Jim McKay covered competitions from badminton to barrel jumping on the "Wide World of Sports." AP Richard Deitsch's Mailbag Submit a question or comment for Richard. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Richard Deitsch on Twitter

Each week, SI.com's Richard Deitsch reports on newsmakers from the world of TV, radio and the Web. This week's column focuses solely on the life and career of Jim McKay, the pioneer sportscaster who passed away Saturday of natural causes at 86.

I never interviewed Jim McKay but in September 2006 I had a long conversation with Sean McManus, the dutiful son who followed his father into sports broadcasting and rose to head CBS News and CBS Sports. Part of the interview focused on his pioneering father, the man who covered 12 Olympics and spanned the globe to introduce us to a variety of rarely seen sports, from the Grand Prix of Monaco to cliff diving in Acapulco to barrel jumping at Grossinger, N.Y.'s falls.

McManus recalled being in the control room at the 1972 Games in Munich when McKay delivered the solemn news that 11 Israeli athletes had been killed by terrorists. Those words ("When I was a kid, my father used to say our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized," McKay told ABC viewers. "Our worst fears have been realized tonight....They're all gone.") are among the most famous in broadcasting history.

"None of us understood just how widespread and how important the reporting job he was doing was," recalled McManus, who was 17 at the time. "We were in this little studio in Munich, right outside the Olympic Village. I was probably 15 yards from my father, hanging in the back of the control room watching Roone Arledge give orders to my father, Howard Cosell and Peter Jennings. I watched all the different production decisions being made, as well as the incredible swing of emotions when we thought the athletes had been saved and then realizing they had all been killed at the airport outside of Munich.

"The stakes were, obviously, so much higher and the subject material was life and death as opposed to a sporting event. It wasn't until all of us got back to America and my father and I saw on our front porch probably 1,000 letters or telegrams from people. They were literally stacked up on the porch. I think I realized then that this really had been a huge national gathering. People were hanging on his every word from half a world away. The other thing that people can't appreciate now is that the word 'terrorist' was not a word that any of us were familiar with. A terrorist act happening on live television was completely and totally foreign to any American citizen.

"The impact [of Munich] has been much greater in the ensuing years. To this day, probably 95 percent of the people who come up to my father do not mention all the Kentucky Derbies he did or the great sporting events he did. What they mention is Munich. It had such a visceral effect on so many people emotionally that it stuck with the people who were viewing that day for a lifetime."

The one thing I really wanted to know from McManus was what his father was like when he finally got off the air. He had gone for a morning swim when he received a call from the studio that gunshots had been fired in the Olympic Village. He quickly threw on clothes over his swim trunks and stayed on the air for 16 consecutive hours.

"He was completely and totally drained in every way," McManus said. "Something had happened that would affect him and stay with him for the rest of his life. Mentally, physically and emotionally, he was just completely exhausted."

LINKS OF THE WEEK

• The New York Times obituary, nicely crafted by Frank Litsky and Richard Sandomir

• Same with McKay's hometown paper, The Baltimore Sun

• There is poetry in these words: The human drama of athletic competition. Here, McKay opens an episode of ABC Wide World of Sports in 1970.

• A conversation between a pair of Olympic broadcasting icons: Bob Costas interviews McKay in 1991.

• Here's the first and second of six half-hour interviews McKay did with sportscaster Jerry Sandusky as part of the Archive of American Television. It's in real time. No commercials. Amazing stuff.

• HBO Sports will re-air the 2003 documentary "Jim McKay: My World In My Words" later this week. The Sports Emmy-winning film -- written and narrated by McKay -- will air June 12 (7:00 p.m.), June 15 (11:30 a.m.) and June 16 at 11:55 p.m. on HBO2. All times are ET.

• ABC honored McKay's life during its coverage Saturday of the Belmont Stakes.

• CBS reporter Armen Keteyian examines McKay's impact on sports broadcasting.

• Another Costas-fronted tribute to McKay.

• SI's William Taaffe pens the definitive Sports Illustrated piece on the broadcaster on McKay (July 18, 1984).

• McKay makes his debut in the pages of SI [May 8, 1961].

• Bravo to Ken Fang of Fang's Bites for procuring McKay tributes and videos around the web.

• Nice to see the Deadspin commenters -- at least the majority of them -- show McKay due respect upon his death.

THEY SAID IT I

"Jim McKay had a very important quality. You never felt what he expressed wasn't genuine. You never felt his reaction was 'What's called for here is a tear.' You never had a sense that he professed to be moved and when they went to a commercial, he blew his nose."
-- Costas, July 22, 1992, New York Times

On Sunday I spoke at length with Costas on the legacy of McKay. Here are excerpts of that conversation.

• "Part of the secret of his appeal was his genuineness. There was no television act. He was a genuinely gracious man with not only professional skill but a personal humanity that he brought to every assignment. He had a respect for words -- and the ability to employ words to enhance a broadcast is in short supply these days. With all the best broadcasters in those kind of essay situations, the audience was not always able to tell whether they had written it or whether they were ad-libbing. That is the mark of somebody who has the command of their craft and the language, and a respect for language and ability to use it effectively.

"He had the combination of a reporter's eye and professional skill, with the genuine enthusiasm of someone who was off on an adventure. It was almost as if he was showing you his home movies. Most of the sports that were on Wide World of Sports were not big-ticket events under ordinary circumstances, but what made them interesting was the way McKay covered them and presented them. He gave you a sense of place and told you why it was interesting to be in Prague or South Africa or wherever he might have been. He gave you the travelogue aspect, and then he gave you some back story about the competitors that made you care about something which you would not have paid the slightest attention otherwise. There just wasn't anything like that on television. He created a role that basically had not existed in sports broadcasting until he figured it out."

• "I definitely considered him a friend but I would not overstate our friendship. We had some memorable interviews, including one on "Later with Bob Costas" in 1991 and another around the same time on the radio on my old "Coast To Coast" show. The formats of those shows gave him the space to do what he did best, which was tell stories.

"During the Olympics in Barcelona we spoke by phone and he was very supportive and very complementary, which meant a great deal to me. Without overstating it, obviously there is a connection between us. Jim was always very gracious to me personally and very kind in the things he said about me.

"I appreciated that and we did work together briefly in 2002 at the Salt Lake Games. By that time Jim was getting up in years and it was a measure of his dedication to his craft that he was frequently apologizing to me and Dick Ebersol for feeling that he wasn't quite what he had been. The truth was he could not have anchored live extemporaneous circumstances quite the way he did in the prime of his career but he could still write and he could still deliver a scripted essay. And it was still Jim McKay, so it was a tremendous asset for our broadcast."

• [Costas was a 20-year-old junior at Syracuse during the Munich Games]. "I was back at school and happened to have a Jewish roommate at Syracuse. He was deeply affected by it. I remember even then having a sense of how poised and calm McKay was -- yet at the same time how human he was. He was touchingly human without histrionics. He didn't over-dramatize it and yet it was all the more memorable and dramatic because of the mature and yet heartfelt way in which he did it. He was mature and professional without being detached. That's a difficult combination and that is what made him unique. There may have been a handful of others who could match some of the qualities he had, but the combination of qualities he had was close to unique."

THEY SAID IT, II

Laura and I were saddened to learn of the passing of Jim McKay. For a generation of Americans, Jim was more than the much-honored host of Wide World of Sports and ABC's Olympic coverage. He was a talented and eloquent newsman and storyteller whose special gift was his ability to make the viewers at home genuinely care about more than just who won or lost. Jim was at his best during what had to be his most difficult assignment, hosting with skill and sensitivity ABC's blanket coverage of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis. Off camera he was a compassionate and generous person and devoted family man. We are also grateful for Jim's service to his country as a Naval officer aboard a minesweeper during World War II. Our thoughts and prayers are with Jim's wife, Margaret, his children Sean and Mary, and all of his family and friends.
-- President Bush, in a statement

THEY SAID IT III

CBS Sports anchor Jim Nantz first wrote McKay while he was a student at the University of Houston. It was the beginning of a long and special friendship. In September 1981, McKay invited Nantz to play golf with him at a club in Fairfield, Ct. Nantz flew from Houston, took a bus from LaGuardia Airport, and spent the night sleeping on the floor of the golf course clubhouse where one of Nantz's former teammates on the University of Houston golf team worked as a club pro. He spoke with SI.com on Sunday about his longtime friend and mentor:

• "I was super-nervous meeting the great Jim McKay. I had all these ideas in my head. I had built him up bigger than life and I envisioned him arriving by stretch limo. All of a sudden here comes this station wagon with the wood-grain paneling on the side. To my astonishment, it was being driven by Jim McKay. He actually knew how to drive!

"It was a fascinating day talking about the business, talking about dreams. At the end of the day I had an instamatic camera in my bag and I took a snapshot. The photo is in my book. I sent him a thank-you note afterward and crossing that note in the mail was a book he had sent me written by one of his late colleagues, Henry Longhurst, who was basically a poet by way of the UK. He signed the inside flap: To Jim Nantz. Remembering our day on the windy links of Fairfield. Sept. 13, 1981. On the cover of that book, Henry is turning around from his announcer position at No. 16 at Augusta and looking into the lens. I would be sitting in that very tower four-and-a-half years later. I debuted at CBS [he became cohost of CBS's scoreboard show, The College Football Report] four years and one day after I went golfing with Jim McKay.

• [Nantz traveled to St. Andrews in 2000 to join McKay in what would be his last broadcast as the lead anchor in terms of presiding over an event. On the day of the final round of the British Open, he walked with McKay from his room at the Macdonald Rusacks hotel along the 18th fairway to the broadcast booth.]

• "I called up his room and he told me come on up. He welcomed me inside to a tiny 10x12 chamber, dark and overlooking the street. It felt like being with Pavarotti before his last concert. There was a little desk with all kinds of reading material on top of it, an uncorked bottle of red wine and it looked like he had a small glass. He was all dressed and ready for work. He sat on the edge of the bed. I sat on a little chair and he reflected on his career and what was about to happen that day -- Tiger becoming the youngest golfer to complete the career Grand Slam.

"There was just an overwhelming feeling of sadness. He was very choked up a number of times and all he could talk about was how he could not wait to get home. He so did not want to be there. He had a tough travel experience getting over and had missed his connection in Heathrow. He was two months shy of his 79th birthday, his mind was brilliantly sharp but he just had no more appetite for the life of the lonely road warrior. It was profoundly sad for me.

"He would talk about [his wife] Margaret. Always Margaret. Theirr love for one another ran so deep. He fretted and worried about her like I have never seen any spouse in a relationship. He adored her. He worshipped her. I can't say that strongly enough. He just wanted to get home. He had tears in his eyes and I'm not exaggerating at all. It was just palpable how much he wanted to go home. I thought at the time: Here was the man whose adventurous life I had dreamed of living and emulating since I was 11 years old. I had never given thought to what it must be like after you live out the dream. I never saw the back end of the deal."

• "His career was genius work on the fly. Think about this: Jim McKay, loved more than anyone in our industry, do you ever remember him calling a football game? You ever remember him calling a basketball game or a baseball game? He achieved all of this outside of the mainstream sports. He hosted Wide World of Sports, the greatest anthology show ever. He anchored golf, which he absolutely loved and relished and gave him a chance to write those opening teases. He did Olympics and horse racing. He built this career that can never be equaled without being involved in football, basketball or baseball. It says so much about his ability to tell a story."

• "I think you can build an argument we are talking about an individual here who is arguably the most talented person in the history of television. I'm going to include him with Walter Cronkite. He was to sports television what Lucille Ball was to comedy and Ed Sullivan was to variety shows. I think you can make an argument that Jim McKay was as important and talented and as influential and as great as anyone in the history of television. That may sound like it's way over the top, but look at the challenges he faced.

"He was live for the great bulk of his career. He didn't have the technology we have. He traveled more than anyone in the 1960s and 1970s, and traveled when travel was not easy. Think back what it must have been like to cross the Atlantic Ocean back then. Repeatedly. To go beyond the Iron Curtain, to go to Third World countries, to go to the Great Wall of China. He was not a sportscaster, which cheapens what he did. He was a storyteller. He was a teacher. He was a tour guide who educated us on the rest of the world."