Vin Scully worked every sport, but we don’t think of him as the man who called Dwight Clark’s catch for CBS. (Though he was.) We think of him as, on both coasts, the Voice of the Dodgers. We think of him on the final pitch of Koufax’s perfect game: “Two-and-two to Harvey Kuenn …”
Cawood Ledford called the Kentucky Derby for national radio and the Kentucky Colonels – hey, remember the ABA? – for a Louisville station, but the reason his name hangs in the rafters of Rupp Arena is that he was the Voice of the Wildcats. Larry Munson did both the Braves and the Falcons, but we know him for the sugar falling from the sky, for property being destroyed, for the hobnailed boot. We know him for Georgia football.
Keith Jackson was a bit different. We don’t connect him to a single team so much as we do a single sport. He did the Olympics. He was the first play-by-play man on “Monday Night Football.” He did the World Series when the masses still watched the World Series. He was many things as an announcer, but mostly he was one thing.
He was color and pageantry. He was Texas-Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. He was Ohio State-Michigan in the Big House, as he dubbed Michigan’s stadium. He was the Granddaddy of Them All in Pasadena. He was three yards and a cloud of dust and Switzer’s whoosh-whoosh wishbone. He was college football.
Jackson died Friday at 89. He was born in Roopville, Ga., which sits in Carroll County not far from Star Point and Yellow Dirt. According to the Los Angeles Times, he rode his horse to school. He joined the Marines at 16 and matriculated at Washington State, which is about as far from Roopville as you can get, and then he – like "Wide World Sports" – was off spanning the globe for ABC. He was good wherever he went, but the feeling you had when you heard that voice on autumn Saturdays was, not to get all sappy here, the feeling of coming home. (Meaning both him and you.)
I never actually met Keith Jackson. Saw him in person a bunch of times, but I never said, “Hello.” That’s another of life’s little regrets. But if you follow college football – and we live in the South, which means we all do – you felt as if you knew him. And you surely feel wistful today.
You’re sorry for his passing, but you’re grateful for all those autumn Saturdays. Say it with me one more time: Whoa, Nellie.
> RELATED: Read and sign the online guestbook for sports broadcaster Keith Jackson
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