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Page 2's "Critical Mass" is a weekly survey of what's happening at the busy intersection of sports and pop culture.
|  | | Chick Hearn was a steady, reliable and soothing voice for thousands of Lakers fans. |
Earlier this year -- just after he first fell and broke his hip -- I wrote a piece about Chick Hearn being an integral part of the sound of Los Angeles. I hoped when I wrote it that Chick would recover (which he did) and return to call another four or five hundred Lakers games, and that it would be a long time before I had reason to write about him again. But it didn't work out that way. He suffered a brain hemorrhage on Saturday and died on Monday at age 85. So I'm back at the keyboard, trying to reckon with what he's meant to me, trying to measure the loss of him.
What I've lost, what any of us who grew up around L.A. have lost, is a relationship. The story of an announcer is never just about the announcer, it's about where and how his voice finds its audience, where and how it hits them, holds them, lifts them up. I'm thinking this morning about the pepper pop of Chick's voice and remembering his inimitable phrasings, but I'm thinking most about being 5 (or maybe it was 6) years old and sitting on a stool in my grandfather's garage listening to Lakers games -- about when Chick and I met.
My parents were getting divorced then. I wasn't sure who to talk or listen to, and I remember being kind of suspicious of words anyway, because all the explanations I got for what was happening and why it was happening didn't make the hurt go away.
I spent a lot of time with my grandfather in those days. I liked the deliberate pace and easy rhythm with which he moved. I liked that he didn't talk much. And I loved the radio in his garage. It was in a brown leather carrying case, with a snap in the back and holes for the dials and buttons on the front, and it sat on a shelf above the radial saw, covered in sawdust. I was too small to reach it (I don't think I touched it until years later, after Papa died), but I stared at it for hours at a time and I thought of it as mine. And Chick's.
I wish I could tell him how he sounded to me then (or at least how I remember and imagine it now). If I could, I'd say things like this:
|  | | Hearn's magical precision mirrored the play of many Lakers stars. |
I wanted to talk the way you did, Chick. I wanted to rattle and jump, to fit things in phrases and say things with flair. I had a tennis ball and a makeshift basket on the garage wall and I tried to play along with your descriptions, tried to match my movements to your words. When there wasn't a game on, I'd borrow your language and mimic your voice for a play-by-play of me helping to set the table, drawing a picture or climbing a tree.
You were quick. You moved with a kind of magical precision from player to player and moment to moment, making up words and phrases all the while, and I felt agile, strong and smart just listening to you.
You were excited when the Lakers played well. You felt things. I could feel that and join in it. At the same time, you were opinionated, unafraid to be straight, even hard, when the Lakers played badly. Can't tell you how much it meant to me to hear that and to know that it wasn't angry, just honest; can't tell you how important it was then, and for years afterward, to experiment with my own version of that kind of bold language and objectivity.
There was so much joy and life in your voice, so much self-certain, in-the-moment rightness about it. Can a voice be a home? Can a sound be a place to put yourself, to rest in, to grow up in? I think it can; I think that's what I was doing listening to you.
I loved your soft, welcoming twang. I always thought you were talking to me, and that you were inviting me to take it easy and step outside of what was worrying me. I thought you knew me and imagined I knew you.
I got lost in those games, Chick. The good kind of lost, the wide-eyed, wondering kind of lost. I sometimes closed my eyes and felt myself floating up out of my seat.
I'd say things like this. I'd tell Chick that I "met" him when I was scared and confused, and that he came across to me in great waves of comfort, clarity and fun. I'd try to explain to him how the relationship between us grew, how his voice continued to sustain me as I got older. I'd tell him that all the things I felt at 5 were still coursing through me at 15 and 25, and that they are today. I'd tell him hundreds of thousands of other folks felt them too. If I could, I'd tell him:
He was constant (3,338 games in a row) and unflappable. Every time I heard his voice, it reminded me of where I'd been and gave me a way to measure how far I'd come.
|  | | Honorary mayor of Hollywood Johnny Grant waches as Jonathan Jones, left, places a candle on Hearn's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. |
He made me love the relationship between words and actions. Listening to him, I knew that basketball was a crazy, balletic, serendipitous thing and that a person had to stretch his mind and twist his tongue just to get close to understanding it. I write about sports now because I want to work in his tradition.
I thought about my grandfather whenever I listened to a Lakers game and I was grateful for the way it kicked open a memory door and brought him close for a minute.
My oldest, best friendships were based on and strengthened by nights spent getting together and listening to Chick.
After I moved away, when I'd come back to town, his voice made it feel like home again. I was always proud to be from Southern California in part because I could drop down anywhere in the country and say his name and people's eyes would light up, and they'd look at me with envy and longing.
I would say these things, and a hundred others.
Most of all, I would tell him that I wish he were still here and that I'm not sure what to listen for without him.
Eric Neel reviews sports culture in his "Critical Mass" column, which will appear every Wednesday on Page 2. You can e-mail him at eneel@cox.net.
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