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From
Scott Simon at NPR:
Bob Greenberg died this week at the age of 67. He was a sportscaster
who happened to be blind. When I've told people he's one of the most
extraordinary people I've ever worked with, there's usually polite
incomprehension: A blind sportscaster?
Bob worked for WBEZ in Chicago, and he could be cranky, blustery and loud. But it was a marvel to watch him work.
A
helper would read box scores to him every day, and Bob would pound a
Braille keyboard to punch them into cards. If a football player caught a
pass, Bob would rifle through his cards like a riverboat gambler, find
the dots and stats he wanted and announce, "That's the third fourth-down
pass Baschnagel has caught this year!"
In
the early 1980s, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar could be a little sullen with
reporters. After a hard game on a cold night, the press cornered him in
the locker room, barking questions. He turned with a cold stare, and saw
Bob Greenberg, dressed in rumpled, ill-buttoned clothes, holding a
white cane and a microphone.
"How'd you get here?" Kareem asked.
"Not
hard," said Bob, who then explained how he knew the exact number of
steps to bring him to the Lake Street "L" station; how he felt for the
right combination of coins to put in the turnstile; and then the number
of steps to take along West Madison to Chicago Stadium.
"Maybe that's why I can remember so many stats about the game," Bob said.
Abdul-Jabbar
paused to take that in and finally replied, "Ask your question, sir."
Athletes often disdain reporters as snoops and second-guessers who
couldn't catch a ball that's laid in their lap. But Kareem saw Bob
Greenberg and seemed to think, "You've worked hard to get here, too."
I
don't recall Bob saying there was anything he couldn't figure out how
to do because he was blind. But I came to feel that having to count and
calculate most every step, every day of your life, could make any man a
little cranky.
Bob told me once that over the
years, he had painted in his mind's eye what most every play in sports —
indeed, what most every item on Earth, from beetles to roses to whales —
looked like. But he said he couldn't quite "see" home runs. They had a
distinct sound: the single stroke of the bat, the crowd's hopes and
cheers rising as the ball sailed into the stands, or just fell into a
long, dismaying out.
"I sure wish I could see that," Bob said.
Alfonso Soriano of the Cubs hit a home run out of Wrigley Field yesterday. I like to think Bob saw it.
