Jim McKay

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Jim McKay (born: James Kenneth McManus * 24. September 1921 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ; † 7. June 2008 in Monkton , Baltimore County , Maryland ) was an American sportscaster , who primarily through its incisive CatchPhrases ( Tags popular) was. He was also known outside America for his coverage of the Munich hostage-taking during the 1972 Summer Olympics .

biography

McKay first grew up in Philadelphia. At 13, his family moved to Baltimore . There he attended the Jesuit school Loyola Blakefield , which he left in 1943 with a bachelor's degree . He spent the next three years in the United States Navy , including as a mine sweeper in Brazil .

From 1946 to 1947 he worked as a police reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun . When the newspaper founded a television station called WMAR-TV in 1947, he joined the station as a writer, producer and broadcaster. In 1950 he moved to CBS , where he worked as the host of a variety show called "The Real McKay". To match the title of the show, it was unceremoniously renamed Jim McKay.

In the 1950s he worked in a wide variety of moderation fields, including a. for weather reports , game shows and political magazines. Over time, sports reporting emerged as the focus of his work . In 1960 he was supposed to take over the reporting on the Olympic Winter Games , but suffered a nervous breakdown in advance . The Summer Olympics in Rome then marked his debut as a sports reporter. In total, he was supposed to report on eleven Olympics, the last time in 2002 for NBC .

His coverage of the 1972 Summer Olympics, when the Palestinian group Black September took eleven members of the Israeli team hostage and later died in an unsuccessful rescue attempt, stayed in the collective memory . McKay reported 16 hours live about the hostage situation for the broadcaster ABC .

" When I was a kid, my father used to say our greatest hopes and worst fears are seldom realized. Our worst fears were realized tonight ... They're all gone. (Free translation: When I was a child, my father always told me that our greatest hopes and worst fears rarely become a reality. Tonight our worst fears became truth - they [the hostages] are all gone.) "

- Jim McKay : at the end of the report

In addition to the Olympics, he reported on numerous other sports events, such as the Kentucky Derby , the British Open and the Indianapolis 500 . One of his last major reports was about the 2006 World Cup . He has won twelve Emmys over the course of his career .

Jim McKay was also the founder of the Maryland Million Classic horse race . His son Sean McManus is president of the sports and news division of CBS .

In 2008 Jim McKay passed away at the age of 86.

literature

  • McKay, Jim: The Real McKay: My Wide World of Sports. Plume 1999, ISBN 0452280257 .
  • Miller, Toby / Geoffrey A. Lawrence and Jim McKay: Globalization and Sport: Playing the World . Sage Pubn Inc 2001. ISBN 0761959696

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary in The New York Times (online edition)
  2. ↑ Statesman.com ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.statesman.com
  3. ↑ Obituary on sports.espn.go.com

Web links

personal data
SURNAME McKay, Jim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McManus, James Kenneth (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sports reporter
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 2008
Place of death Monkton (Maryland) , Baltimore County , Maryland