Al Bernstein On Boxing: “Don’t Shoot…I’m A Producer!”

By Al Bernstein June 9th, 2009 All Boxing Articles

"This Is Not Time For Humor!"

Imagine, if you will, this scene. In a slightly run down urban neighborhood, a huge truck with an ESPN logo on it is parked behind a concert venue.

Several police cars surround the truck and officers exit their vehicles and approach the truck very carefully. They have already called for back up because they believe a robbery might be in progress.

The officers have no idea what the label “ESPN” means, and so they figure it’s some kind of cover to look like a real business. They deduce that equipment or furniture is being taken from the concert venue and put into the truck by the thieves.

They carefully enter the vehicle only to discover it is a television production truck with a now startled crew working inside it. A nervous producer tries to convince the skeptical police that this is all part of an all-sports network and they are there to televise a sports event that evening. The police finally accept this is “some kind” of television event, even if they still don’t know what ESPN means.

This sound like a twilight zone episode set in some alternative universe to ours. But, as delightful as it might be to think there is a parallel universe that has not yet been sullied by Stephen A. Smith’s commentaries or the Around The Horn show, that’s not where this all took place.

All of this really happened right here in 1980, in our universe, on planet earth, in a little place called Chicago, Illinois.

The television truck was there to do one of the early shows in the Top Rank Boxing Series on ESPN, when police did, in fact, assume something criminal was going on and acted as described above.

These police officers could be excused if they didn’t know what ESPN stood for, since none of the city of Chicago was yet wired for cable, and ESPN was only in a small fraction of the homes nationally. More...