Vitale -- yes, Vitale -- makes welcome comeback
When all the preparations for the Dick Vitale conference call were completed and it finally came up on the phone early this week, the first thing one heard was Vitale in the background warming up his voice by singing, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."
I'm sorry, but how can you not like a goofball like that?
I'll admit it: Like many of my critical ilk, I've been hard on Vitale from time to time in the past as an over-the-top self-parody. Yet listening to him describe his illness and recovery from surgery after having potentially cancerous ulcers removed from his throat, I felt something click.
Vitale does epitomize something about college basketball, about the excitability and the willfully naive pageantry and, yes, the youthfulness that separate it from the pro game. And if a guy can capture that at Vitale's age, more power to him.
He said he expected to feel 12 years old when he returned from a two-month layoff to do the Duke-North Carolina game Wednesday night, and indeed he was as joyful as ever. His voice, scratchy at first, soon warmed and held up through the game.
Working a schedule that will find him doing about as many games as ever, but no back-to-backs or doubleheaders, he'll do Georgetown-Louisville at 8 p.m. Saturday on ESPN.
"I'm excited. I feel like a new guy," Vitale said on the call, sounding much as he always has. "I didn't want my career to end because of a physical ailment. It's gravy time for me, I'm 68 … and I'm living a life that's been a dream."
What came through is that Vitale is genuine -- genuinely excited by life, with a genuine expertise for college hoops, and, yes, genuinely goofy.
When he said, "I got through it a lot easier than I thought I would," because he was having bladder problems and prostate surgery at the same time, and the catheter distracted him from all other woes, I wanted to punch in the code to ask a question and say, "Hey Dick, TMI. Please, take a timeout, baby!"
Yet he also insisted, "My heart and soul is basketball," a sentiment that might have sounded false coming from anyone else.
He went into how "ESPN changed my life," when it scooped him up as an analyst after he was fired as an assistant with the Detroit Pistons in 1979. He said, in hindsight, he didn't think he'd have made it to age 50 as a coach. "I just hated losing," he said. "It used to tear my heart."
Instead, he channeled that passion into unabashed admiration for the game and its college players, and in that he became "the voice" of college hoops.
"I was never a smooth guy, like the play-by-play guys," he said, displaying a hidden self-awareness. No, he was a coach, and "we talk from out throat, and not from our diaphragm." Yet that was his signature. "Look at Rod Stewart, he's raspy, and he makes millions of dollars," Vitale said, adding, "Raspiness is one thing. I've always been raspy. But it was hoarse," meaning his voice.
The last two or three years were "a tough, tough time," he said. "Every game I was a nervous wreck, worried over what was coming out of my mouth, because the throat was a problem."
For years, no one had any answers, so it might have been a relief when a doctor finally found it was not reflux but ulcers causing the problem, but for the sticking point that they might be cancerous.
"The word just scares the life out of anyone," Vitale said. "You don't think too much about basketball, you think about other things."
He talked about being in the hospital, commiserating with others going through various types of biopsies. "I got good news, good news in that it came out that it was not cancerous, but a lot of people don't get good news," Vitale said.
If anything, it made him even more appreciative of the life he has -- if that were possible. "At 68, man, every day is special, every day," he said.
So all right, let's appreciate Dick Vitale for who he is and what he does, and I'll go beyond that to say he's earned the right to do basketball on TV for as long as he wants -- just as long as he doesn't start doing ads for prostate drugs or more-comfortable catheters -- that's TMI, baby!
In the air
Remotely interesting: Comcast SportsNet Chicago presents its 20th annual Sports Awards -- going back to the days of SportsChannel, of course -- in a live ceremony at the Hilton Chicago at 7:30 p.m. Monday.
ESPN Deportes runs highlights from the Caribbean Series winter baseball playoffs at 2 p.m. Sunday.
End of the dial: WSCR 670-AM will air only five White Sox spring training games in their entirety. Four other games will run as "partial interactive games," in which Ed Farmer and Chris Singleton do the first three innings, then conduct a talk show with listener input.
"SportsCentral" with host Jim Memolo airs live from the Chicago Auto Show at 7 p.m. today on WGN 720-AM.
-- Ted Cox