SPANNING THE GLOBE TO BRING YOU THE CONSTANT VARIETY OF SPORTS: Legendary sportscaster Jim McKay died today at the age of 86. He hosted Wide World of Sports for 40 years and covered 12 Olympic Games, traveling an estimated 4 1/2 million miles to cover 100 different sports in 40 different nations.
McKay was the opposite of the SportsCenter/Screamin' A. era, a soft-spoken gentleman averse to hype and drawn to storytelling, who always knew it was the athletes, not he, who was the star. And he was the right man for that awful time in Munich, 1972, when his "They're all gone" was all he could say, and all anyone could say. ESPN is describing him tonight as "the Walter Cronkite of sports," and that sounds right to me.
