Schaap does himself well

By BRUCE LOWITT

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 18, 2001

On several occasions (usually when I'm about to cover a Super Bowl or another major sport event), a few friends and acquaintances have said they wished they had my job.

I wish I'd had Dick Schaap's.

Not many of us have taken sex kitten Brigitte Bardot to dinner and anti-establishment comic Lenny Bruce to the World Series. Not many of us, in the space of a few paragraphs, can write: "Joe Namath came to my house for dinner one night ... I went with (Norman) Mailer to (Arthur) Miller's home...John Chancellor and Paddy Chayevsky and I decided to go..."

Schaap, the host of ESPN's The Sports Reporters, has been a correspondent for several television networks and is the author of more than 30 books. He invented, with the completion in 1968 of Instant Replay with Green Bay Packers offensive lineman Jerry Kramer, a new form of journalism: "as told to Dick Schaap."

He has written about everyone from Robert F. Kennedy and the Son of Sam to Vince Lombardi and Mickey Mantle. He is the "autobiographer" of a dozen subjects -- Kramer, Namath, Joe Montana and Billy Crystal among them. Sports Illustrated once took Schaap to task for being such a name-dropper, (he may be the name-dropping equivalent of Johnny Appleseed), but -- unlike so many other writers and broadcasters these days -- Schaap has never been so full of himself that he has made himself part of his stories.

Until now.

Now Schaap has written the ultimate "As told to Dick Schaap" book: "Dick Schaap as told to Dick Schaap." In Flashing Before My Eyes; 50 Years of Headlines, Deadlines & Punchlines, he finally focuses on himself, weaving together the plentiful laugh-out-loud and tears-in-your-eyes moments of his own life, making it feel like a conversation in his den (or, more likely, in a bar where he's picking up the tab).

We are richer for it.

Like much of what he has written, however, Flashing Before My Eyes is not exclusively about him. It is about the people he has listened to. And that is the essence of Dick Schaap. He is a great listener.

Schaap does find room to tell us of a life away from typewriters, computers and cameras. Of diverse siblings. Of children, one of whom, Jeremy, is an ESPN reporter.

And of marriages, two of which ended in divorce; the third is heading into its third decade. You could say a .333 career batting average is good enough for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.

If you have ever heard him deliver his Parting Shot on The Sports Reporters, you already know the tenor of Flashing Before My Eyes, often wistful and lighthearted, even when mentioning former spouses. And, when appropriate, stinging. Consider this, on Howard Cosell:

"... at some point during his career, Cosell decided that he was more important than the story, that the questions he asked were more meaningful than the answers he elicited. He stopped probing and began promoting -- self-promoting....It may be apochryphal, but, supposedly, Howard once said to Red Smith, "You know, there are fewer great sportscasters than one might think,' and Red replied, "Howard, I know there is one fewer than you think.'...After his death, Cosell was greatly missed, but not greatly mourned."

Schaap provides, of course, samples of his half-century of writing and broadcasting, not so much as to make one think, "All right, I get the point," but rather to wish he had included more.

On Lenny Bruce, who died with a needle in his arm, Schaap writes: "...the police came and harassed him in death as in life. Two at a time they let photographers from newspapers and magazines and television stations step right up and take their pictures of Lenny Bruce lying dead on the tiled floor. It was a terrible thing for the cops to do. Lenny hated to pose for pictures."

And on Ali, whose career lasted a few fights too long: "It should have ended then, before the snow began to melt, before his speech began to slur and give rise to rumors of brain damage, before his cheeks grew so puffy that they threatened, even when he had not been punched in months, to push shut the brown eyes that once had glowed so brightly."

Dick Schaap seems to know everybody worth knowing. (Did I mention he also tells stories about Bobby Fischer, Jimmy Buffett, Johnny Carson and Bill Clinton?) Flashing Before My Eyes gives us the pleasure of knowing Dick Schaap.

- Bruce Lowitt covers sports for the Times.

Flashing Before My Eyes;

50 Years of Headlines, Deadlines & Punchlines

By Dick Schaap as told to Dick Schaap

William Morrow, $25

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