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Jack Whitaker RIP

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by mpcincal, Aug 18, 2019.

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  1. mpcincal

    mpcincal Well-Known Member

    mpcincal, Aug 18, 2019
    #1
  2. MileHigh

    MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

    RIP to a giant. It wasn't bikini wax that got him banned from the Masters. But "mob."

    Legendary sportscaster Jack Whitaker dies at 95

    But it was one word – “mob” – that got Whitaker booted from the CBS Masters telecast for six years.

    Whitaker was working the Masters telecast in 1966 when he said something that upset Augusta National Golf Club chairman Clifford Roberts.

    “The threesome was playing particularly slowly, and we knew we had to be off at 7 p.m. for Walter Cronkite,” Whitaker recalled in a 1979 interview. “I was doing the 18th hole, and as the players and the galleries were coming up the fairway, I said, ‘Here comes the mob.’ ”

    “It looked to me like a mob of people scurrying toward the green, but Mr. Roberts took offense. He said the gallery at the Masters was not a mob. And that was that.”

    “Every time you use a cliché you get in trouble,” Whitaker said years later in an interview with Inside Golf.

    “It was very crushing. I didn’t know about it until the following March,” Whitaker said of being told that he was being pulled off the Masters.

    “All of a sudden there was a backlash in the papers,” he said. “I got some very nice press so that made me feel a little better. Oh but it hurt.”
     
    MileHigh, Aug 18, 2019
    #2
  3. MileHigh

    MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

    Also, he landed at Omaha Beach, lest we forget.
     
    MileHigh, Aug 18, 2019
    #3
    Baron Scicluna, playthrough, garrow and 1 other person like this.
  4. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Jack was the voice of CBS 10 in Philly when I was a small child. Also did Eagles games, as the NFL wasn't such a big deal in the late '50s. He and Brookshier did the Eagles games in the '60s. Another part of my childhood gone. RIP.
    PS: It was McCord who said bikini wax and got banned from the Masters. Even as a teenager, I knew that if a fucking golf tournament could get announcers banned, the news on TV was precensored by the wealthy and powerful.
     
    Michael_ Gee, Aug 18, 2019
    #4
  5. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    Don't remember his play-by-play at all. In the mid-70s, when I started getting heavily into sports, he was mostly doing Eric Severied (sp?)-style commentaries at the end of big events,like the Super Bowl or Masters. A giant indeed. RIP.
     
    HanSenSE, Aug 18, 2019
    #5
  6. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    He was Brent before Brent, Costas before Costas - like most of his brethren, overshadowed by Cosell. Surprised ABC or NBC didn't grab him to compete against Cronkite, he had that much gravitas. Really a bad look for Augusta that they never invited him back - would have thought Nantz or Chirkanian had enough pull to make that happen.
     
    DanOregon, Aug 18, 2019
    #6
  7. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    He was special and great. That kind of guy doesn’t exist anymore in the positions he had.
    Peace
     
    heyabbott, Aug 18, 2019
    #7
  8. Chef2

    Chef2 Well-Known Member

    IMG_20190818_214024.jpg

    To be a fly on the wall with any of those crews.
    The old Sun Bowl stories with Pat and Tom are legendary.
     
    Chef2, Aug 18, 2019
    #8
    OscarMadison, garrow and HanSenSE like this.
  9. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    One of the '70s NFC title games they had Hornung out in the parking lot talking to fans and one said, "I hope it's going to be one grand game, because that's what I've got on the Rams." Better days than the prechewed mayonnaise that is all of NFL television now.
     
    Michael_ Gee, Aug 18, 2019
    #9
    Chef2 and HanSenSE like this.
  10. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Looking at that CBS announcing line-up - does doing weekly NFL games just not pay as much outside of the top teams ? Don't remember Gowdy on CBS - he was NBC's baseball guy then did American Sportsman and the Olympics on ABC. Oh and Lindsey Nelson and Vin Scully.This was 1980. One of the last years of Pr-ESPN.
     
    DanOregon, Aug 18, 2019
    #10
  11. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Gowdy was NBC's lead AFL and then AFC announcer as well as baseball.
     
    Michael_ Gee, Aug 19, 2019
    #11
  12. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    Gonna have to punch up that old NFL Today theme song on YouTube.
     
    playthrough, Aug 19, 2019
    #12
    OscarMadison likes this.
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