Sports at Lunch, Dick Enberg and Bill Walton

We’ve welcomed Dick Enberg into our homes, through the magic of sports on television, for so many years. Those who are new to San Diego first knew him as central to a national broadcast team with Al Maguire and Billy Packer, the network triumvirate that elevated college basketball to a screen separate from the pro game. Those who grew up in San Diego, or migrated here long before the masses arrived, knew Enberg from following Southern California sports when he served as the voice the Los Angeles Rams, the California Angels and the UCLA Bruins.

Now Enberg is sharing his life with his adopted family – sports fans -- through television pictures, sounds and his signature line, “Oh, my!” He has written a book entitled, quite naturally, “Oh, my!” And he offered a special reading on Dec. 14 as part of the San Diego Hall of Champions Sports at Lunch series.

Sharing center stage with Enberg was Bill Walton, whose emergence as a icon in the basketball Enberg described so eloquently in Walton’s UCLA days as an All-American and national Player of the Year. Center stage is the proper description, since a stage was set up on center court at the Hall of Champions, the same hardwood floor from the Federal Building’s days as the gymnasium home to the USA Volleyball team that has been preserved in the sports museum.

Walton guided us through the chapters, asking Enberg to tell us about growing up in Michigan on a farm; his inauspicious start in broadcasting at Central Michigan University; his choice of “Oh, my!” as a signature line while at Indiana University; his move to the Los Angeles market; and later the national and international stages he holds in broadcasting.

Walton, mentioning he lost his own father in the past year, also wanted to hear about Enberg’s father and their father-son relationship that was strained but in the end loving.

Enberg’s broadcasting career started by accident, he told us. As a Central Michigan student, he applied for a job as a janitor at the only radio station in the small town of Mt. Pleasant. But when the station manager heard Enberg’s voice, he was offered instead an audition and later a job.

“What if he had given me the job I wanted?” Enberg asked, inviting his audience to ponder with him the ironic turns one’s life can take.

At Indiana, where he was earning a Masters degree while also broadcasting Big Ten sports for the Hoosiers’ network, Enberg decided he needed a signature line. He decided the Midwestern expression “Oh, my” worked. He explained it’s more a expression of dismay – such as his mother saying “Oh, my, Richard” when she was disappointed in something he did. But for a sports call, he added the exclamation point.

“I tried it out and after three or four games, I was walking through the Indiana graduate center when so friends saw me and called out, “Oh, my!”

Enberg smiled, looking down humbly, and added, “It’s been a wonderful friend for me all these years.”

The chapter with Maguire, the old Marquette-basketball-coach-turned-analyst, was an important one to Enberg. He said the street-smart New Yorker Maguire tried to educate and protect Enberg, the small-town farmboy.

“He called me Dixie, and one day he said, ‘Dixie, is no a good answer or bad?’ I answered bad, but he said, “No is a good answer. Yes is the best answer, but no is a good answer, too. The bad answer is maybe. With maybe, you have to wait a week or a month to find out the answer. With no, you don’t have to wait.’ That was Al.”

Enberg had other stories about George Allen, the Rams coach in the 1960s; Ted Williams, his boyhood idol while the San Diegan played for the Boston Red Sox; and many other sports figures.

But Walton wouldn’t let Sports at Lunch end without a Enberg discussing his father.

Enberg talked about the tough love of his father. He told a story of how he came home from a high school basketball game, in which he scored 22 points, and sought praise from his father. But his father’s reply included the observation that his opponent scored 25. Enberg said he expressed his hurt on his way out the door when his father stopped him with words Enberg has always use has motivation.

“The day you think you’re so good you can’t improve, you can only go one way,” Enberg’s recalled his father telling him. “I didn’t like that lesson. I wish he had said something else, but what a powerful lesson. I’m 70 years old next month, and I’m still driven by that.”

Enberg closed the story about his father’s death and he and his wife had the inevitable task of going through his father’s belongings.

“We found a couple of shoe boxes with tapes of games I had broadcast many years ago in Los Angeles,” Enberg said. “He had put his tape recorder with a microphone next to the radio. The tapes were all neatly organized. That was his way of saying how he was very proud of me.”