Living Out Loud

by Craig Sager

  I didn’t know what to do—and really didn’t understand what I had just done. I drove to the beach in Sarasota and sat on the sand, staring into the ocean, hoping the answer would come to me. I called my father and asked for advice. Not surprisingly, he ripped me for potentially ruining my career, but after some time he calmed down and persuaded me to figure it out. I did.

  No, I did not apologize. Instead I got back into my car and drove to WYND, our rival station across town, and offered the basketball package and myself to the station manager.

  Cliff didn’t press charges, and I got myself a new job. It was a win-win for me.

  After another six months on the radio in Sarasota, I decided that it was time to take another step closer to being a television sports anchor, which meant getting on television in any way possible. A buddy of mine, Wayne “Duke” Schifferly, got hold of a camera, and we went to a taping of Superstars, a made-for-TV competition on ABC featuring top athletes from all across the sports spectrum, so I could record some fake stand-ups for a résumé reel, wearing some very fanciful outfits. Superstars included professional soccer player Kyle Rote, Jr., routinely defeating more famous names from conventional sports, boxer Joe Frazier nearly drowning in the swimming competition, and O. J. Simpson outsprinting all comers in the challenges. Ironically, “Duke” saw the opportunity to double down, and, along with running camera, he went on to become O. J.’s personal bodyguard.

  I spent the next several months sending out résumé tapes to television stations all over the country for a variety of on-air jobs in news, sports, and weather. My mailbox quickly filled up with rejection letters, some going so far as to let me know that I would never be on television. I kept every single letter, not so much as an incentive to become better at my craft but as a reminder of those who doubted me. Here are some of the quotes from the letters:

  “You don’t have what we are looking for.”

  “There are no openings that meet your qualifications.”

  “I suggest you pursue another line of work.”

  “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

  “We’ve returned your resume tape.”

  There was one letter of encouragement, though, that I also kept. It was from a sportscaster in Dallas who went on to reach national fame.

  You appear to have a lot of passion and love for your work, and I will be happy to discuss my thoughts on your resume tape with ideas on how to improve. Give me a call.

  Verne Lundquist

  In 1975, ABC Sports decided to add sideline reporters to its college football telecasts, and though I had little television experience at the time, I went for it. I made it down to the final five. They ended up hiring Jim Lampley, who would go on to broadcast the Olympics, boxing, football, and every other sport imaginable, and Don McGuire, who would go on to become my boss at Turner Sports from 1987 to 1995. But I didn’t pick up my bat and glove and head home. I kept going after it.

  After getting rejected from every station, I got a call from WLCY in Tampa/St. Petersburg, offering me a chance to audition for a meteorologist position. The first thing I did was go to a local thrift shop in Sarasota, a city dominated by retirees, and pick out a seersucker suit in yellow, blue, and white. The second thing I did was buy the Golden Guide to Weather and memorize meteorological terms like “cumulus clouds,” “cold front,” and “barometric pressure.”

  The good news? I nailed the audition and got the job. The bad news? The station manager told me that I had to tone down the clothes, because the camera couldn’t focus when I lifted my arms to point to the map.

  Weather reports should be fun, and my broadcasts tried to convey that message at least in part through my wardrobe of colorful jackets, shirts, and ties. I had fun for a while, but I quickly became bored with doing the same South Florida weather every night at 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.—other than during hurricane season, the conditions didn’t exactly change. So I started to look for something else. Though my dad encouraged me to get on the news side, every ounce of my being missed the competitive world of sports and the dramatic moments it produced.

  WINK-TV in Fort Myers was looking for a sports director and sports anchor, and I was in. When I left the station in Tampa, one of the requirements for my replacement, according to the station manager, was for that person to change his or her name to Sunny Day.

  When I first started at WINK-TV, I was happily a one-man band. I made phone calls, lugged the camera and tripod everywhere, hit record, did interviews, edited stories, wrote scripts, and delivered sportscasts during the newscasts. I brought with me to Fort Myers my grassroots approach and work ethic, hitting as many high school games on the schedule as possible and often not getting back to the station until ten minutes before air. I also did play-by-play of local high school games, and games at nearby Edison Community College, as well as hosting pep rallies at local schools. I had never worked so hard in my life, but I loved every minute of it.

  The Kansas City Royals held their spring training in Fort Myers every February and March, and WINK would regularly cover the team and its games, so I got to know many folks within the organization, including manager Whitey Herzog. When the Royals’ home television station, KMBC in Kansas City, was looking for a new sports anchor and Royals pre-and postgame host in 1978, I was a finalist, but I lost out to another young broadcaster.

  But in 1979, that same job opened up again, and Whitey suggested that they consider me. I got the job and made the decision to leave the sun of Florida for the flatlands of the Midwest. Kansas City was a bigger market than Fort Myers, and that’s how anchors and reporters moved up in television: by moving to progressively bigger markets. In Kansas City, in addition to hosting the Royals shows and anchoring sports on the evening news, I did play-by-play for the NBA’s Kansas City Kings and preseason games for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs.

  In the fall of 1980, CNN, which had made its cable debut on June 1 of that year, designated the Kansas City Royals–New York Yankees playoff series as its first sports remote, meaning that reporters would be covering the event on-site. However, Major League Baseball rejected its credential request, telling founder Ted Turner that CNN was not an accredited network and never would be. Not one to take no for an answer, Ted called Royals public relations director Dean Vogelaar, looking for ideas to bail out CNN. Dean told him to call me, as I would be covering the series, and it just so happened that I lived with two of the Royals’ players—Craig Chamberlain and Steve Mingori—along with PR assistant Mike Swanson.

  After speaking with Ted, I agreed to record my story segments to air on KMBC in Kansas City and then record a different tag line or ending and turn it over to the guys at CNN to air. Nobody watched the channel at the time, so I was never concerned that my bosses would see it.

  Flash-forward five months to March 1981, when I received a call from CNN asking if I would come take a tour of their Atlanta headquarters. On a layover in Atlanta, en route to do a Royals spring training game, I visited with Ted Turner, and he promised me an hour each night devoted to sports, which was a hell of a lot better than the three minutes I was doing on the newscasts. And that’s how I became CNN employee number 343.

  Being part of a start-up network was at once frustrating and invigorating. In those early years, we had little credibility and limited resources, but even as we tried to find our sea legs, we produced some great television. As CNN expanded, along with its sister network, TBS, we were able to create college football and basketball programming, cover the Goodwill Games, and report from around the world. When we landed the NBA contract in 1984, it was a game changer. Michael Jordan and the NBA were exploding, and in 1988 came the launch of TNT, the current home of the NBA. Turner Broadcasting shelled out a whopping $20 million to secure the rights to NBA games in a two-year deal in 1984, which at the time seemed astronomical to rights holders. But with the arrival of a new generation of superstars, the NBA was taking off. Four years later, the deal was worth $50 million. (For comparison’s sak
e, the contract today costs Turner a reported $1.2 billion a year.)

  I have been with Turner ever since, covering every sport imaginable on almost every continent. I have witnessed some amazing events, but more important, I have experienced the emotions that sports bring out. One of those moments was in New York City in 2001.

  Like most Americans, I remember where I was when I first learned of the September 11 attacks, and I couldn’t have been farther away from New York. I had just wrapped up my broadcasting duties with Turner at the Goodwill Games in Brisbane, Australia. Stacy had come with me on the trip, and our return flight to the States was on Tuesday, September 11, though most of the Turner crew had flown out on Monday. On Monday evening (Tuesday morning in New York), we were out to dinner when video of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center started to replay on the televisions at the restaurant. Trite to say it, but it was surreal. I immediately thought of my father and called him, and Dad was in full fighting mode.

  “We got to go to war with them,” he insisted, ready to enlist even in his eighties.

  Not unexpectedly, with the American airports shut down, our flight was canceled.

  I made it to New York early on September 21, in time for the Mets–Braves game, which was being broadcast on TBS. Major League Baseball had put its schedule on hold immediately following the attacks, and this was the first game in New York City after the attacks. I knew it would be an emotional game for all involved, and the stands were packed with first responders, many of whom had spent the past ten days searching for survivors—and then bodies—at Ground Zero. The pregame tribute to the victims was emotional, as was the national anthem. For a good part of the telecast, I reported from the left-center-field section, where many New York City firefighters fought back tears. The game of baseball was clearly just a respite—a distraction—if only for a few hours. When the Mets’ Mike Piazza hit a mammoth two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth inning to put the Mets ahead, 3–2, the 41,235 in attendance erupted into not only a cheer I hadn’t heard all game, but one I’d never heard in my baseball-going career. I interviewed Mayor Rudy Giuliani during the game and Piazza after the game. Those interviews just felt so different from any others I’d ever done.

  While in New York, I was given a tour of Ground Zero. As it is for anyone who spent time there, particularly in the first few weeks post-9/11, it is hard to describe the sensations and the feelings. A layer of smoke hovered over the area, and the smell from fires permeated the scene.

  It was shortly after my visit to New York that I donated my frequent flier miles to the NYC Fire Department, because those men and women needed free trips more than I did.

  I will never forget those days in New York, just as the Hank Aaron home run game is etched in my memory.

  14

  VICTORY

  In late April 2014, I was a week into my chemotherapy treatment at Northside Hospital, and so far, I felt no ill effects from the chemo. This isn’t so bad, I remember thinking. The game plan that Dr. Holland had set up was to first kill all the existing evidence of leukemia in my body—the “blasts”—and then get me into remission, meaning with little or no evidence of any blasts.

  A strong measure of the stage of the disease is the amount of blasts in the bloodstream. If abnormal immature white blood cells fill the bone marrow and flush into the bloodstream, it causes an array of serious issues, including limiting the production of healthy blood cells. For healthy humans, the percentage of blasts in the blood at any given time is zero. My blood contained 27 percent when I was first diagnosed.

  If I could get into remission, we could consider doing a stem cell transplant, which is really the only hope for an AML patient. Rarely will the leukemia go away with just chemo and never return. So it’s best if a donor can be found, so that their stem cells can help create a new, healthy way for the patient’s body to produce blood cells.

  While we waited to see if the chemo had an effect on the blasts, which could take two to three weeks, doctors were already in the process of identifying a potential match for a transplant. In fact, as soon as I was admitted to the hospital, doctors had begun the often lengthy process of identifying any potential matches in Europe, as it has the largest blood donor base in the world. But even if doctors could find a match in Europe, professionals would then need to find the anonymous donor, get his or her agreement to move forward with the process, collect the needed marrow, and ship it to the States. This search could take months, so the doctors turned to my family for help in finding a donor as I continued to receive treatment.

  Meanwhile, day after day, there was routine testing of my vitals and of my blood, and the occasional painful bone marrow biopsy. I felt strong as the days wore on, and my blood levels seemed to indicate that I was responding well to the chemo. On May 10 (day nineteen of my being in the Blood and Marrow Transplant unit), Dr. Holland came in the room during his rounds.

  “You can go,” he said, as matter-of-factly as you can deliver surprisingly great news.

  “I can go?” I asked incredulously. “Today?”

  “Yes, Craig,” he said, smiling. “You can go home today. You still need to come in every day for treatment and testing, but you can go home.”

  I almost jumped out of the hospital bed, pulled out my IV, and gave the man a hug. Thirty days in the hospital? Not me. He explained that the blasts in my bloodstream were decreasing every day. He also said that he and his colleagues were amazed at how well my body had responded to the chemo.

  Of course, going home came with restrictions. I was told to avoid mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, picking up the dog poop, or doing any household maintenance—to which Stacy replied, “That shouldn’t be a problem. He doesn’t do those things anyway.”

  When we got home, Riley came out to the driveway before I even got out of the car and gave me a huge hug. Ryan was at a friend’s birthday party, and Stacy decided that we would surprise him when he returned. I came into the house after being away for almost three weeks, and I felt great. We laughed a little, I ate some food, and then I went upstairs to lie down in my own bed.

  When Ryan came home, Stacy was waiting.

  “I have a surprise for you,” she told him through a few tears. “Go look in Mommy’s bedroom.”

  He walked into the room and immediately sprinted the ten steps to the bed and leaned over and gave me a hug.

  “I can’t believe it!” he said excitedly. “You’re home! Now I don’t have to imagine you in my dreams anymore.” My heart melted.

  The next day, I was right back at Northside Hospital, where Stacy and I would go every morning for the next few months after taking the kids to school, spending six or seven hours a day there in the early days, having transfusions and getting platelet refueling. Five days after Dr. Holland had released me, he announced that I was in complete remission. The chemo had worked! I had beaten AML. I had not been so excited in weeks. I couldn’t wait to get back to work and onto the golf course.

  But remission was just the first step, I remembered. I still needed the transplant, and Dr. Holland targeted early July for the procedure. He also told me that I needed another five days of chemo, starting June 2, to make sure that there were no signs of leukemia in my body as we headed toward the transplant, although he did concede that I could get the chemo as an outpatient.

  But I still needed a donor match. And wouldn’t you know it: the match was Craig Sager.

  15

  A Match

  My siblings and I were told that finding a donor to give Dad a bone marrow transplant was the only option for long-term remission. The online research I had been doing since his diagnosis prepared me for the possibility of a transplant. Hearing it for the first time, however, was something I wasn’t quite prepared for.

  To me, bone marrow was that yellowish, spongy stuff in the middle of bones that I had no appetite for visualizing. Now it had become the only way to save my dad’s life. I could envision them extracting it out of his body. I
could picture all the new cells that would have to fill his hollow bones to build an entire new immune system from scratch. My dad was going to have to go through this dangerous procedure, and I fully grasped how complicated, terrifying, and incredible this process was going to be.

  After hearing that a transplant was the route we were taking, I soon became convinced that I was going to be the one to donate the bone marrow, even though the statistics weren’t in my favor. Finding a match is a long shot—there are six leukocyte antigen key markers that the tests compare between the donor and the recipient, and the doctors suggested that there was only a 25 percent chance that I would match on half. The odds of being the perfect donor they were searching for were even lower—only 2 percent of children share all six markers with a parent—but no matter how long it had been or what age I was at, spending father-son time always reminded me of just how much the two of us are alike. We had the same competitive drive, the same constant craving for excitement, and the same behaviors and mannerisms—even the same taste in clothes. Everything I felt inside myself when I was in my own world was in him, too, I believed, only amplified.

  The donor testing process can be done with a swift cotton swab of the mouth to collect a DNA sample, but for family members, nurses go straight to blood tests to accelerate the steps. My biggest obstacle was getting over my fear of needles. As a kid, if I knew I had a doctor’s appointment in a month, that whole month was ruined. One of the happiest days of my childhood was when I talked a doctor out of giving me a finger prick.