Clever. Of course, that led to a lot of takeoffs, such as one that went, “Imagine your radio as the field as I see it. The red marks will be Georgia and the black will be Auburn. The dial will be the football.”
This was before the digital radio. In fact, this was before a lot of things, such as instant replay, the Copper Bowl, SAT requirements, and the ACLU filing a lawsuit because somebody said a prayer before the game.
Getting Ed Thelinius on the phone that day was surprisingly easy. The station operator answered, I asked for “Mr. Thelinius,” she rang his line, and he picked up.
“Thelinius,” he said.
That’s one thing you learn in journalism school. The proper way for a journalist of any kind to answer the phone is by saying his or her last name. It sounds official. Big-time official, like a guy carrying a clipboard with a pencil tied to it.
“Mr. Thelinius,” I began, noticing once more my greeting was offered with my voice getting higher on the “inius” and a question mark on the end of it. I’m seventeen years old, and I’m talking to a legend. What would you expect?
After the “Mr. Thelinius,” I said, “My name is Lewis Grizzard, and I work in the loan-payment department of the First National Bank, but I’m not going to be here much longer, although please don’t mention that to anybody who works here because I neglected to mention I’d be leaving after the summer to attend the University of Georgia. . . .”
With that out of my dry mouth, I suddenly thought, Why am I telling Ed Thelinius I’m a liar? I want to gain this man’s trust, and in the first thirty seconds I’ve told him I lie like a dog? (Again, the animal reference.)
But I pressed on, hoping he would forget about my opening statement. “I intend to major in journalism, sir, and I eventually would like to have a career in sportswriting. I realize you are not a sportswriter but a sports caster, but I still feel any advice and help you could give me would be quite worthwhile. I was wondering if there might be some time for me to come over to the station and speak with you. It shouldn’t take long. I’m merely interested in learning how to become as great as Furman Bisher.”
To my utter amazement, Ed Thelinius responded to me by saying, “Why don’t you come over right now?”
Right now? You mean at this instant? You mean, I have asked the Homecoming Queen for sex and she has responded, “Okay, how about right now?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said.
I hung up the phone, went to Mr. Killingsworth’s office, and told him I felt like I had been rode hard and put up wet and wanted the rest of the afternoon off.
He said, “I’ll have to dock your pay.”
“Go ahead, banker breath, I’m going to talk to Ed Thelinius,” is what I wanted to say. What actually came out of my mouth was a somewhat defiant, “Okay.”
I drove to the studios of WAGA-TV, I told the receptionist I had an appointment with Ed Thelinius. She offered no argument, which was refreshing, phoned Thelinius, and said to him, “There’s someone here to see you.”
There were a couple of heartbeats there when another one of those questions-that-always-come-up-when-things-are-going-great came up, as in, “What if he has forgotten about me since we talked?”
It could happen, couldn’t it? Ed Thelinius was a busy, important man. The fact he had made an appointment with a seventeen-yearold kid could have slipped his mind. Or, he simply could have changed his mind, as in, “What’s a busy, important man like me doing making an appointment with a kid from a bank?”
I could almost hear the receptionist’s next words: “I’m sorry, but Mr. Thelinius has decided you are too insignificant for him to waste his time on.”
But no. The receptionist’s next words were, “Go through the door on the left. Mr. Thelinius’s office is the third one on the right.”
I would learn later that radio and television people often have two voices. They have one for when the red light is on and another for when it’s off. Drive-time disc jockeys and local television sportscasters come to mind first. When they’re speaking into a microphone, their voices drop a couple of octaves, and what comes out is something between Edward R. Murrow and Pat Summerall. In normal conversations, however, they often sound like a cross between Gomer Pyle and Phil Rizzuto talking about the Money Store.
But Ed Thelinius wasn’t like that. When he said to me, “It’s very nice to meet you,” he could have been saying, “Tarkenton talks to his two rows of five.” The same resonance was there. Ed Thelinius, I would come to realize, could say, “Pass the salt,” and make it sound like Georgia has just beaten Auburn to win the Southeastern Conference football championship.
We sat there having our little chat. I was nervous, and it occurred to me I’d been nervous a lot that summer. If this was what graduating from high school and leaving home was all about, I would be a nervous wreck and given to episodes of drooling by the time I was thirty.
I told Ed Thelinius of my plans for the future, and he mentioned something about the fact newspapers didn’t pay their employees very much, and I said I didn’t really care as long as I could get into the ball games for free.
And then, with no warning whatsoever, Ed Thelinius suddenly said to me, “How would you like to work on my Georgia football crew this fall?”
Two miracles in one day. First he had said, “Why don’t you come over right now,” which would have done me for years in the miracle department. An hour later he’s saying to me, “How would you like to work for my Georgia football crew this fall?” If I had known about Red Barber saying, “I’ll be a suck-egg mule” at the time, that might have been my reply.
Instead, I handled the situation with my usual aplomb. I jumped in Ed Thelinius’s lap, put my arms around him, kissed him square on the mouth and said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, can I go outside and wash your car?”
Not really. As a matter of fact, a quarter-century and some change later, I don’t remember my exact reply. I know I was stunned. Beyond belief. Casey Stengel had just asked me how I’d like to play for the Yankees. Elvis wanted to know if I’d sing backup for him at Vegas.
I probably muttered something like, “I certainly would, Mr. Thelinius, sir.” Doesn’t matter. Here was the deal:
Play-by-play sportscasters use “spotters,” one for each team. The spotters sit on either side of the announcer with a board in front of them. The board, to keep this simple, has the names of each of the players, and, in Thelinius’s case, their measurements, their class, and their hometowns.
The spotter’s job is to point at the name of the ball carrier, to point at the name of the tackler, to point at the name of someone who has delivered a good block, and to keep the announcer abreast of injuries and substitutions, so the announcer can say something like, “Zawicki is out with a broken neck, and Wojohowitz, the six-one, two-hundred-twenty pound sophomore from Goat City, is in to replace him.”
Ed Thelinius had a regular to spot Georgia. What he needed was someone to spot the opposition, and that, by God, was going to be me.
There was even money involved. That hadn’t even occurred to me.
“I’ll pay you ten dollars a game and pick up all your expenses on the road,” Mr. Thelinius, sir, said.
We would work out the details later, he explained, such as where and when to meet him when we left for Tuscaloosa on September 8, for Georgia’s opening game against Alabama.
Now, get this picture: I’m seventeen years old. Since nearly the time I learned to dress myself until now, I’ve wanted a job in sports. I haven’t been out of high school two months and already I have one. So it only paid ten dollars a game and travel expenses. It was not only an actual, honest-to-God