so, wherever possible, I’d try to be constructive and point out possible alternate scenarios, rather than label someone as being at fault. I needed to help the fans recognize what was happening, though, and in doing that I knew I would offend someone. “She just wasn’t hustling on that play,” I might say, and whoever she was wasn’t going to like it. But by now, I knew one thing, for sure: You can’t please everybody.

  If I had to try to keep the way I played out of my color, I never worried about any personal regrets creeping in up in the booth. I was never one to think what if. “What if you’d been born later, you might have played today?”

  I’m asked that question often, but I played at a great time in the game’s history, and I’m grateful for that time. After so many years, and several false starts, a women’s pro league had finally arrived. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t playing on it. It was here to stay, and if I’d contributed in some small way to its creation and was now able to be involved as a broadcaster, well, that was more than enough for me. I still call the games with every bit as much enthusiasm and pride in women’s basketball as I’d ever had.

  Basketball was basketball. It was the game I loved and I’d always said that no other country’s men or women played better than ours. I remained every bit a fan of the NBA players as I’d ever been. In less than a year after I began broadcasting the WNBA games, I became the first woman to announce an NBA game on network television for NBC. Again, thanks to Dick Ebersol. I announced with Dick Enberg up in Utah covering the Jazz, who, ironically had partnered with Donnie years earlier for the Angels Broadcasts. Who knew Dick and I would end up together when he and Donnie were so close? But like Women’s basketball, broadcasting is a small circle. Men’s basketball—on the other hand—well there’s never been anything small about that.

  The number of spectators at the NBA games dwarfed the average WNBA game, and the ratings crucified the women’s games. But I figured it would only be a matter of time. There was no doubt the women’s game had finally arrived. And now it even had its own Hall of Fame.

  It had been a long time coming. When the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame was finally erected that June of 1999, I brought my daughter, Drew, with me to Knoxville where I became a member of the inaugural class to be inducted.

  My good friend, Robin Roberts, was the MC for what would be the largest class ever. It was wonderful to see old pals Juliene Simpson, Pat Summitt, Lucy Harris, coaches Billie Moore and Sue Gunter, and the rest of the ’76 Olympic team. We were all inducted, along with so many others whom I had played with or against over the years. As we’d approached the building, Drew, who was now six, looked up to see the largest basketball in the world. The Baden Ball measured thirty feet tall and weighed ten tons. Inside, there were artifacts, memorabilia, and other iconography which had been painstakingly collected over the years and was now in one place for posterity.

  “Mommy, I want to go home,” Drew said the next day, one hand tugging on my shirt, the other holding a rainbow ice-cream cone; purple stains framing her little mouth. We’d been sightseeing in downtown Knoxville all morning, but every now and then a stranger would stop me.

  “Can I have your autograph, Ms. Meyers?” People were often stopping me on the street, wanting to discuss the Final Four teams, the coaches, or my history. That got old fast where the kids were concerned. For the past few years, I’d been bringing one of them with me each time I travelled for some special one-on-one time, but they noticed when my attention was being diverted, even for a moment. Now Drew was looking up at me with these big, blue eyes that reminded me of her dad.

  “Of course we can go home, honey. We can do anything you like,” I bent down and kissed the top of her head, which was covered in auburn locks. As a single parent, I was always trying to do double-duty, and it hurt when it felt like I was falling short. But I still had to travel, and I knew that keeping myself and the kids busy was part of the healing process. When we returned to California, I still missed Don, but I could feel the haze lifting. It would not lift for long, however.

  I came back to find that my 80-year-old father, who had been battling dementia for the last year or so, was worse. He was in and out of various facilities because he’d wander off and sometimes become abusive with staff, so invariably the facility would call us in and tell us that things weren’t working out.

  He’d forget to eat, forget to take his pills, and he’d get angry that everyone was telling him what to do. He couldn’t remember much of the present, but he would tell us things from his past, stories we’d never heard, and it was so interesting. I didn’t remember him being so talkative when I was younger. It was nice. Other times, though, he’d become convinced we were stealing his money and demand that we take him to the bank.

  Mark and Frannie were there a lot, along with Patty, David, Jeff, Susie and Colleen. Sometimes he recognized us, and sometimes he didn’t. But it didn’t matter. We were family and that’s what family does.

  That same year, my oldest, beloved brother, Tom, who was a favorite uncle to all of his nieces and nephews, had grown increasingly sick after having contracted HIV years earlier. Mom was taking care of him in La Habra, where we’d all grown up. She watched her 6’3” first-born, hulking son, who had been able to tackle anyone on the football field and been nicknamed “The Mayor of Newport Beach” because of his larger-than-life personality and generosity, wither away. In 1999 Tom died. Mom had now lost two children.

  Then, in early 2000, my da
d passed on. As an athlete, one of the first things you learn is how to go on after a loss, how to pick yourself up, go out there and battle all over again. This was different though. I had never dealt with such an unrelenting opponent.

  I was glad that the father I’d loved, despite everything, was finally at peace. So was Mom. For her, Dad’s passing represented closure. The little death that had occurred for her so many years earlier, way back in 1979, when Patricia and Robert Meyers had officially divorced, was now finally being laid to rest. Whenever I felt sorry for myself that Don had died, I thought about my parents. It made me realize there were so many worse ways a marriage could end than in the death of a spouse. My mother had been living with an open wound, which would finally be allowed to heal.

  The kids and I were also on the mend. It had been seven years since Don had died. I had faith that the new millennium would usher in only good things for all of us.

  22

  A Single Mother

  “You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.”

  ~ Polish Proverb

  “Mrs. Drysdale you have to come down to the school, fast.” I was doing some research for an upcoming broadcast, when I got a call from D. J.’s Junior High telling me that he had hurt his arm playing football during lunch, and that I should come quickly.

  “Well… okay…” I remember feeling a bit put out, like maybe they were making a mountain out of a mole hill. He wasn’t a little kid anymore, he was almost 12. I figured if it were a real emergency, they’d have called the hospital. I almost told them to give him two aspirin and have him lay down—basically the same line Mom would give us when we were younger and got hurt. I’d been raised that if you fell down, you pulled yourself up and tied-up your bootstraps. If that philosophy was good enough for me, it was good enough for my kids.

  D.J. was less impressed. “Mom, you didn’t come forever,” he said, when I finally arrived.