There are few sports journalists working today with a resume as broad as Chris Myers. From a decade doing everything for ESPN (SportsCenter, play by play, and succeeding Roy Firestone as host of the interview show “Up Close”) to decades of involvement with nearly every league under contract with Fox Sports (NFL, NASCAR, Major League Baseball), the kid from Miami has truly seen and done it all when it comes to sports television.
Which is why it’s a little surprising that his memoir, “That Deserves a Wow,” isn’t more revealing. It hits all the admittedly very high points — the first live interview with O.J. Simpson following the civil judgement against him in the Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman murders, the 1989 California earthquake that postponed the World Series for a week, and live on-the-scene reporting from the Centennial Park bombing at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 — but a lot of it is pulled from transcripts and comes across as a rather dry retelling of what fans will recall seeing on TV.
For readers looking to get into the business, though, there’s some good advice in these pages. Myers knew early on what he wanted to do with his life and began writing down his goals. “Get on the radio. Be an anchor on TV,” he scrawled in lipstick on his mirror as a kid. As he grew, he swapped the mirror for note cards and kept them close to his bed, reading them often as reminders. And as he climbed to a top rung on the TV sports ladder, he followed this adage: “If you don’t jump at unexpected opportunities, you won’t get more than what’s expected.” That’s the tenet that convinced him to leave ESPN for Fox Sports, which was essentially a network start-up in 1998.
That decision led to a slew of opportunities that brought Myers face-to-face with a galaxy of sports stars. He recalls some of his most memorable on-camera moments, from Tom Brady after winning Super Bowls to Mike Tyson in his heyday to the Boise State player who proposed to his cheerleader girlfriend live on Fox. Unlike many TV sportscasters, Myers never got pigeonholed into a sport, which explains how he became the voice of NASCAR as stock car racing surged in popularity.
Being on TV does have its perks, and Myers’ personal friendships with Bill Murray and Charles Barkley fall into that category. Some of the best chapters recount escapades with each of them, one involving a corned beef sandwich and another Barkley’s prodigious gambling habit. There’s also some real heart here, as most fans will probably have forgotten the personal loss Myers experienced in 2012 when his 19-year-old son Christopher died in a car accident.
“Back then I thought, ‘Well, there’ll be other days.’ I didn’t realize that that was the only day,” is a line spoken by actor Burt Lancaster as Archie “Moonlight” Graham in the movie “Field of Dreams,” and Myers uses it to reflect on how it felt (and still feels) to lose a son. The supportive role played by Rick Hendrick, the legendary owner of Hendrick Motorsports, during that tumultuous time in Myers’ life, is a touching revelation.
In the end, it’s easy to forgive Myers for not dishing more or burning any bridges in his memoir. He admits he’s lived his dream and perhaps the ultimate lesson readers should take from the book is that, sometimes, nice guys do finish first.
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Rob Merrill, The Associated Press
