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Dan Cook, 1926-2008
Posted by HenryJames on July 7th, 2008 under Uncategorized
Dan Cook passed away on Thursday, July 3rd. He was a South Texas sports icon.
Cook covered everything from the Kentucky Derby to the Super Bowl. He also covered The Game. I’m talking about the 1963 Lee-Brackenridge bi-district football game. There have been bigger games in San Antonio, but there will not be one better. You can find his writeup for this game in The Best of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football 1960-1989.
I grew up reading his columns in the San Antonio Express-News and watching his nightly sportscast on San Antonio’s KENS. His newscasts were the first thing my dad let me stay up past my bedtime to watch. It was only 10:30, but it might as well have been all night long because that’s the way it felt to me. Bonding with my dad while watching sports is one of my best childhood memories.
It was like entering an adult world. Cook had gravitas, and you took what he said seriously. You kids might not know this, but it is actually possible to deliver sports news without thinking up 37 different nicknames for a home run or touchdown. Fuck you, ESPN. But don’t mistake his professionalism for dullness. He had a quick wit.
The Express-News article linked above has the following story:
(Blackie) Sherrod said Cook always was the life of the party.
One of his favorite Cook stories came when the two were covering the Kentucky Derby one year. He said before the race, a friend of theirs approached Cook, an avid bettor, and asked him about one of his daughters. She wanted to know where he planned to send her to college.
“It all depends on who wins this race,” Cook said.
That beats any jackass catchphrase.
So I called my dad the on the Fourth to see if he had heard. He was travelling so he had not. But as if compelled by the sports gods, he had started reading again the book of Cook’s selected newspaper columns. It was like going back to my childhood.
There are bigger reporters than Dan Cook, but there will not be one better.
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srr50 said:
July 7th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Dan Cook was an original, but we were blessed with some of the best damn writing around when the SWC was in its prime.
Some of my most treasured memories are from the old SWC pre-season football tour of all the schools. It was like a 10-day classroom/party for anyone just getting started in the business.
During the day you would work and learn from pros like Cook, Blackie Sherrod, Jack Gallagher, and Dave Campbell. Then at night you got to really go to school by listening to their war stories.
EyesOfTX said:
July 7th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
As a lifelong fan of Mr. Cook, one of the things I’ve missed most since leaving South Texas twenty years ago is his nightly presence on my television screen and getting to read his frequent writings in the San Antonio Express News.
Cook was from the old school of sports writing – tough, brutally honest, stick with the facts and throw in a few zingers here and there. His columns featuring his alter-ego, Benjamin Broadhind, sitting on a stool at the local bar, having a glass of whiskey and shooting the bull with various and sundry patrons were a joy to read. A regular contributor to the annual Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine for more than 40 years, his piece in the 1965 issue about the 1964 contest between San Antonio Churchill and San Antonio Lee – “The Greatest High School Game Ever Played” – remains in my view the best feature article ever printed by that publication.
His television sports reports were even more fundamental than his sports writing. Cook never got used to all the high-tech gadgetry and rapidly-moving highlights that long ago became the staple of television sports broadcasting. His segments commonly consisted of him sitting at the desk, telling you what had taken place in sports that day, with perhaps a highlight or two thrown in just to get the camera off of his incredibly wrinkled face for a couple of seconds. But there was something special about those reports, because you just felt like if you were getting the sports news from Dan Cook, you were getting it straight.
It received only passing mention in the SA Express News obituary, but Dan Cook is responsible for the advent of the saying “The opera isn’t over ’til the fat lady sings.” Dick Motta is commonly credited with it, but he always gave Cook credit for it when asked.
Motta was coaching the Baltimore Bullets in 1978, and they were in town playing the Spurs in an NBA playoff series. A touring show of the NY metropolitan opera was also in town, and KENS showed a clip of a rather plump soprano singing the closing song of the whichever opera was being performed just before Cook’s sportscast began. The Spurs were down to the Bullets, 3 games to 1, in the playoff series, and things weren’t looking good for the home team. Cook noted this in his report on the 5:00 newscast, and closed by saying something like, “but as we just saw, the opera isn’t over ’til the fat lady sings.”
News Anchor Chris Marrou got so tickled that he wasn’t able to do his into for the traditional funny clips segment that always ended the KENS newscasts.
Motta actually had seen that newscast that day, and after the Bullets had pulled out a come-from-behind last minute win over the Spurs that evening, used the quip to a reporter in his postgame interview. That clip aired hundreds of times on various television sports reports in the next several days, and it became the common wisdom that Motta had come up with it on his own.
But it was Dan Cook, the guy with the wrinkled face, the guy you could count on to give it to you straight. Rest in Peace.
Bacon said:
July 8th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
KENS 5 news > anything in Austin/DFW/Houston
mainly b/c of Mr. Cook…plain and simple.
RIP Mr. Cook
EyesOfTX said:
July 9th, 2008 at 5:28 am
KENS during the ’70s and ’80s and into the ’90s was the best local TV newscast I’ve ever seen anywhere at anytime. Marrou, Fred Lozano, Deborah Knapp were all terrific anchors, and Cook was a rock. The newscasts in Austin and Houston are just uniformly bad jokes and always have been. Only the ABC station in DFW compared in overall quality to KENS.
HenryJames said:
July 9th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Yes. Chris Marrou is gold.
Chooky liked Joe Fowler.
srr50 said:
July 9th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Chooky also appeared on the “Captain Gus” show and liked Judd Ashworth
“The newscasts in Austin and Houston are just uniformly bad jokes and always have been.”
Gee, thanks. :(
HenryJames said:
July 9th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Does Gary DeLaune know you raid his wardrobe?
8straight said:
July 9th, 2008 at 9:08 am
I’m sure he would make an exception with some Austin sports anchors of days gone by.
EyesOfTX said:
July 9th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Gary DeLaune covered the Kennedy Assasination – he started his career as an AP stringer, and was at Dealy Plaza when it happened. He also appears in one of the most aired films taken at Parkland Hospital. I had a long conversation with him about it one night when I ran into him at Denver’s old Stapleton airport.