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Death Watch '02: Chick Hearn, Legendary Sports Broadcaster
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By Paul Shrug, Section News
Posted on Mon Aug 5th, 2002 at 10:13:44 PM PDT
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Warmest greetings! More death! Errr... make that, for all intents and purposes, might-as-well-be-death.
The play-by-play voice of the Los Angeles Lakers and a massive behind-the-scenes architect for the game of basketball, Chick Hearn, 85, has slipped into what doctors believe is a coma from which he will never recover. This means that he's likely called his last Laker game and is facing elimination in the National Mortality Association playoffs.
Wow... what an awkward, laborious euphemism for death. Excuse me. Onto the pre-emptive obit.
Update [2002-8-5 22:13:7 by Paul Shrug]: Hearn died for real this evening at 6:30pm.
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| Hearn seriously injured his brain in a fall at his San Fernando Valley home, and had to receive two craniotomies to repair the hemmorhage to his brain.
Despite the fact that we all hate the Lakers here -- we all hate the Lakers, right? -- I can't hear you! -- Hearn's consistent presence and enthusiasm for the game no doubt helped to increase its popularity during the 70's and 80's. He broadcast his first game in 1965, and literally missed no games whatsoever until health reasons demanded he do so in 2001. Incredibly, up to that point, he had been the only play-by-play announcer the Lakers had ever had since their move to Los Angeles.
In covering Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson's careers from point-blank range, he was at ground level in relating the exploits of the first B-Ball stars of the mass media age. Hearn also coined the phrases "slam dunk," "air ball" and "finger roll," along with many others. As a regional sportcaster with sports-wide influence, he's roughly to basketball what Harry Caray was to baseball: A cheerleader for the game itself, who practically invented its media presence, and scripted a good part of arguably the most successful American sport of the last 15 years.
(This part deleted because it talked about how he hadn't died yet. He has.)
Your Hall Monitor of Death reminds you, only you can prevent forest fires. |
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