JIM MCKAY

I'm very sad another piece of my childhood is gone...I used to watch Wide World of Sports every weekend...and I always wanted to be like Jim McKay. He wasn't the regular sportscaster...he could take you to an event and make you feel it. He was sooo good at the Olympics...and I'll never forget that awful day in Munich. Reports say he'd been in failing health in recent months...and it's funny he passed away on the day of the Belmont Stakes, horse racing was one of his loves and for years, hosting the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown on ABC. Another passion was Auto Racing, and he hosted the Indy 500 for many years including that awful 1973 race which took 3 days to run...

I attended Saturday's Yankee game - I got a text message about his death from a friend about 10 minutes before they announced it at Yankee Stadium. You could hear a collective gasp from everyone there as the news had just broken....but after a monment of silence, a thunderous round of applause filled the big ballpark in appreciate for the man who brought so much into all of our lives. I'll never forget that moment either.

RIP.