With the holidays traditionally spawning a time of reflection, Cynopsis Sports hit Thanksgiving week with an interview with Eric Mirlis, author of the book “I Was There!” which features 65 prominent sports broadcasters and journalists remembering the top 5 Sports Moments they have seen in person. Participants spanned the spectrum of sports leagues and networks, including Marv Albert (who also wrote the foreword), Joe Buck, Bob Costas, Frank Deford, Jim Nantz, Bob Ryan, Dick Stockton and more.
On the genesis of the book idea: It actually is a fun story! It goes back to 2005, when I was playing around with my own website. Every week, I would ask broadcasters and writers that I was friends with a different Top 5 question. One week, the topic was the “Top 5 Sports Moments Seen In Person”. The response I got was overwhelming, and it spread from there. A couple of weeks later, I was talking about it with two college friends of mine (Kenny Albert and Rich Ackerman) and Rich had talked about the topic in the press room of Madison Square Garden one night before a game. He told me some of the lists other media members had rattled off, and the two of them convinced me that it was a great topic for a book. That led to my first go-round, which became a book called “Being There”, which came out in 2007. “I Was There!” is really a sequel to that, but I’m really viewing this as a standalone project, given how much time has passed and how much the media landscape has evolved since then. Aside from a small handful of people, it is a completely different group of participants and stories.
On lining up talent: I’ve been lucky enough to have spent 25 years working in sports, which really helped with that. I hit up all of my friends that are writers and broadcasters, and then called in as many favors as I could after that. That made it a little easier, but there were still plenty of blind emails and finger-crossing that people would agree to be generous enough with time to chat with me and take part. Happily, once again, I got very lucky and was able to put together what turned out to be a great group of professionals…and I mean that in every sense of the word.
On some of the best stories: The best stories are the ones that catch you off-guard and put a cool spin on something you already knew about. There are a lot of those in the book, but two, in particular, that I love sharing, because they take that concept to a different level. First is Jeremy Schaap talking about being at the Bucky Dent game and sitting in Bucky Dent’s seats as he hit his famous home run. The other comes from Terry Gannon, who grew up with Rudy Ruettiger and was at the Georgia Tech-Notre Dame game depicted in the movie “Rudy”. In both cases, sports fans are very familiar with the event, but now get to see it from a completely different perspective. After I hung up the phone following each of those interviews, I knew I had something special that I was going to share.
On the variety of events: I’m not sure anything really surprised me, simply because everyone in the book has experienced so much. The depth of the potential stories was so great, that I knew that I could hear stories about literally anything. On one hand, you have Dick Stockton talking about Willie Mays’ catch in the 1954 World Series and Dave Kindred talking about Ben Hogan at the 1967 Masters, while on the other, Michelle Beadle talks about a low-level minor league hockey game and Survivor Series and Rob Stone talks about a bowling tournament.
