“Sir, I was brought here to be a reporter and the third man on the sports team,” I stammered. “But for the last month I’ve been the number-one anchor on sports at 6 P.M., our most-watched show, and yet I’m being paid as the third reporter. I don’t think that’s fair.”
“You’re right, John,” Klinkhammer said. “We’re taking advantage of you, and it isn’t fair.”
I was stunned that my complaint had worked, and worked so quickly. It was that easy! But the punch line came next.
“So as of tomorrow,” Klinkhammer said, “you’re off the air.”
As you can imagine, I backpedaled pretty quickly. I accepted the $17,000 for the top sports spot and kept my mouth shut after that!
But I couldn’t dismiss the disparity between the lowly sports anchor and the station’s big stars. On my first day on the job I was walking into the lobby when I heard the purr of a new Porsche 911. I turned to watch a beautiful blonde emerge from the passenger’s side. When the driver’s door opened, out stepped Gord Martineau, our lead newscaster, a dashing man of about thirty.
Gord and I soon forged a friendship. We’d work the same 6 P.M. newscast, then head out for dinner and drinks. Gord never let me reach into my pocket, and whenever he didn’t pick up the tab, his friends did. I was a few years younger than most of them, so they nicknamed me “Cubby.”
It seemed like everyone in Gord’s gang was rich, either through business or family money. They flashed lots of cash and surrounded themselves with beautiful women.
Gord took me to a party in Forest Hill, Toronto’s answer to Beverly Hills, hosted by a wealthy couple in their forties. We walked in the front door—the first mansion I’d ever been in—and I understood: so this is how the rich live.
While the couple gave us the tour I couldn’t get over the sheer amount of money they possessed. In the front drive they’d parked a Porsche and three Mercedes. Their house was bigger than every one of the two dozen places I’d lived in my entire life, combined. And just like Beverly Hills, Toronto had found cocaine. Although I had been offered it a few times, I’d never tried it—but it was getting harder to avoid. That night there was a bowl of it in the bathroom, and various guests had it as well.
I sat down next to a few of them, looking over my shoulder to make sure Gord didn’t see me because I didn’t want this getting back to the station. With the coast clear, I raised the coke spoon to my nose and inhaled deeply. A few more hits, and I knew this was a drug I wanted to have around.
After a few months of this I’d love to say that I woke up, realized how dangerous and stupid cocaine was, and stopped snorting it. But the truth is I got out due to pure economics. I simply couldn’t afford it.
Not long after that party the news director called me into his office.
“We want to offer you a new two-year contract,” he said. “How much do you want?”
My mind raced, but I didn’t skip a beat. “Thirty thousand in the first year,” I blurted out, “and forty in the second.”
“How about thirty and thirty-eight?” he countered just as quickly.
“Perfect,” I said.
I had just jumped from $17,000 to $30,000 in one minute, with $38,000 promised the next year. But I didn’t want to be one of those guys who snorts all his money up his nose. I was getting a huge break, and I didn’t want to waste it.
With that salary I could also move into the city, ending my daily half-hour commute. I started looking for a house, which I would share with a citytv producer, Jim Shutsa. We found a four-story townhouse in a neighborhood called Cabbage Town, with a suite on the top floor. We flipped a coin to see who would get to use the suite for their bedroom, and I won. It seemed like everything was going my way.
At about the same time the Toronto Sun included me in a story titled, “Toronto’s Terrific Men.” I even dated a sexy club singer named Carlene for a little while. I never had it so good.
I was partying late and going home with a different woman every night. I spent the next year going from one girl to the next, with nothing in common except that I couldn’t stay faithful to any of them. I spent more time creating alibis than building trust.
There was one exception. Early in 1981 I met a twenty-one-year-old named Lyndsay who worked in a bar near our studio. She dressed in the funky style of Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan four years before the movie came out. She liked to party and didn’t seem to have a care in the world. She also fed my fragile ego by latching on early and strongly. She was serious about me, and I hadn’t let that happen in a while.
After applying for my first job in Espanola in 1978, I never applied for a job again. It always happened the same way: someone heard me, liked me, and called me with a job offer, which is a lot more common in TV than in the “real world,” I’m sure, because your work can be seen by anyone, every day. I admit: I’ve never thought twice about it—which shows how you can take your good fortune for granted. I’m filled with insecurities, but not when it comes to work. It’s the one place I always feel completely at home, entirely comfortable and confident. Well, almost always.
A few months after I got my big raise in Toronto a headhunter from Stamford, Connecticut, called to ask me, “You ever consider working in the States?”
“Not really,” I replied. Toronto was my dream, and I’d achieved it.
“How much are they paying you in Canada?”
“Thirty thousand,” I said. “But I’ll be up to thirty-eight in six months or so.”
“What if I said you could make three times that in the States?”
He had my attention. “I’d say I’d have to listen,” I replied.
He phoned again the next day. He said he’d sent my tapes around and got solid offers from stations in Denver, Oklahoma City, and Baltimore. I immediately turned down Oklahoma City. I didn’t want to go as far west as Denver either, but I said I might consider Baltimore. That surprised him, as Baltimore was a notorious crime capital at the time, but I’d read it was changing quickly with a revitalized waterfront. More important, I didn’t want to live too far from Bernie, Gail, and my friends in Canada.
A few days later I took a tour of Baltimore and met the folks who ran WMAR-TV. At the end of my visit the station’s general manager offered me a three-year contract: $80,000 the first year, $90,000 for the second, and $100,000 for the third. Because the Canadian dollar was worth about eighty cents to the US dollar, his offer would nearly triple my Toronto salary.
By the time my return flight descended over the lights of Toronto, I knew I was going to leave my favorite city.
During my last two weeks in Toronto I had one of the greatest thrills of my broadcasting career. On March 19, 1980, the NHL’s Quebec Nordiques called Bernie up from Syracuse, making him just the fifth black guy to make it that far, starting with the great Willie O’Ree in 1958. Bernie’s coach? None other than our old friend, Jacques Demers.
I hunted down a clip from a recent minor league game of Bernie’s in Halifax—no small trick before computers. After I’d run through that day’s sports headlines, I ended the show by saying, “Big news today. The Quebec Nordiques have called up Bernie Saunders—my brother!” I then rolled the tape of Bernie on the ice, scoring a goal. “Let’s take another look,” I said with a grin, “from that exact same angle.” When I rolled it again my co-anchors and I were laughing, and I hope the viewers were too.
The following fall I drove to Buffalo, where the Nordiques were going to take on the Sabres. Whenever Bernie got on the ice, I jumped and hollered in the stands like a teenager.
After the game I met Bernie in the locker room. He took off his new uniform among some of the players we’d grown up watching on TV, guys like Marc Tardif and Andre Dupont and new stars like the Stastny brothers, Peter and Anton.
“You were fantastic out there,” I said. “I’m so proud.”
“I wish you were out there with me,” he said.
“You know I was.”
CHAPTER 18
> Big Man in Baltimore
IN 1980 TORONTO HAD ABOUT 3 MILLION PEOPLE, ALMOST four times more than Baltimore. But I knew that working in a major American market could open doors that even Canada’s biggest city couldn’t. After stumbling into this career as a lark, I was now playing chess with it, looking two moves down the board to set up a position at a national network.
It was also clear that the people at WMAR-TV in Baltimore were serious about getting me, and they proved it when they worked so hard with US Immigration to get me a work visa. Aside from the other sportscaster who was understandably a little frosty about getting passed over for the number-one spot on the sports desk, the people at the station were very welcoming, helping me get an apartment and settle in to my new hometown. Lyndsay followed me to Baltimore to see if we were for real.
My desk was about thirty feet from the men’s room and about sixty feet from a soda machine. My routine consisted of walking to the soda machine, dying of thirst, drinking a soda, and then walking to the men’s room—then repeating this ritual a few times a day.
Once I got in bed I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour without having to go to the bathroom. Lyndsay urged me to go to the doctor, but I stubbornly refused—a classic hockey player’s response. Then one day she cleverly asked me to take her to her doctor’s appointment. It wasn’t until we got there that she confessed the appointment wasn’t for her but for me.
When I told the doctor my symptoms he immediately tested my blood sugar. A normal blood sugar level runs between 80 and 120 milligrams; mine came in at a staggering 694. When Lyndsay left the room the doctor told me, “If your girlfriend hadn’t forced you to come see me, you’d have been in a diabetic coma within a couple of days. After that, anything could have happened, including death.”
The doctor admitted me into the hospital with a diagnosis of juvenile type 1 diabetes. I asked, “How can an adult get juvenile diabetes?”
He explained that sometimes it hits in adulthood. There are 29 million people with diabetes in the United States, and only about 1 million have type 1: I was one of the “lucky” ones. He said I’d have to take insulin injections for the rest of my life.
I’ve had a few serious incidents along the way, like most diabetics, but I’ve managed quite well with the disease, and it hasn’t stopped me from doing much.
I will always be grateful for Lyndsay’s intervention, which might have saved my life. But after a few months together she wanted to return to Canada to pursue college. I have to admit I didn’t like the looks we got in Baltimore as an interracial couple—as often from black people as from white.
Single again, I quickly gained a bad-boy reputation at a disco called Martinique’s. It didn’t hurt that my career was taking off—even faster than I’d hoped. Despite the differences between Canadian and American sports, for the most part the transition was pretty easy. Both the Toronto Blue Jays and the Baltimore Orioles play in the American League. I didn’t have far to go to see the NHL’s Washington Capitals, who play in Toronto’s conference, and even college football and basketball, which are largely foreign subjects to a Canadian who grew up in the sixties, were not hard to figure out. They quickly became two of my favorite sports.
I also got some extra help from a couple of future Hall of Famers. Eddie Murray, the Orioles’ star first baseman, had been burned by a writer early in his career and vowed it wouldn’t happen twice, so he refused to talk with the media—ever. He wouldn’t talk to me on the record either, but he and I somehow became very good friends.
After the Orioles won the World Series in 1983 I felt comfortable enough to ask him if we could do an extensive interview. After teasing me about how lucky I’d be to get that, he agreed, and our two-part sit-down interview became a big hit for our sports department—and a big controversy in town. Predictably, the other reporters were jealous and claimed Eddie only talked to me because he was prejudiced against white journalists. They overlooked the fact that he agreed to talk to me because we’d become friends, so he felt he could trust me. After all, he wasn’t talking to other black reporters either. But Eddie was right: I was very lucky to get that interview, which helped establish my credibility in town.
About an hour away, in downtown DC, Georgetown University basketball coach John Thompson had built the Hoyas into a national power. The team’s “us against the world” attitude rubbed many the wrong way, but it worked for them.
I got to know the Georgetown staff while they were scouting practices at Baltimore’s Dunbar High School, a national power in its own right. I had become friends with Dunbar’s head coach, Bob Wade, and often stopped by to say hello and watch practice. The Georgetown coaches often visited their gym, too, to recruit stars like David Wingate and Reggie Williams. So when Williams signed his national letter of intent in 1983 to play for Thompson at Georgetown, I had the scoop, which resulted in my first network story on NBC.
On the air that night I boldly predicted that “the Georgetown Hoyas will win the national championship next year.” That season, 1983–1984, Coach Thompson allowed me to watch his closed practices on occasion, which gave me an edge on the competition. Sure enough, the Hoyas beat Houston that year for their first national title.
I was thrilled to see Eddie Murray inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003 and Big John elected to the College Basketball Hall of Fame three years later—both very well deserved. I owe Eddie and Big John a great debt.
When I wasn’t working, I confess I spent most of my free time drinking, getting high, and chasing women, but I also coached a hockey team of twelve-year-old kids with former Baltimore Colt star Tom Matte. I kept my waking hours filled with as much activity as possible—good or bad—to avoid facing my thoughts, in a vain attempt to keep my depression at bay.
Working remained my best distraction, although sometimes it came with its own distractions. I still had to handle comments from my dad like, “This Toronto and Baltimore stuff isn’t anything to be proud of,” and “When are you going to be on a network so I can see you?” My personal favorite: “You look like you’ve put on a few pounds. No wonder you can’t get on network TV. Who wants a fat guy on their network?”
It was easier to brush aside those shots through self-medication than to deal directly with my father and all the insecurities he stirred in me.
By 1984, my fourth year in Baltimore, I had saved enough money to buy a townhouse in Ellicott City on the outskirts of Baltimore. Walking through that door as the owner was one of my proudest moments, a deep feeling of satisfaction. I even got a cocker spaniel named Angie.
My father had managed to weasel his way back into my life by doing me a few favors and odd jobs over the years. He really was an expert handyman too, so when I got my new place I asked him to come down and hang some curtains and blinds. I welcomed him when he arrived—no point in digging up ancient history—and he set to work hanging blinds in the basement family room. When I heard the drilling and hammering stop so he could cuss up a storm, I went downstairs to see what the problem was.
He wiped the sweat off his arm and said, “There’s no beam above this damned door. Could you have bought a bigger piece of shit? You really got taken, you know. Those contractors must’ve seen you coming a mile off.”
Just like that, I felt like I had been reduced from a TV journalist on the rise in the States to an incompetent ten-year-old kid back in Chateauguay. For a split-second I even feared he might hit me. My father had a knack for bringing me down when I was at my highest—whether it was winning a Little League title or moving into the kind of home he could only have dreamed of. But I didn’t recognize the pattern until we started writing this book.
When I got a job in Moncton, he asked when I would make it to Toronto. When I moved to Toronto, he asked when I would make it in the States. When I made it to Baltimore, he asked when I would get to the network. When I moved into the home I’d worked hard to buy, he reduced it to garbage.
After his comment about my new house,
I ran outside and kept running until I reached a pasture. I sat beneath a tree and cried. I’ll never be good enough, I thought. But then I asked a better question: Why did his opinion mean so much to me? Even then, on some level I realized that this was his problem. It was only my problem if I wanted to make it my problem.
I wiped my tears and walked back, resolving not to let him put me down in my own home ever again. I walked downstairs and yelled at him, “Get out!”
When he tried to backtrack I ran upstairs, fetched his suitcase, and threw it down the steps. That was the day I decided I’d had enough of my father’s bullshit.
He loaded his tools in his truck and left.
Even when my career was going great, my problems were never far behind. If you don’t admit you’re depressed and get help, you tend to self-medicate. My drinking was getting out of control. That was horrible for my diabetes, but less because of alcohol’s effect on my blood sugar level than the bad habits drinking encourages, like eating the wrong things at the wrong time. If you’re alone, with no one looking after you, that can be deadly.
The “good” news, if you will, was that Baltimore’s police officers had a reputation for protecting their local celebrities. Orioles manager Earl Weaver, for example, had allegedly been stopped while driving drunk many times, but they apparently let him go every time. The bad news was the same: celebrities could do virtually anything they wanted, and that wasn’t what I needed.
One night I was driving about ninety miles per hour with my old Western Michigan buddy Neil Smith in the passenger seat and two girls in the back. We were passing around a bottle of whiskey, and Neil and I had a couple of beers going as well—being about as stupid as you could be. When we heard the siren of a squad car bearing down on us, I thought, There goes my career.
The officer approached my door and motioned me to roll down the window. He could clearly see the beer and smell the whiskey. He looked at my driver’s license, then at me, and said, “Have a nice night, Mr. Saunders.” That probably saved my career.
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