Big League Babble On by John Gallagher

Author:John Gallagher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

You Can Take the Girl out of the Trailer Park, but You Can’t Take the What Out of Her Mouth?

(or, Q107 wordscramble: Here’s Robert Palmer with “You’re a DICKHEAD of Love!”)

I’ve always liked the line, “There. I’ve said it; I’m glad.” I suppose in this chapter it should read, “There. I wrote it; I’m glad.” It usually holds true for me unless what I said gets me parked in the boss’s corner office the next day being asked the question, “What did you say, and are you still glad you said it?” Worse yet if what I said leads to a lengthy off-air suspension, and worse even still if it means getting eighty-sixed while I’m in the prime of my life and broadcasting career.

It was a whirlwind of a time, co-hosting the Q Morning Zoo on Q107 in the a.m. and being sports anchor for City at night. Throw in public appearances at up to $10,000 a shot, and your humble high-school-dropout “on-air” putzlehead was making over half a million dollars a year. I loved the attention, the notoriety, the fame, and the fortune. And I loved covering sports. Yes, they were paying me nicely to go to sporting events and then go live on TV and radio to describe what had transpired. Gimme some a’ dat! Don’t forget, fellow sports fanatics shell out thousands of dollars to see major sporting events live. I got in free. And all expenses paid for. Super Bowls, World Series, Stanley Cup finals, World Championship boxing matches? Free, free, free, and free. Plus I got to hobnob with the world’s finest athletes and stars. This was before the Internet, before you had dozens of all-sport channels and PVRs. Now you can stream live sporting events and sportscasts on your smartphone twenty-four hours a day. Back then, if you wanted the night’s highlights, damn it, you tuned in to John Gallagher at eleven every night.

It was a simpler time, and safer for that matter. Safe as far as what was acceptable in the life of an on-air “personality.” Lordy, lordy, lordy, the things we got away with on and off the air back then would shrivel some men’s testes into raisins. Today you can be fired for anything and everything. Here’s a good example. Not long ago, my friend and fellow sportscaster Damian Goddard was fired from Sportsnet for tweeting his opinion on same-sex marriage. One wrong tweet or post on social media and “ya burnt!”

The “Gallagher Files” contain a similar incident. We’re all familiar with Tonya Harding, the American figure skater who ruined her future in the sport when she was implicated in clubbing fellow competitor Nancy Kerrigan before the 1994 Winter Olympics. Back then everybody was taking shots at her. Including yours truly.

The “kicker” story is the last segment of a broadcast that usually features a bizarre or humorous “bit” intended to end the news or sports on a lighter note — think Ron Burgundy and the waterskiing squirrel. I wrote that night’s kicker.

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