Familiar voices are drifting away in sports

A lost voice is a bit of a sad song.

A voice, after all, is an interesting thing ... sometimes taking on a life and personality all its own.

A good voice — and that can be so many things to so many people — serenades us, takes us on a journey, negotiates us through the frenetic minefields that are, in the end, only games. A truly good voice is warm and comforting and welcome: just an old friend that we do not know telling us about our game. It envelops us, warm and comforting, almost like that old quilt that Grandma made just for you.

Sure, these things that wrap themselves around us and twist our souls are just games. But they are also a joy, a moment away from life's worries and a moment to join hands with family and friends and neighbors and people we do not even know ... join hands and live and die and laugh and cry with those crazy, beautiful games.

The great voices float across our living rooms and, after all these years, we do not even need an introduction. We know them instantly. And, because that voice is there, the story is the better for it. The game is the better for it.

Over the past few months, we have begun to lose some of those voices.

First and foremost and forever is the gentle, lyrical, talking poet Vin Scully. Then came Verne Lundquist, a mellow and comfortable voice, one that serenaded us for more than 40 years. Then came the farewell of the booming, friendly voice of Chris Berman — an ESPN staple since that network launched in 1979. And now, most recently, there will be the farewell of Brent Musburger, the folksy voice that has serenaded us through our games for almost five decades.

Everything must eventually pass. It is as inevitable as the change of seasons, the shift from one of our beloved sports to the next. We expect the seasons to change. We hate it, but we expect our favorite players to one day bid farewell. Somehow, though, we always believe those voices will be there. Always and forever.

Scully was certainly the most heralded. The man went joyfully to work every day for 67 years and he was every bit as eloquent on his final day at age 89 as he was on his first day. He would launch into a pregame soliloquy or a midgame story or just toss in a line or two here and there and you would stop, jaw open and think, that is poetry. Even at the end, he was quietly eloquent. "Don't be sad that it's over. Smile because it happened."

Lundquist was a little more special because of his Texas beginnings — graduating from high school in Austin, graduating from Texas Lutheran University, spending all those years in Dallas and as the Cowboy play-by-play man. He is in the Legends of the Sun Bowl, coming here several years to do the Sun Bowl for CBS. He was forever calm and kind and eloquent, dropping in an "Oh, my goodness" now and then.

And who will forget his gentle and touching pat on the back for Jackie Smith when he dropped Roger Staubach's game-tying touchdown in the end zone late in Super Bowl XIII: "Bless his heart, he's got to be the sickest man in America."

Who can think of Chris Berman without smiling? The big 6-foot-5 guy seemed to have more fun on the air than the law allows. The National Sportscaster of the Year six times and forever fun. Thoughts of the Home Run Derby and his "back, back, back, back, back." Thoughts of NFL highlights and "he ... could ... go ... all ... the ... way" or "rumblin, bumblin, stumblin."

In a world of shrieking and constant criticism, Berman always seemed to find fun and a kind word. In some ways, he seemed to transcend sports. He was the first sportscaster to win the Newseum Institute Al Neuharth Award of Excellence in the Media. He will still do a few things with the network. But, for the most part, he will be gone.

And now Musburger will do his final game, the Georgia-Kentucky basketball game, Tuesday on ESPN. His eloquent, folksy delivery was unmistakable and simply an integral part of first the NFL and then college football. On any given weekend, you certainly expected to hear Musburger greet you from the biggest game at the biggest stadium. He brought us the Doug Flutie miracle with Boston College and he brought us Dwight Clark's The Catch with the 49ers and The Masters and the U.S. Open tennis and so much more.

When you heard "You are looking live at ..." you knew.

Four wonderful voices, each different in its own way. Four wonderful voices, each one of our sports security blankets in their own way. Four wonderful voices — gone.

But that is the wonderful and amazing thing about life and about the way sports imitates life. There is change. It is the natural order of things. And there will be new voices to come in and sweep us away, to take us on that magic carpet ride through our beloved games.

As Scully so beautifully put it in his farewell:

"There will be a new day, and eventually a new year, and when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, ah, rest assured, once again, it will be time for Dodgers baseball.”

New days. New voices

But the old ones, our security blankets for decades, will be missed.

Bill Knight may be reached at 546-6171; bknight@elpasotimes.com; @BillKnightept on Twitter.