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Dandy Don, like Ron, always remembered to keep things fun

Call it an unfortunate coincidence: Don Meredith died three days after Ron Santo did.

These were two outstanding athletes who went on to distinguished broadcasting careers.

Their dissimilar styles were similar in at least one way: They made me laugh.

Meredith did it on TV by being a folksy “Monday Night Football” jester. Santo did it on radio by being an outrageous homer for the Cubs.

They don't make 'em like that anymore, folks. They don't make broadcasters uniquely engaging characters who could turn your frown upside down.

Everyone is so serious now. Excuse the expression in this context but humor is a dying commodity in sports.

Cubs results were important to Santo, for sure, but his passion came across as sort of lovably cartoonish.

Not everybody liked Santo's radio manner. Some grew weary of him not being able to explain what was going on, like how Harry Caray stumbled over words late in his career.

However, each was beloved by most Cubs fans anyway. Why? Because they spoke at once for themselves and us.

Dandy Don Meredith was himself, too, a homespun Texan who played quarterback for SMU and the Cowboys but didn't sound like football games were war games.

When Meredith teamed in the “MNF” booth with Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford, they made football fun.

Not all viewers liked them, either. But give me those guys over today's “MNF” crew that pretends to care about the relative length of a punter's cleats to his hair.

NFL fans watched Meredith-Cosell-Gifford just as Cubs fans listened to Santo with straight man Pat Hughes because they entertained in a discombobulated way.

Now that Santo is gone, nobody figures to provide as much levity while doing any sport in Chicago anymore.

Any humor is overwhelmed by the notion that every play could shift the balance of power in the Middle East.

Nationally it's worse. Listen closely to some of those guys doing football and basketball, if your ears can take it.

They don't have an allegiance to either team but keep screaming for some reason. Someone please tell me why these men inside my radio and TV are screaming at me?

The scene has shifted away from announcers who could turn a phrase, spin an amusing yarn, crack a joke and even mess up a call. Now they want to trick us into thinking they're perfect and impress us with how smart they are.

A sports writer probably shouldn't say this but when I watch or listen to a game, it doesn't matter whether the pitcher grips the ball with or against the seams.

Nor do I care about statistics like the field-goal kicker is 83 percent accurate in the second half of TV doubleheaders outdoors on partly cloudy days of soldout games east of the Mississippi.

Seriously, sports don't have to be so serious that somebody has to tell me ahead of a play what's going to happen. They're going to be wrong half the time anyway, so just tell me what happened after it happened, but not in too much detail.

More important is that announcers leave us laughing after a game regardless of who wins and who loses.

Meredith and Santo did that, for me anyway.

So now that they're both gone, in the words of Willie Nelson by way of Dandy Don, “Turn out the lights, the party's over.”

mimrem@dailyherald.com