Читать книгу Playing Ball with the Boys - Betsy Ross - Страница 9

Congratulations, Mrs. Ross, you have a boy!”

Hearing that, my mother immediately broke into tears.

Dr. Gregg took a closer look. “Oops, no, I was wrong, you have another daughter.”

That daughter was me.

Now, whether that pronouncement at my birth had any affect on my profession of choice, I’m not sure, but I do know that growing up, my tastes trended more toward baseball than baby dolls—a tomboy, in the vernacular of the day. Not that my parents didn’t try to make me more ladylike. One Christmas, I discovered a doll and baby carriage under the tree. I think they’re still sitting in the corner of the basement. After that it was cork guns and volleyballs and basketballs. And my parents were wise enough never to dissuade me from what I really enjoyed.

I grew up outside of the town of Connersville, in southeastern Indiana, in a rural area where every home had a basketball hoop and the Cincinnati Reds were the team of choice. I was the typical kid who would fall asleep with the transistor radio under my pillow. I’d even carry it with me in the grocery store when the Reds were playing on Saturday afternoons. And usually, someone would ask me the score of the game.

Since there were few kids my age to play sports with, and my sister, eleven years older than I, was already away in college, my mother was, more often than not, drafted as my playing partner. While Dad was at work at the factory, my mother would pitch batting practice to me or catch the football.

She was no stranger to sports herself—in fact, she would brag about her crooked right pinky, bent at the slightest outside angle, from a softball that came in just a little too fast during recess at Orange Elementary School. So even though her knees hurt and her back was tired, she’d often take a few minutes to keep me occupied in the back yard.

One time, we were playing one-on-one basketball in the gravel driveway in the back and Mom had the ball. She went up for a shot, I reached up to block her, and my hand slammed into her nose. Of course, any time you hit the nose, it gushes blood like a Texas oil strike. I was distraught, but it turned out there was no damage. In telling the story in later years, when people were horrified that I had mugged my mother, I just explained, “Well, she was driving the lane, what else was I supposed to do?” And my basketball friends completely understood.

Now, all of this happened before Title IX, which has given countless young girls the opportunity to play sports in high school and college. So I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t play Little League baseball with the boys, when I played softball with them during school recess. Or why I couldn’t participate in Punt, Pass and Kick competitions when I’d play touch football with the guys during lunch hour. In fact, one of my badges of honor in the seventh grade at Garrison Creek School was having my name written in the back of the grade book—reserved only for serious infractions—for playing touch football after our teacher, Mr. Fowler, told me I couldn’t. (By the way, in a remarkable twist of fate, when the Cincinnati Bengals hold the regional Punt, Pass and Kick finals at Paul Brown Stadium each year, I have the privilege of handling the stadium announcements for the competition, introducing each participant—boys AND girls.)

But in school, when I couldn’t participate in sports, I did the next best thing—I wrote about sports. I was very fortunate when I was a youngster in that I knew at a fairly early age I wanted to write. I attended a one-room school in our rural area—two of them, in fact, Nulltown for grades one through four and Garrison Creek for grades five through eight—before I went to Connersville High School. I was first published in the sixth grade when I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper. Now, that was pretty heady stuff, seeing your name in print when you’re ten years old!

But that was enough to give me the writing bug. Well, that, and, when I was watching the news, I noticed that President Lyndon Johnson called NBC News reporter Nancy Dickerson by her first name at news conferences. Wow, that’s cool, I thought. Presidents know your name if you’re a reporter.

So I decided that was what I wanted to do. I didn’t know much about the process of journalism, other than what I read in the paper every day and saw on television. But an assignment from Mr. Fowler at Garrison Creek changed my life. The assignment was: Interview someone. Now, you could interview your friend, your brother, your parents, anyone, and that’s what most kids did in my class (all seven of us!). But I decided to interview Candace Murray, the author of the daily “O Yez O Yez” heard-about-town column that was published in the Connersville News-Examiner newspaper.

So Mom made the appointment, we waited for Dad to get home from work so he could drive us the seven miles up to town, and Candace waited for us at the News-Examiner office so I could do my interview. It’s funny, I don’t remember a whole lot about the interview itself, but I remember the smells of the newsroom (ink mixed with newsprint) and the stacks of chaos on everyone’s desk (old newspapers, letters, copy paper, all of it). I thought it was great.

She gave us a quick tour of the newsroom and the printing area in the back—those huge printing machines like you see in the old movies churning out full pages of printed newspaper. It was fascinating. I was hooked. I knew that was what I wanted to do.

Now, what if she had said no to the interview? Or if she had given me only a half hour of her time instead of staying late at work? I might have been a veterinarian (my second choice of profession) instead of going into journalism. So to this day, I thank Candace Murray for helping me choose journalism—and if a student wants to come by the office for an interview, or to shadow me for a day, I always say yes. You never know when you’ll have an influence on someone’s life.

So, I took the usual journalism paths, working on the high school newspaper and yearbook, then moving on to Ball State University, partly because of its great journalism program, partly because my sister went there and I was familiar with the campus. Admittedly, I wasn’t big on working on the Ball State Daily News campus newspaper; with the journalism classes and with extra classes to get my teaching certificate I was busy enough. But I dreamed of taking what I learned and becoming an investigative reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.

But again, one seemingly innocuous decision made a huge difference in my professional life. Since I was working on a teaching certificate, I had to do one quarter of student teaching. I was planning to do it at my old high school, like most people did, so I could live at home and save expenses. As we were setting up my student teaching schedule, my counselor said, “You can do two classes in journalism and two in English.” That made sense, since English was my minor, but it was hardly my favorite subject.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I really have no plans to teach English. Is there anything else you can give me to teach along with journalism?”

“Well, Connersville High has a radio/TV program,” he said. “Do you want to teach two classes in radio and television?”

“Sure,” I said. How hard can it be? I thought.

Well, let me tell you, it was harder than I dreamed. Since I had zero, zip classes in radio and television at Ball State, and the campus broadcast facilities were not necessarily the best (this was the pre-David Letterman Communication and Media Building days), it never crossed my mind to take broadcast classes. So I’d study whatever the topic was the day before I had to teach it, and do video projects right along with the students.

Betsy Ross and former Ohio State women’s basketball player Toni Roesch announcing a women’s basketball game between the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University.

And I had a blast.

I learned to shoot a video camera, edit, I learned everything about a television studio, writing for TV, and I learned it fast. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. And I also thought, “Great, it’s my last quarter of my senior year in college and I finally figure out what I want to do.”

After graduation, I landed a job teaching journalism and advising for the yearbook and newspaper at Merrillville High School in Indiana, but I never got the television bug out of my brain. I taught one year, then joined the staff at the South Bend Tribune, a terrific newspaper that still serves as the paper of record for much of north central and northwestern Indiana. The job at the newspaper returned me to my journalism roots but also gave me access to start work on a master’s degree at the University of Notre Dame and an opportunity to get the experience in television I needed to pursue a TV career. And it was a terrific place to get broadcast experience, since at that time Notre Dame owned the NBC affiliate in South Bend, and the station was right on campus. Instead of studying at a campus facility, we got to work at a commercial studio. So I worked my college classes around my work schedule at the Trib.

While I was working at the newspaper, I also got to pursue my passion for sports. As anyone in journalism knows, sports departments are historically under-staffed. So I would volunteer on Friday nights to cover high school basketball and football for the Tribune’s sports section. The guys in the sports department were more than willing to give me a chance, and were thankful for the help. As terrific as that opportunity was, that also was my first rude awakening to the reality of women covering sports.

When I went to high school football games, I usually would be able to find a corner of the press box where I could sit and watch the game. But one Friday night at South Bend Clay High School, when I made my way up to the football press box, I was turned away. “Nope, no room up here,” the P.A. announcer said, even though there was at least four spaces open to his right.

I tried not to notice the slight smile he gave one of his buddies as I thanked him, walked down the bleachers, and stood by the fence that separated the stands from the field. And that’s where I covered the game. I got the job done and the story filed, but I’ll never forget that night. Since then, I’ve talked to many women who also say they’ve been kicked out of press boxes, so at least I know I wasn’t the only one. And I’ve been nudged out of press rows since then. But on that night, it didn’t make me feel any better to know that not everyone had my parents’ opinion that I could do whatever I wanted.

Eventually I got my master’s in communication arts from the University of Notre Dame and landed my first television job at WSJV-TV, then the ABC affiliate for the South Bend-Elkhart market. And even that job search had its own twists and turns. As I got closer to graduation and started looking for a job in television news, I thought I would have it made: A print reporter looking to switch to television? What news director wouldn’t want to hire me with that kind of experience?

Well, as it turned out, many. Because it didn’t matter what kind of journalist you were (journalist with a capital ‘J’ as we liked to call ourselves), news directors wanted television experience, not newspaper. So I went through months of interviews in area television markets before I got a call from a news director in Fort Wayne. Could I send an updated resume tape?

Of course. Now I just needed to get another tape together. I had just made one at the station on campus, so I couldn’t impose on them to make another one. So out of the blue I called the news director for WSJV, introduced myself (he was a Ball State alum so I used that as my “in”) and asked if I could come over and do a quick anchor desk read for a resume tape.

He agreed. So a couple of days later I came in during their afternoon down time, read a few stories at the desk, then did a pretend standup close for a reporter package. When I was finished, the news director, Phil Lengyel, called me into his office.

“Do you have a reason that you want to go to Fort Wayne to work?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s just a lead I have on a reporter’s job.”

“Well,” he continued, “we might have something coming up here soon, so let me keep you posted on our openings here.”

Sure enough, a couple of weeks later there was an opening. Phil called me, and I started on the Monday after my Thursday graduation from Notre Dame. I had made it into television—even using, with some reluctance, my real name.

You see, Betsy Ross is, indeed, my God-given, Mom-given name. Not Elizabeth, not Beth, it’s Betsy. And it’s not like there was some premeditated scheme to give me this name—as I always say, if my parents wanted a daughter named Betsy, they would have given that name to my older sister, Jeanne. In fact, the nurse supposedly told my mother after three days of my being in the hospital without a name, “You can’t call her ‘Hey, You’ all her life.” So Betsy came from somewhere, and my middle name, Melina, came from a baby book (pronounced like Melinda without the “d,” not the Greek pronunciation of Me-lee-na).

I have heard just about every comment anyone can make about my name, most of them lame, some of them cruel, but every once in a while, one that is clever. I was at the ticket window at Comerica Park in Detroit when the woman at the counter saw my name on the credit card and said, “Your parents must have had big plans for you.” I like that comment—it’s probably my favorite.

As I was changing professions, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to change my name, just like all hotshot news anchors did—so I thought. I lobbied Phil to let me change my name. To Jennifer Edwards. I don’t know why. I thought it was a cool name, very un-ethnic, again, just like all the other big anchors.

“Are you crazy?” he said. “You’ve got a name that people won’t forget. You gotta keep it.” And so I did. And Phil, you were right. Even though I have to endure countless bad jokes, it is memorable. Thanks.

From WSJV-TV, I headed home to the Cincinnati area and WCPO-TV, then moved up the interstate to WTHR in Indianapolis, got my first full-time sports anchoring position at SportsChannel America in New York, then headed back to Cincinnati at WLWTTV. And while each television job (except for SportsChannel America) was as a news anchor, I used the same method I used at the Tribune to keep my hand in sports—I’d volunteer to help out the sports department. That was how I was able to put a sports resume reel together for SportsChannel America, and eventually how I was able to catch the attention of ESPN.

Because I was working for the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati, and because NBC had the rights to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, our station was really promoting the upcoming Summer Games. And, as fate would have it, we had an unusual number of area athletes involved in the Olympic trials, and eventually, the Games. Two members of the gold medal-winning “Magnificent Seven” women’s gymnastics team were from Cincinnati, as was one of the coaches. Swimmers, divers, runners, shooters, rowers, you name the sport, we had an athlete competing for a spot at the Olympics. So I lobbied hard to cover their stories. That led to an opportunity to work for NBC NewsChannel, the news feed that goes to affiliate stations, on Olympic coverage. And, eventually, I got to go with our sports crew to Atlanta to cover the Olympics themselves.

At the same time ESPN was getting ready to launch ESPNews, a twenty-four-hour news channel specifically for highlights and scores. They were looking for someone who knew sports and who could anchor in half-hour blocks. Considering that most sports anchors were on the air for only about three to four minutes for their nightly sports reports, having someone who was used to anchoring for longer periods of time, and who also had sports knowledge, would be a perfect fit.

So my agent started making calls and sending my Olympics tapes to Bristol, Connecticut, and after the Games I headed to the Worldwide Leader for an interview. Now, this wasn’t the first time I’d been to ESPN headquarters. When I was working at SportsChannel America, ESPN was getting ready to launch ESPN2, and I interviewed back in 1990 for a position on the new network. So I was familiar with the routine—meet everyone, sit down with a producer in the afternoon, write copy, then go on the set and anchor highlights.

Except the circumstances were very different on this interview for ESPNews. As schedules would have it, I was there on the day of the funeral for ESPN anchor Tom Mees. He was one of the first anchors for ESPN when it signed on the air in 1979 and was still with the network when he drowned in a neighbor’s pool in nearby Southington, Connecticut. The shock was still apparent on everyone’s face, and while I didn’t have the chance to meet him, I heard wonderful stories about Tom on that day, and during the years I worked at ESPN.

Still, we all went through the motions, everyone was very nice, I did my anchor test, then couldn’t wait to get on the airplane back to Cincinnati. Whether it was the pall that hung over the newsroom that day, or whether it was the mess of the construction for the new ESPNews studio, I didn’t have a good feeling about the place. You know when you go into a job interview, you know in the first few minutes whether you think you’d fit in? I didn’t think I’d fit in. I knew I didn’t want to work there.

Of course, I was offered the job. I was to be one of the first wave of ESPNews anchors, being hired from across the country, to launch the new network.

And I said no.

I had no desire to move to Connecticut, my family and friends were all in the Midwest, and I just couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling I had on that day of my interview. So I did the unthinkable—I said no to ESPN.

Until six months later, when I said yes.

What changed? Well, in television, as in any business, when bosses change, they bring in their own managers and their own style. Our station, WLWT, was first rumored to be in line to be purchased by the network itself, which was another reason I didn’t want to leave for ESPN. The opportunity to work for an O & O (network owned and operated) station was tempting. But when that fell through and another purchaser took over, the new news director who came in had a “if it bleeds it leads” philosophy that didn’t necessarily fit what I felt comfortable doing.

So I called my agent. “Think ESPN might still be interested?” I asked.

They were. So in April of 1997, six months after the launch of ESPN2, I was anchoring on ESPNews. I got a quick education in hockey, in soccer, in a lot of sports other than the football, basketball, baseball, and golf I was used to covering. And as much as I thought I knew about sports, my knowledge paled in comparison to most of the folks around me. For a sports fan, it was heaven.

But for all the extra folks brought into ESPN to launch ESPNews, there were still only five females of the nearly sixty anchors for all the networks: Robin Roberts, Linda Cohn, Chris McKendry, Pam Ward, and me. I still have a signed ESPN banner that I keep in my office with all five of our signatures on it. We weren’t numerous, but we were proud of what we did.

For someone who was plopped down in New England with no friends and family in the area, ESPN was, and is, a terrific place to work. ESPN not only hires people who are good at their jobs, but are good people. If you weren’t nice, if you weren’t cordial, if you weren’t respectful to your coworkers, you didn’t stay. I got so used to guys holding doors open for me that it was a shock when I went to the mall and the same thing didn’t happen there.

And it was a place where my writing skills were valued. It remains the only newsroom where I have worked that I wrote every word that I read. It may be more time-consuming, but that’s the only way the anchors can put their own personalities into the writing. It would be silly, let’s face it, for me to read something that Stuart Scott writes, and vice versa. So I loved the opportunity to put my own style into my anchoring, something that, of course, is forbidden in straight news.

In fact, one of the best compliments I received in Bristol was from a producer who said after a show, “I can’t believe you ever anchored news.” That’s when I felt I finally arrived.

I’m often asked who were some of my more memorable interviews during my time there. One was Pedro Martinez when he was still with Montreal and had just won the Cy Young award. Despite his success, he knew he had become too pricey for the Expos to keep him, and he knew he would be leaving Montreal—but he didn’t know where. He was thrilled for the honor, but very apprehensive about his future and unsure what would happen next.

Another one I remember was a satellite interview with Lance Armstrong after one of his early Tour de France wins. Just a bit of background: When these athletes do satellite interviews, they sit in one studio and the production crew around them dials up different anchors in different cities. But the satellite feed usually stays live, while the new anchor is being dialed up for the next interview.

So, the Lance Armstrong feed comes up, he’s live on our monitors as he’s getting ready to do our interview. In the background I hear one of the producers say, “Next interview is with ESPN and Betsy Ross.”

“Betsy Ross,” Lance says. And I’m thinking, oh boy, here it comes, some lame comment about my name. “Made the flag, right?” he added. And then, to no one in particular, said, “Boy, there is nothing like riding those final miles at the Tour, and everyone has their American flags out, and they’re waving them as you go by. Just seeing those flags makes you so proud to be an American and know that those people support you. That’s the prettiest sight around, to see that flag.”

I immediately became a Lance Armstrong fan.

One interview we did on set for ESPNews almost didn’t happen. It was when former Reds reliever and “Nasty Boy” Rob Dibble had just started with ESPN, and he, on occasion, would come on ESPNews to talk baseball. Now, at the Worldwide Leader, the analysts, especially ex-players and coaches, often would cut their teeth on ESPNews and then when they got good, they’d move over to ESPN.

Rob had done his time on the News side and now was working for Baseball Tonight, but we had some extra time on ESPNews and asked the Baseball Tonight producer if Rob could come on the set and give us a baseball preview.

“No, he doesn’t have time,” the producer said, blowing us off. “He can’t do it, I won’t even ask him.”

Well, okay, we thought, we’ll find something to fill the time.

About an hour later, Rob came over to our desks. “So what time do you want me on your show?” he asked the producer and me.

We thought you didn’t have time to do an interview, we explained.

“Nope, you guys gave me my start here at ESPN before they’d take me on Baseball Tonight, so I’ll always make time for you. Now, when do you want me in the studio?”

And I immediately became a Rob Dibble fan.

Speaking of fans, there’s always a bit of the starstruck factor around ESPN, mainly because of those famous “This is SportsCenter” promotions that are shot on the ESPN campus three or four times a year. It wasn’t unusual, when the production crew was on campus, to run into Pete Sampras in the cafeteria or Tiger Woods’ former caddy, Fluff, in the stairwell (I’ve done both). Or, to find yourself in a Bon Jovi video when the band was set up in the newsroom, shooting an “It’s My Life” video for the SportsCenter promos. I didn’t know the words to the song when we started. But after six hours of shooting, I knew it backward and forward.

But my closest brush with fame came when I was working the early morning shift to do SportsCenter updates on the 2002 Summer Olympics in Sydney. My day started around three but ended around ten. So when the shift was done this particular day, I headed to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. I walked in to see that tables and chairs had been moved to make way for a billiards table, and who would be standing next to it but Jeanette Lee, the “Black Widow.”

A bit of history here: If you are one of these people who watches any ESPN network any hour of the day, you’re familiar with Jeanette Lee, who became a billiards star on ESPN2 when the young network was filling its programming schedule with lots of made-for-television events, like billiards competitions (usually aired between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.). I used to watch Jeanette Lee any chance I could, because I was fascinated with how she could run a pool table. I had just purchased her book, and it was on my desk when I saw her in the cafeteria.

Maybe I can get the book and have her sign it, I thought, so I dashed across campus, grabbed the book, and went back to the caf, only to see that they had started shooting their promo. Bummer.

A couple of hours later, the field producer for the production company came into our cubicle area (I shared space with Trey Wingo) and asked if it was OK to move some chairs around, since they were going to be shooting a spot with Trey. He happened to glance and see my Jeanette Lee book on my desk.

“Hey, do you know that she’s here on campus? We just finished shooting a promo with her.”

“Yes, I ran over to the cafeteria, but you guys were already shooting, so I didn’t want to bother her,” I said.

“No bother, but I think she might be gone now,” he said. “Anyway, I’ll be back in a couple of hours to set up the shoot.”

No problem, I said, and went back to my computer.

Ten minutes later, the producer came back. “Hey, Betsy, I want you to meet someone.”

And into my little humble cubicle walked Jeanette Lee.

“Hi, how are you?” she said, offering a handshake.

I couldn’t think of a thing to say. She saw her book on my desk and autographed it, gave me her business card, even gave me a gummi bear out of her candy bag. She could not have been nicer. She, and that producer, absolutely made my day.

During my five years at ESPN I anchored NBA 2night, NHL 2night, weekend SportsCenters, Olympic coverage during the 2002 games and, of course, ESPNews. But my most memorable day on the desk was one that none of us will forget, September 11, 2001. I was working the morning-early afternoon shift that day, so I came in around eight in the morning. I was scheduled to fly back to Cincinnati that afternoon, so I was anxious to get the day done and get home for a long mid-week break. I was happy to see that the weather was sunny and clear in Connecticut—good flying weather.

I was in the newsroom, sitting at a desk watching The Today Show on our monitors, when the initial report came that a small plane had hit one of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center on the tip of Manhattan.

While the first reports of the size of the plane varied, we still just thought of it as a tragic accident, a news story for the New York area—until the second plane hit. And then we knew it was much more than an accident.

As the minutes ticked by and we realized this was a story that would reach across all broadcast spectrums, the news editors and producers started to huddle around our desks. The reports continued—all flights grounded—as many as 10,000 body bags ordered for Lower Manhattan—the news became more dire as the morning went on.

That’s when we decided that, even though it was not a sports story, ESPN needed to acknowledge that we knew what was happening and we would have updates throughout the day. I went into our ESPNews studio and, broadcasting across all the ESPN networks, including international outlets, went back to my news anchor roots and reported what was happening. I stayed on the anchor desk until four that afternoon, when the next anchor came in.

It was one of the most surreal days I’ve ever had in broadcasting. I remember being shaken when I had to report the death of Jackie O, being emotional when I had to report that the Major League Baseball season was being cancelled. But this was just beyond anyone’s comprehension. As the morning went on, the news kept getting more grim: a third plane crashing into the Pentagon; the search for the fourth plane that eventually crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Every half hour, I’d broadcast live (since the ESPN networks were all in taped programming), updating the situation, encouraging viewers to turn to their local ABC affiliates, promising responses and statements regarding how this would affect the night’s sports schedules.

Through it all, I just remember repeating one phrase during my updates: “The apparent terrorist attack on the United States.” Who in the world would have thought those words would come out of any of our mouths? Eventually, of course, games were suspended as the nation, and the world, tried to come to grips with this unspeakable tragedy. And that was the day that, for once, sports took a back seat to news at ESPN.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that day changed my life, as it did for so many people.

That day forced so many Americans to reassess their lives, their goals, their priorities. I was one of them. I had been at ESPN for nearly five years, had just signed a new contract, but I knew that my future wasn’t in Bristol. I was commuting every week from Cincinnati to Connecticut. I was tired of flying and knew that I needed to be closer to home to take care of my mother, who then was in her early eighties. So by the spring of 2002, I decided to come home to Cincinnati. It was time.

From that decision came Game Day Communications, a sports and entertainment public relations company I started with my business partner, Jackie Reau. I still stay in sports broadcasting through freelance work, play-by-play gigs, and radio interviews. But being at ESPN is every sports fan’s dream and one of the highlights of my career. Sure, I’ve heard and read stories about how the atmosphere there was not necessarily friendly to females, but I personally never felt it. I felt accepted as a sports anchor and welcomed to the ESPN family. I still have close friends from my Bristol days, and I am grateful to the folks there for the opportunity to be part of the best sports operation on the planet.

I’m fortunate that I can continue to make a living in the business of sports, something that might not have been possible ten or twenty years ago. It is because of the perseverance of so many women before me, that I can be in this profession. They put up with a lot, so that I could follow my passion. We who are reaping the benefits of their hard work owe them a great deal of thanks.