You Let Some Girl Beat You? (25 page)

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 dad 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.

“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.

After we got home, I sent him to bed to rest, and went back to what I'd been doing. But I could hear the different groans he was making, and they didn't sound right. As a mother you can tell when your child is really hurt. You've heard him cry from anger, frustration, or pain enough times to know the difference. This sounded like agony.

When I took D.J. to the doctor, sure enough, he had broken his humerus bone, the one between the elbow and shoulder. The doctor said it was one of the hardest bones to break. I felt like I'd dropped the parenting ball yet again.

Now I was supposed to leave for Sydney and the 2000 Olympic Women's Basketball Games. Dick Ebersol had hired me to do the color. But Drew was only seven and Darren was ten. After what had happened with D.J., I didn't want to leave them for three weeks while I travelled halfway around the world. So I pooled my airline miles and was able to bring them. Mom, my brother David, and my sister, Cathy also came, and it turned out to be the most amazing trip for everyone.

Darren, my brother, David, and D.J. stayed in one hotel room, while Mom, Cathy, Drew and I stayed in another. Things were different since FIBA had changed the rules in 1989 that allowed professionals to compete in the Olympic Games. The catalyst may have been when the US Men's team finished with only a Bronze at the '88 Olympics. The '92 Olympics had ushered in the first Dream Team. Since then, no other country stood a chance. (Women's ‘Dream Team' came in 2000.)

These were also the first Olympics in which WNBA players would compete. There was a fierce rivalry between Australian basketball player, Lauren Jackson and our own Lisa Leslie. The Games were played at the Sydney Superdome, and both the U.S. Men's and Women's teams took the Gold.

When we returned to the States, I continued to do the NCAA Final Four for ESPN, and when I wasn't broadcasting, I worked various basketball camps and did some motivational speaking. Offers kept coming to coach or work in the front office with various WNBA franchises, just as they had when the league first started up, but I still said no. I wanted to wait until the kids were off to college.

Sometimes I wondered if my youngest would ever make it. By now, in addition to breaking her femur and arm, she seemed like she was always hurting herself whether it was splitting her chin jumping backward into the pool or breaking her wrist while competing with a boy to see who could jump highest. She was nine and reminding me more of myself when I was young. Nowadays, I didn't run and jump the way I had then. Now, I had to make time to exercise along with every other broadcaster who hoped to keep their backsides from turning to mush from sitting in the booth too long.

By 2004, I realized I'd been broadcasting for twenty-five years. That spring, after attending a Baseball Hall of Fame luncheon at the White House as Sandy Koufax's guest, I flew into New Orleans to do color for the NCAA Women's Final Four with Mike Patrick who was now calling the play-by-play. It was there that I received a phone call requesting that I fly to Los Angeles to attend the Cy Young Awards. I was asked to represent Don. All of the other Dodger Cy Young Award winners were invited to be there when Eric Gagne was presented with his award. I wanted to go and I knew my children would be there, and I wanted to be with them, but arranging for a flight back and forth in time would be difficult.

That same week the
L.A. Times
ran a piece, “Meyers At Home in Final Four.” I'd been featured in the
Los Angeles Times
a lot over the years, but what made this article so special were the nice things my colleague, Mike Patrick, said about me. “I've never met anyone who doesn't rave about her. You never hear an unkind word spoken about her from anyone.”

For the most part, I got along well with all of my broadcasting colleagues. They'd been so nice to me over the years, and Patrick, especially so. “Not since Ann Meyers had anything so great come to TV,” he was once quoted saying when asked about the advent of HD Television, and I'm still so flattered that he would say something so nice.

But now, when I was feeling like I couldn't be at the right place at the right time, like maybe I was letting too many people down, it was especially great to read something like that. It was beyond gratifying to learn that colleagues considered me to be a decent individual in a business that was often driven by ambition and greed. I'd always taken pride in my work, always wanted to deliver and be the best without being cut-throat about it. To know now that I was respected and liked by my peers felt good.

That July, I left the children to travel to Athens to cover the 2004 Olympics, again for NBC. Just as it had been in 1984, it was still an incredible honor to be broadcasting the Olympic women's basketball games, for which I, once again, had Dick Ebersol to thank. This time, though, we were warned not to bring our families. It was still so soon after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The fear was that the 2004 Olympics would be a dangerous place, especially for Americans.

Without the kids there, I was better able to focus on my work. A lot of the players from other countries had tricky names. I was working with one of the best play-by-play announcers out there, Mike Breen, with whom I'd worked covering WNBA games for NBC. Together we studied the pronunciation of each player's name so we could avoid stumbling during the broadcast. While I was working color for the women's games, Doug Collins was working color for the men's, and Mike was doing double duty calling both the men's and women's. Afterward the whole crew would go to dinner at the same beautiful open air restaurant with its gentle sea breezes. We'd be there until one or two in the morning and the place would remain packed. It seemed Greece came alive at night. The basketball banter would go back and forth, and we'd remember past Olympic games, and it always made the food taste better

We all had a great time and as it turned out, it couldn't have been safer. The staff in charge of security was hyper-vigilant, and I regretted not bringing the kids. Then again, hindsight is a lovely thing. How many times I have wished for a crystal ball, so I'd never make a wrong step. Most of all, you always want to be there. But later that year, I learned that even being there was no guarantee that the worst wouldn't happen.

In late November, Dick and Susan Ebersol's fourteen-year-old son, Teddy, died. The family had boarded a small, private jet in Colorado that crashed moments after take-off in icy conditions and poor visibility. Dick suffered serious injuries, as did the rest of the family, but Teddy had been ejected from the plane, dying instantly. He had been the youngest of five, an altar boy, who had spoken at his 8
^th
grade graduation the previous year by saying, “The finish line is only the beginning of a whole new race.” My Darren and Teddy were only a year apart.

Those of us who knew Dick and his wife, actress Susan Saint James, could not imagine the heartbreak they were going through. There were no words to heal their pain. Dick had been instrumental in the careers of so many. His protégés were scattered throughout the broadcasting world, most of them flourishing, many of them owing their livelihoods to him. He was pivotal in launching my Olympic broadcasting career for NBC, and he'd given me the honor of being the first female to broadcast a nationally televised NBA game, in addition to hiring me to work the WNBA games. Now I and so many others could do little more in return than pay our respects and offer up our prayers at his son's funeral.

It was appearing more and more that the peaks of life were impossible without its valleys. When I got back home, I'm sure I hugged the kids much harder and longer than I normally do when returning from a trip. Then I called Mom. As parents, we are programmed to protect our kids, not to bury them, and this was something she understood all too well. After we talked I reminded D.J., Darren, and Drew that however difficult things were for us without their dad, there was still so much to be grateful for.

During this same period, I tried to spend as much time as possible visiting Papa. He was always on my radar and I'd often call him whether I was on the road or at home. He was in his nineties, but still managed to get to plenty of the UCLA games at Pauley Pavilion when he was feeling well. He always sat in section 103B in a seat behind the home bench. And he always managed to give out autographs. Even as frail as he had become, his signature was as pure and clear as it had been forty years earlier, just like the heart and soul of the man himself. He had never sought the limelight or all the attention. He'd been a teacher in his early career, and that's always how he thought of himself, a teacher first and foremost. When he started coaching back in the 30s and 40s, and then at UCLA in the 50s, he was one of the few coaches out there who would play black athletes. In 1947 he'd refused an invitation to the Final Four Tournament in Kansas City because of the NAIB's policy banning African American players.

This was well before they began calling him the Wizard of Westwood, a moniker he didn't appreciate because he'd tried so hard to teach his players that success could only be achieved through commitment and hard work. The press was making it sound as though it were as easy as magic for him. We, who knew him, never used that term. And if he'd have let the press know how much he disliked it, they would have stopped using it, too. That's how strong a sway he held over people. Even in the twilight of his life, his influence was such that when he appeared on Charlie Rose with Bill Walton and Bill Russell, Russell admitted later that the only reason he went on the show was to be near Papa. We all wanted to be near him whenever we could.

And I wanted to tell him my news; and get his advice.

Robert Sarver had called me from Arizona asking me to act as General Manager for the Mercury. The Phoenix Mercury was the one WNBA team that called year in and year out. They had been relentless. I'd just received the Ronald Reagan Media Award a few months earlier, placing me in the company of Howard Cosell, Bob Costas, Keith Jackson, Frank Deford, and Rupert Murdoch. It was a personal victory for me because I was such an introvert unless I was performing as an athlete, and I considered it a triumph over nature to think that I had been given an award in the name of one of the greatest American communicators of the 20
^th
Century. Whether or not I would consider Sarver's proposal depended on a couple things. I wanted to know that I could take the job and continue to broadcast and, more importantly, whether my children thought it was okay. I wasn't about to uproot them again.

Sarver had just purchased both the NBA and WNBA Phoenix franchises a couple of years earlier from Jerry Colangelo, who was instrumental in supporting the WNBA league in 1997. A self-made man at twenty-three, Sarver had been the youngest to found a national bank. Now, nearly twenty years later, he hoped to make both the Suns and the Mercury as profitable as all of his other endeavors. Not long after he stepped in, the Phoenix Suns tied a record for the NBA-Best 62 wins. In September of 2006, Robert hoped that by bringing me onboard he could do the same thing for the women's team.

I needed to talk to someone who understood the rigors of being a GM, so I turned to Don's good friend, Buzzie Bavasi. The Hall of Fame GM with the Brooklyn/LA Dodgers, California Angels, and San Diego Padres, was a wealth of information. Of course, I also spoke to Papa, and my family. Before presenting it to the kids, I wanted to make sure I understood all the ramifications myself.

By this time, D.J. was nineteen and a senior at Cushing Prep Academy in Massachusetts, Darren was seventeen and in high school, and Drew was thirteen, in junior high. They were getting older, but I still wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do. They were the first ones I asked. I had to know how they felt. A few months earlier we'd all been invited by the Dodgers to see the premier of the movie,
Bobby
, the fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the assassination of Robert Kennedy on June 5
^th
1968—the same day Donnie had achieved his sixth straight shutout. It was filled with newsreels from the day, and though much of the dialogue revolved around Donnie's shutout, they never did show footage of him.

“Gosh, Mom, the whole way through I kept thinking they were going to show Dad,” Darren said.

Darren was just three when Don died, an age where memories of his father were only just beginning to form. Now Darren was trying hard to recall what he could. It reminded me of when he was younger and how frustrated he would get when he couldn't remember the same things about his dad that his older brother, D.J., could. I would wonder when all the little scars from Donnie's death would finally disappear, leaving us with only beautiful memories.

Now we had watched a movie that had taken us back in time to a day that was so terrible for the nation, and yet historic for their dad. It was one of Don's greatest achievements.

“As proud as he was of that day, I know he'd be twice as proud of you two now,” I told Darren and Drew after the movie, and I believed it with all my heart.