Inside Information

I spent over 30 years in radio, much of it in sports. Four of those years were spent at L.A.’s legendary KMPC, when it was still KMPC. I got to work with some of L.A. radio’s legends, especially in the sports department. I was mainly an assistant sports producer, and I got to work Angels baseball, Rams football (they were still in Anaheim), and UCLA football & basketball. I was lucky to be there.

I will post about KMPC in the near future. Promise.

Meantime, while it’s been nearly 20 years since I was employed by KMPC, I still get asked about my time there. One of the things I get asked about is the “Inner Sanctum” secrets, or Insider’s Knowledge. That gets to be a little tricky.

I knew plenty about KMPC people. Golden West Broadcasters had plenty of skeletons in their closets. But, I was “part of the family”, and was entrusted with that information as “one of them”. In other words, in total confidence. To me, internal information is almost as sacred as the confessional or lawyer-client privilege. Even all these years later with GWB dead & buried, to violate that trust would just not feel right.

However, I did learn lots about people from other stations and people from teams, newspapers, and television. I can’t name names, lawsuits are always a possibility, and innocent people can get hurt. But I can get a little vague and still have people get the idea. Here are a few:

There was a multi-sport announcer who was fired after it was discovered that he was having an affair with a star athlete’s wife. A very big star. Just about as big as you can get. He’s lucky the athlete, whom everyone has heard of, never got a hold of him. Today, that athlete and his wife are still married.

Another announcer was let go after getting into a fight with one of his mic-mates in an elevator. The incident was kept very hush-hush. Today, talk of the incident is very taboo at that particular organization.

A female sports personality had an affair with the General Manager of the company she worked for. Both were very much married. It had much to do with her getting a major push. Presently, she is still married to the same man, and is still in a media-related position, but is no longer doing sports.

There was a Los Angeles area pro football player who was traded away, far, far away, for the peculiar reason of getting married. Why would a player get traded for getting married? Simple. The player was white. His bride was black. They were very much in love. Who objected to this union? Management? Not exactly, even though they werent’ thrilled. They saw to it that pictures of the happy couple never ran anywhere. Coaches? Nope. They couldn’t have cared less. Teammates? A few expressed concerns to the player, but otherwise, they mostly left it alone. Some of the African American players had white wives or girlfriends, and they didn’t want to be hypocrites.

So who does that leave to object? The players’ wives, that’s who. When the team passed out seat assignments to player’s wives and families, many asked them not to assign her near them. A few of the black players’ black wives read her the riot act. There would be functions put on by the players’ wives, and someone would “forget” to send her an invitation. She would always be told that it had nothing to do with her interracial marriage, that it was nothing more than an oversight, not to take it personally, and that it won’t happen again. But it always did.

There was one full season of this internal tension, then he was traded. Such pettiness at such a high level. And somehow, the team managed to keep it all quiet.

To slightly alter an old phrase, if these media-types could talk….