Whenever Jim McKay walked through a pressbox, he wanted to be treated as just one of the guys. His ego was the flip side of Howard Cosell, his longtime colleague on ABC Sports. Where Cosell was bombastic and vain, McKay was quiet, dignified, and totally unimpressed with himself.

Among the ink-stained wretches – or dashing knights of the keyboard, if you prefer – McKay achieved the level of universal respect that Cosell always wanted but never got. It was because he wasn’t just another TV talking head. McKay had substance and style. He was a reporter, first and foremost, but he also spoke with an eloquence and insight rare in his field.

So the typists, even the most cynical ones, treated McKay with the deference he had earned. Always a gentleman without ever being stuffy about it, McKay greeted friends warmly, a sparkle in his eyes and a question on his lips, “So who do you like in the big race?”

Maybe it was like that before the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Maybe, because of all those years as host of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” McKay always was looked upon as almost a family member, the good neighbor who always was welcome in the living room. But there’s also no doubt that the tragic events of that summer changed both McKay and the way we perceived him.

When it was learned that Palestinian terrorist had invaded the Olympic Village and taken hostage 11 members of the Israeli team, McKay was taking a day off. He quickly put on his work clothes over his swimming suit and hurried to the studio to anchor ABC’s around-the-clock coverage.

For many long hours, the world was transfixed by the events in Munich. Everyone hoped for the best but expected the worst. The nightmare ended when a commando raid failed and all the hostages were killed. Haggard and haunted, McKay looked into the camera and told America, “They’re all gone.”

If he wasn’t the Walter Cronkite of TV sports before Munich, that’s what he became during the hostage crisis and what he remained throughout the rest of his career. Everywhere he went, weeping Americans embraced him and thanked him for his professionalism during the tragedy.

Touched though he was, Jim never seemed completely comfortable in the role in which he was cast. The way he looked at it, he was just doing his job the way he always did it. He told me, “Anybody would have done the same.” Maybe so. But nobody would have done it as eloquently as McKay.

The truth be told, McKay thought of himself as more of an old-fashioned reporter than an international celebrity. After serving in the Navy in World War II, he started his journalism career as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun.
When the Sun started its own TV station (WMAR) in 1947, Jim was the first local on-air broadcaster seen in Baltimore. He served as host to a three-hour weekday show, “The Sports Parade,” and eventually moved to New York to do the same kind of show for CBS. He changed his name from McManus to McKay because CBS wanted to call the show “The Real McKay.”

But it was when he moved to ABC and began hosting “Wide World of Sports” in 1961 that McKay became a household name. It has been estimated that he visited 40 countries and traveled 4.5 million miles to record the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” in sports ranging from basketball to table tennis to ice fishing.

We got to know each other in the late 1970s, when I was sports editor of The Courier-Journal and Jim was anchoring ABC’s telecast of the Triple Crown races. Much as he loved all the sports he covered on “Wide World of Sports,” Jim loved thoroughbred racing most of all.

He and his wife, Margaret, bought the farm in Monkton and owned a string of horses that raced mainly on the Maryland circuit. Most of his horses were trained by Bill Boniface, who won the 1983 Preakness with Deputed Testamony.

“Jim was one of the best ambassadors our sport could ever have,” Boniface told the Associated Press after learning of Jim’s death. “He really enjoyed the thoroughbred business. As many great sporting events as he was involved in, he would say he enjoyed the Derby and the Preakness the most. He really put our sport at the top.”

He also put his money where his mouth was. McKay was the driving force behind the “Maryland Million,” a nine-race card for Maryland-bred horses that was modeled after the Breeders Cup.

Jim was born in 1921, three years before Nellie Morse became the first – and still the only – filly to win the Preakness. Somebody wrote a poem about Nellie that had a line about her “showing the boys the way home.” Often, when I’d run into Jim in the Pimlico pressbox, he would recite the poem, his eyes twinkling with delight. He loved words, the texture and richness and sound of them.

In 1984, I was thrilled to learn that Pimlico Race Course had selected me to receive the Old Hilltop Award, which it annually gives to journalists “in recognition of their outstanding coverage of thoroughbred racing for more than 20 years.”

It was a huge honor that became even bigger when I learned that Jim McKay would be my co-recipient. I suddenly felt small and unworthy. Much as the award meant to me, it meant so much more to Jim. Baltimore was his town and Pimlico was his track. He deserved to have the stage all to himself. Typically, of course, he made sure I got more attention than I deserved.

For all his broadcast success, McKay never lost his love or respect for the written word, as I learned when he gave a speech in Lexington, Ky., in the early 1990s.

I began a column about him by saying, “I’ve always thought of Jim McKay as the Red Smith of sports broadcasting, and that’s about as high a compliment as I can pay somebody in the electronic end of the business.”

I went on to explain that I grew up idolizing Red because of his graceful and witty prose. He had the ability to pull something worth reading out of even the most mundane game or boring athlete. I said McKay had the same ability.

“Of all the guys who have made it big in sports network TV over the last 30 years,” I wrote, “McKay is the best journalist of all. He’s a superb reporter, above all else, but he’s also a craftsman…I supposed the thing I like most about Jim’s stuff is that he always manages to hit the right notes emotionally. He knows when to be light-hearted and when to be serious. He lets a story develop without intruding on it.”

I didn’t think these were particularly insightful observations and I was certain they weren’t new. But that night, before his speech, McKay sought me out to thank me. “I think that’s the nicest compliment you could give me,” he said.

His eyes were moist. I was at a loss for words, so I just gave him a hug. He was a legend, sure, but he was so very human, too, and he wasn’t afraid to show it. That, at much as anything, is why America loved Jim McKay.