Life and Stuff

There comes a time in life when something you thought would never happen does, and you don't know how to react to the situation. This is especially the case when one of your heroes has been doing his thing for so long that you take him for granted. As the months and years go by, they remain a constant in their profession you start to believe that there is no way someone can replace that person, and you hope the bigwigs who call the shots feel that way too. Whoever said life isn't fair hit the nail on the head. Something I thought would never happened occurred last Tuesday at WBZ-TV. The longtime sports anchor had been given his walking papers. The Reason? What else, the station wanted to save money. To be fair, the sports reports on the local evening news have become irrelevant. There is no need for local newscasts to devote time to sports news and scores when the diehards can get up to the second highlights on the internet or ESPN. Local sports reports these days are nothing more than an extended promo for local sporting events. If you're lucky, maybe you get a brief highlight or a soundbite that the national media didn't pick up. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if local sports staffs start to dissolve in the next couple of years. In theory, this was a rational move, but in practice, it made a living legend expendable.

The typical local sports guy is a smiling, good-looking youngster with a gee whiz attitude who wouldn't dare say anything negative about the local sports teams. He exists to preach to the casual fan, which is to say that he's there to provide just the facts. Therefore, he's not creative with his approach or verbiage and comes across to the passionate sports fan as being rather bland. That's the way it was, until Bob Lobel came along.

Bob Lobel was not your typical sports guy. At his best he was an anti-establishment maverick who loved making local athletes and sports executives cringe. He was the first guy to have the guts to say what we were all thinking when the going was tough. In essence, he made himself the attraction and a must view every night at 6 and eleven. The ability he had to speak his mind, and take a creative approach to his storytelling, endeared him to his audience. At one point in the early 1980's it can be said that he was probably a bigger star than the athletes he covered. For you knew that there's a pretty good chance that Lobel was going to say something that would stir the pot and provide fodder for conversation the next morning. His approach won him accolades from all over, he even made a cameo in a couple episodes of Cheers back in the day. Before I had cable, Bob Lobel was my knight in shining armor when I needed to know what was happening. His humorous laments and fearlessness of the establishment inspired me in both my aspirations as a sportscaster and a sportswriter. While I haven't reached either one of the goals as of yet, Lobel showed me the way in helping me to find the inner voice inside of me. To someone who is passionate about their craft, that kind of guidance is invaluable. As the years went by, I began to take his presence for granted, but as the time for local sports reports started to dwindle, I started to wonder about his staying power.

I didn't receive WBZ on my cable system anymore from the late 1990's on. So I didn't get to see Bob as often as I would have liked to. When I was accepted to Curry, one of the things that excited me was the opportunity to see one of my heroes again every night. However, this was a different Bob Lobel than the one I grew up with. He talked in a slower tone and began to slur his speech. He also made mistakes quite frequently, perhaps too many for a sportscaster in a rabid sports city. He also had the reputation of being both a booze hound and a womanizer in the local press. Thankfuly, the sarcasm and sense of humor remained a constant. I will never forget the time that he refused to show Bruins highlights for a game against the Penguins because he did not want to inflict any anguish on the audience for their horrible play. Instead he showed about thirty seconds of the film The March of the Penguins in the spot that would have been occupied by the Bruins highlights. Only Lobel had the guts to do something like that. I'm sure it made Jeremy Jacobs turn red in the face. Sadly, his reports became more tedious to watch and gave me as the viewer the impression that he was just going out there and winging it. I didn't want to admit it, because his style and flare were so inspiring to me, but I felt his days were numbered.

And so it has come to this. Lobel didn't do anything that would have warranted his firing, he just became a victim of a rapidly changing business. Local sports reports are irrelevant, his heyday is long gone, and people do not watch the local news just for the sports anymore. Despite his departure, Bob Lobel is a legend in Boston and his impact on sports reporting will be long felt.