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By George M. Thomas
Beacon Journal columnist
Published on Tuesday, Apr 08, 2008
It has been said that a measure of a person can be determined by the number of people who show up at his funeral.
In the world of journalism, especially in the niche of sports, where breaking news is rare, the measure of a person after he dies is gathered by what his contemporaries say about him.
After sifting through the coverage Sunday given to the death of Gib Shanley, a man I never had the chance to meet, it's easy to see that his colleagues and those sports reporters who came after him respected him greatly.
Of course, the most extensive coverage was found on his home station WEWS (Channel 5). Growing up in Cleveland and one of its eastern suburbs, I equate Shanley with two things: that station and being the voice of Browns football.
Shanley and his protege, Nev Chandler, turned that sports chair in those studios into the sports anchor spot in the area. Despite his presence, I could never tune in to WUAB (Channel 43) when Shanley anchored the news there.
Andy Baskin currently occupies the WEWS seat, and he and his crew dedicated the Sports Sunday broadcast to Shanley, who had a weekly commentary segment on the program.
What was touching was that it was one of those rare moments when competition among sports journalists didn't matter.
WJW (Channel 8) deserves a mountain of praise for allowing two of its on-air personalities to talk about Shanley via phone for the special. Meteorologist Dick Goddard, who did statistics for Browns radio broadcasts, and weekend sports anchor John Telich offered their memories of the sportscaster, who gained national prominence for burning an Iranian flag on a newscast days after protesters took 60 Americans hostage in Iran.
WKYC (Channel 3) gave Shanley's death significant play on its newscast, but Telich's moving on-air remembrance on Channel 8's 10 p.m. newscast caught the essence of Shanley.
''I'm patterning myself after Gib Shanley. What young guy in Cleveland didn't want to be the next Gib Shanley?'' Telich said. ''But, of course, I didn't have a devastatingly quick wit and humor that could certainly cut through whenever he made a point.''
Shanley possessed all of that, and it's Baskin, his colleague at WEWS for the past year and who rallied to help him get the commentary job, who understands that an era is gone with his death.
''I don't think there will ever be another sportscaster like Gib Shanley,'' Baskin said.
So much for that
When it came to advancing to the title game of the men's basketball NCAA Tournament, North Carolina proved that it was about as inevitable as Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primary election season.
It made for great drama to watch as Kansas dominated UNC in the first half and defended against a second-half surge that saw North Carolina come within single digits before running out of gas.
The only thing more enjoyable? Listening to the game as called by Jim Nantz and Billy Packer because they certainly said what I was thinking as I watched: What the heck is going on? North Carolina was supposed to dust Kansas and march straight to the trophy. Playing the semifinal game Saturday was a mere formality. That's the problem with inevitability; sometimes it's not so inevitable.
ESPN Masters golf
ESPN broadcasts the first two rounds of the Masters Tournament this weekend, with the network's Mike Tirico, who has extensive experience covering golf, including 11 British Opens, leading the coverage.
Conspicuous in his absence: ESPN's Chris Berman, who has had a voice in much of the channel's golf. I know he has done it for years, but it's difficult to picture Berman doing golf, primarily because he's so indelibly linked to ESPN's NFL coverage. Perhaps ESPN thought the same.
Sound familiar?
LeBron James got the celebrity treatment before stepping on a larger stage, so why not Terrelle Pryor, the football and basketball phenom from Jeannette, Pa.? Under the Lights: Terrelle Pryor looks at the recently signed Ohio State recruit in a half-hour documentary. It will run at 10 p.m. Wednesday and 7:30 p.m. Thursday on FSN Ohio.
George M. Thomas can be reached at sportswriterabj@sbcglobal.net. Read his blog at http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/sportsblitz/.
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