The Day Harvey Masters Ran out of Things to Say About Sports

Written By: TMC

Posted on May 8, 2007

The studio lights burned into Harvey’s skin like a summer sun. His tie tightened around his corpulent neck and he felt the sweat dripping down his side and channeling into the folds around his hip. The back of his suit was soaked through and he was sure everyone on the set could smell his fear. And still they were only seconds away from switching onto camera 4 and demanding that he offer 150 seconds of profound insight on every sport in the world.

The words crept up the teleprompter. Now let’s whip it over to Harvey Masters, the SportsMaster, for his outrageous take on the day’s events! For the last three years, his daily segment had always started like this, except sometimes, instead of being outrageous, he was passionate, or intense, or in-your-face. Once, he was sassy, and for a few months last year, he was XTREME.

Maybe he could have thrust the chair backward and dived under his desk, huddling up there until everyone just left him alone; let the camera hold on his empty, spinning chair for the full two-and-a-half. Let the empty desk tell them everything they needed to know. But this was the wrong industry for that kind of stunt. Just two weeks ago, Harvey himself had called Gilbert Arenas a gutless punk for using torn knee ligaments as an excuse to skip the first round of the playoffs. “Everyone faces obstacles,” Harvey had shouted, “but most of us overcome them instead of using them as excuses! Only difference is, he gets paid millions while schlubs like us get peanuts.” He’d ended that segment with his trademark flourish— running his hands back through his thick curls and then pointing them at the camera like a pair of six-shooters. Because he was a straight-shooter and that’s what straight-shooters do.

No, he couldn’t hide. The bloggers would crucify him if he backed out now. But he had nothing to say. A man can only narrate a 6-4-3 double play so many times before he runs out of words. He can only discuss the moral implications of steroid use in baseball for so many days in a row before the dead horse has been beaten to an unrecognizable pulp. He can only analyze the facial expressions of a football coach so many times before he wants to throw himself in front of a train.

Beneath his desk, Harvey pinched his thigh and twisted until his eyes watered. The anchor cruised through the intro to Harvey’s segment and sounded genuinely excited to hear the SportsMaster’s take on the biggest controversy of the day. In fact, the anchor—whatever his name was—ad-libbed and followed his intro with a question. “So, Harvey, I’m sure you’ve got an interesting take on this local radio host saying, and I quote, ‘Steve Nash is so popular because he’s a white man succeeding in a black man’s sport.’ Thoughts? ”

The teleprompter told Harvey to launch into a tirade against the radio host for being racist and evil and for ruining everyone’s day by stealing the headlines from everyone else by making race a part of the equation when it shouldn’t be, and never really was, at least, that is, not until this jackass host came along and jabbed a stick into the dormant beehive.
The invective practically dripped out of the prompter and flooded the room. But the words rolled by and Harvey said nothing. He stared blankly at the camera and shook his head. It felt like even his eyeballs were sweating, and he wondered if anyone had ever had a heart attack live on the air before.

“Um, Harvey?” the anchor said. “Thoughts?”

Harvey had dimly hoped that maybe he could sit wordlessly through the entire segment, but time never moves as slow as it does when you’re trapped in silence. The electric whirr of the recording equipment bounced off the walls, and Harvey heard a producer screaming in his ear to start talking now, or he’d be out of a job in exactly 91 seconds.

“Well, I guess that probably makes sense,” Harvey said. “I mean, Nash is the best white player in the league since Larry Bird, right?”

“But Harvey,” the anchor said. “Aren’t you outraged at this guy for saying something so insensitive?”

“Why can’t he say whatever he feels like saying?

“Okay, okay,” the anchor said with a laugh. “Looks like Harvey’s so upset by the whole thing he doesn’t even know what to say. Let’s move on to something else—”

“What’s the point?”

“Well, there’s lot of important stuff to talk about today, Harv,” the anchor said, his eyes pleading—why do this to me? Why today? “Did you see the story about how Tom Brady might have gotten his girlfriend pregnant?”

“I did.”

“Well—how ‘bout that?”

He’d prepared a rant for this too, disparaging Brady for being so irresponsible and setting a bad example for the kids. And it ended with a little gag—possibly stolen from the USA Today and at least fifty sports blogs—about how quarterbacks should understand the importance of protection. The words crawled by. Harvey shrugged.

“Aren’t you worried about how this will affect your Patriots?” They were his Patriots because his shtick was that he loved every team from the Boston area, that he lived and died with them. The truth was, he hated the Patriots, and he couldn’t stand Red Sox fans. But they were everywhere, and they loved him, and he hadn’t paid for his own beer in years.

“I guess it probably won’t affect them at all, unless he breaks his hand changing the baby,” Harvey said. “I don’t know, man.” Nineteen seconds left.

“Okay,” the anchor said. His leg shook violently under the desk, shaking Harvey’s oversized mug—it held water, but the running gag was that it was coffee, and that he ought to switch to decaf, for his own good. “Anything else you want to add?”

Harvey shook his head, disconnected his microphone, and stood. He patted the anchor on the back, and the anchor shrugged him away angrily.

The cameras whirred and the overhead lights buzzed. The anchor cut quickly to commercial and yelled after him, but Harvey didn’t respond. He brushed past a blustery producer and pushed through an exit into the parking lot. As he locked himself inside his car, he didn’t look back at the small pack of angry suits racing to be the first to fire him. He closed his eyes and wished he’d run out of words sooner. He didn’t know where he was going, but he was glad to be gone. For too many years, he’d sold anger. For too long, he’d sold his dignity. Wherever he went, it would be somewhere where he could accept himself. He backed out of his spot and flipped on the radio; he turned the volume down and drove off, leaving a pack of enraged men behind him. This was the first time he’d ever felt good about pissing so many people off.

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