McKAY, James McManus ("Jim")

(b. 24 September 1921, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), network television sports-caster and commentator best known as anchorman for the American Broadcasting System (ABC) Sports television coverage of seven Olympic Games and as host of the network's long-running sports anthology showcase, ABC's Wide World of Sports.

James McManus is the birth name—and remains the legal name—of the man known to millions of U.S. sports fans for almost half a century as Jim McKay. McKay moved to Baltimore at age fifteen with his mother, Florence Gallagher and father, Joseph F. McManus, when his father gave up his real estate business for a job as a mortgage officer at a Maryland bank. The future sportscaster was so shy and timid as a boy that he depended on his sister to collect fees from delinquent customers on his paper route.

McKay had a Catholic education, attending St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia, then Loyola College in Maryland, where he earned his B.A. in 1943. Upon graduation he entered the U.S. Navy at the rank of lieutenant and commanded a wartime minesweeper in the South Atlantic. Following his discharge McKay returned home and took a job as a city reporter with the Baltimore Sun in 1946. While at the Sun he met Margaret Dempsey, a fellow reporter. The couple married on 2 October 1948, and later adopted a son and a daughter.

As did many newspapers during this period, the Sun started its own television station, WMAR, which went on air in 1948. McKay (still known as McManus) was transferred to the television operation, a move based largely on his college experiences as president of the drama club and a member of the debating society. His first assignment was to host a live three-hour, Monday-through-Friday afternoon program, The Sports Parade. Among his duties on the primitive television show were interviewing sports figures, announcing the horse racing results from Pimlico, and singing an occasional song. In 1950 McKay accepted an offer to do a similar show at WCBS in New York. A Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive decided to name the program The Real McKay, requiring the host to change his professional name accordingly.

While at the CBS flagship station, other opportunities came McKay's way, including network jobs. But sports assignments, including the annual Master's Golf Tournament and the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, proved the most important to his future. Roone Arledge, a former National Broadcasting Company (NBC) executive who had recently joined ABC Sports, admired McKay's compelling style of description and offered him a contract in 1961. "Some people … can make something dramatic by the inflections of their voices, without shouting," Arledge said of the decision. "Jim's not just somebody yelling at you. He has a sense of words, a sense of the drama of the moment." Arledge put McKay at the center of plans to build ABC Sports into an organization comparable to those of its two network rivals, CBS and NBC.

On Saturday, 29 April 1961, ABC's Wide World of Sports premiered with McKay as host and chief commentator. The opening of each show featured a montage of sports clips underscored by McKay's stirring narration: "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports … the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.… This is ABC's Wide World of Sports !" The series showcased different events each week, including unreported and underreported events in track and field, soccer, weightlifting, amateur wrestling, European grand prix racing, and skiing. Gymnastics, figure skating, and competitive swimming, to name a few prominent examples, owe much of their subsequent rise in popularity as U.S. spectator sports to the exposure afforded them by the show. McKay's name was synonymous with Wide World of Sports for a quarter of a century.

Over the years, as Arledge accomplished his goal of bringing ABC Sports first to parity and then to leadership among television sports organizations, part of his strategy was building a stable of recognizable personalities that was almost like a cast of characters. Among such figures as the boisterous, outspoken Howard Cosell and the glamorous all-American athlete Frank Gifford, McKay emerged as a steady, knowledgeable figure. He was prepared to keep fans informed on whatever came his way, whether it was the history of Grand Prix auto racing at LeMans, the meaning of the "Black Power" salute of track medalists John Carlos and Tommy Smith at the Mexico City Olympics, or the last twenty winners of the Kentucky Derby.

In 1972, as in 1968, McKay was passed over by ABC for the Olympic anchor position. But when the 1972 Munich Games were suddenly disrupted by terrorist violence—eleven Israeli athletes, coaches, and referees were taken hostage and subsequently killed by Palestinian terrorists—Arledge knew who to turn to for continuing coverage. McKay took the helm and guided viewers through the unfolding tragedy. He is particularly remembered for the poise, sensitivity, and journalistic skill he displayed when suddenly thrust into a position more appropriate for a seasoned network news anchor.

"All I could think of was the parents of David Berger [a U.S.-born Israeli weightlifter] sitting at home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and that I was going to have to be the one to tell them whether their son was alive or dead," McKay told Sports Illustrated. At the closing ceremonies, as well-traveled news reporters and sportscasters alike struggled to find something appropriate to say, McKay touched the hearts of millions of viewers by reading "On the Death of a Young Athlete," a poem by A. E. Housman, which includes these lines: "…[on] the road all runners come,/Shoulder-high we bring you home,/And set you at your threshold down,/Townsman of a stiller town."

McKay's outstanding work at Munich won plaudits around the world, including two of his twelve career Emmy Awards (one each for news and sports), the George Polk Memorial Award for Journalism, and the Officer's Cross of the Legion of Merit from the West German Federal Republic. Other honors afforded McKay include the Peabody Award (1989) and membership in the Olympic Order (1998), the highest honor given by the International Olympic Committee. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1995. In all, McKay worked as either correspondent or anchor at twelve Olympiads.

Though McKay greatly reduced his responsibilities in the late 1980s after leaving the anchor spot at Wide World of Sports, he has never really retired. He continues to participate in ABC coverage of selected major events, including the British Open Golf Championship and all three legs of Thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown. In 1993 McKay and his wife bought a minority share of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. They live in Monkton, Maryland, and maintain a winter home in Key Largo, Florida.

McKay is the author of two autobiographies, My Wide World (1973), and The Real McKay: My Wide World of Sports (1998). For an intricately detailed profile, see William Taaffe, "You Can't Keep Him Down on the Farm: ABC's Jim McKay," Sports Illustrated (18 July 1984). For a focused look at the Munich tragedy, see Richard Sandomir, "McKay Revisits Nightmare of the 1972 Olympics," New York Times (5 Sept. 1997).

David Marc