Remembering a legend
It was in the early fall of 1989 when then 16-year-old Scott Herpst, driving around in a 1977 beige Chevy Nova, began fiddling with his AM-FM car radio dial one fateful afternoon.
Wanting something different to listen to after having exhausted my entire cassette tape collection, I punched the AM button and began to turn the knob ever so slowly and delicately trying to find the distant, static-laden sounds of a football or baseball game in some far away city, the way I did at night while listening to my stereo in my bedroom.
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There's still something nostalgic about picking up faint sounds of a play-byplay guy's voice from somewhere hundreds of miles away and trying to figure out what I'm hearing. Guys my age understand this.
But on this particular day, I reached the midway point of the dial and was surprised to hear an AM station with very little static. I pulled over in a nearby parking lot just to sit and listen.
There were these guys and they were talking sports and nothing but sports. I had heard and read about sports talk radio, which was really taking off nationally at the time, but this was the first time I had actually heard a sports talk show with my own two ears.
For a while, I had no idea where the show was originating from, but judging by the clarity of the sound and the topics of discussion, I assumed it was somewhere in the Southeast. Maybe Nashville or Atlanta. Then, shortly thereafter, a station break officially introduced me to WGOW AM-1150 out of Chattanooga. The show was the aptlynamed "Sport Talk".
OK, so the show's title may have been a little plain, but the same thing couldn't be said for the hosts.
The show was energetic, fast-paced and at times, no-holdsbarred. At the center of it all was a potstirring, loud-mouthed, know-it-all named Dr. Basketball, who reveled in his own bravado and didn't mind putting callers in their place whenever he saw fit.
"Is this guy for real or is this just an act?" I thought.
Nearly 27 years later, I can honestly say it was a little bit of both.
Dr. Basketball, a.k.a. Dr. B, a.k.a Gary Haskew, suddenly and unexpectedly passed away on July 4. He physically left my life in the same manner he entered it - with a roar in 1989 and with deafening silence nearly three decades later. I was absolutely enthralled when I first heard him spout off on the radio and stunned and speechless when I got the news that he had died.
To call Gary Haskew an original is misleading. The word "original" hints that there might have been others out there somewhere just like him. But the fact is that there was simply no one else out there like him. God not only broke the mold when He created Gary, He utterly destroyed the mold to make sure no one could ever piece it back together again because this world was only big enough for one Gary Haskew.
It's laid-back style and collection of offthe-wall callers and personalities quickly elevated "Sport Talk" from AM radio purgatory to arguably the most-listened to and one of the most popular shows in the history of Chattanooga radio.
And while past hosts, like J. David Miller and Gary's brother, Jerre, and current hosts Scott "Quake" McMahen and "Cowboy" Joe Varner, were and are extremely talented and entertaining in their own rights, Dr. B was without question the straw that stirred the drink.
And boy did he stir it up well.
Whether he was sticking up for his beloved Tennessee Volunteers, referring to fans of other college teams as "idiots", or just generally getting folks riled up, it was impossible not to listen because you never knew what the good Doctor would say or do next.
But Gary was a man's man through and through. He would take it as much as he would dish it out, although there was rarely a time when he didn't make sure that he got in the final word. That final word also cost him a few times, most memorably when he made the claim that he would eat a can of dog food if anyone over the age of 40 won the U.S. Amateur Golf Championship when it was held at the Honors Course in Ooltewah back in 1991.
And when a 41year-old former carpet salesman named Mitch Voges rolled to a surprisingly easy 7-and-6 win in the finals, Haskew - armed with some chips and contiments - famously swallowed the Mighty Dog (and some personal pride) as he made good on his wager.
But most remarkably, no matter how much he got on the case of the show's callers, the "idiots" still absolutely adored him. To get called an "idiot" by Dr. B on the air was essentially a badge of honor for the multitudes who tuned into "Sport Talk" every weekday.
Not too long after hearing the show for the first time, I began calling in myself and have continued to do so on and off ever since. And yes, I once offered up an opinion that the Doctor didn't agree with, and yes, I earned my "idiot badge" with pride.
After over 15 years of only talking to Dr. B on the air over the phone, I finally met the man in person in 2005. I was covering the opening of Canyon Ridge Golf Club and "Sport Talk" was doing a remote from just outside the clubhouse. As it turned out, he knew me from the "Stump on Sports" TV show I had co-hosted since 2001 and invited me and my friend and fellow co-host Rusty Parkhill to grab a headset and sit in for a segment on the show to talk some golf and some