Berman comforted by friends, strangers
Six weeks after his wife’s death, longtime ESPN personality was ready to be hugged
The Hartford Courant
Forty minutes into an hourlong conversation this week where he would bare his broken heart and tickle our funny bone, Chris Berman stopped, as he often does, in mid-thought.
“Wait, wait, the Swami has a prediction,” said Berman, conjuring his longtime NFL picks segment from ESPN. “We are rooting for and predicting a winning Travelers score of minus-15. This will make it closer to par than the U.S. Open for the first time in history. I love Jim Furyk, but no 58 this year.”
Berman loves the Travelers Championship, being contested this weekend in Cromwell, Conn. He hosts the annual media day. He does radio commercials promoting the tournament. He hands out the trophy on the 18th green on Sunday. And this past Wednesday, he once again played in the celebrity pro-am, in a foursome with J.J. Henry, Tim Wakefield and Kevin Nealon.
“Kevin’s from Bridgeport, J.J. is from Fairfield, Tim’s from the Red Sox, a nice New England group,” Berman says.
• Berman faked car trouble once to get a breakfast date with Kathy Alexinski. They would be married in 1983 and Kathy would become as staunch an advocate for literacy as anyone in their state of Connecticut. On May 9, Berman says, his wife, “went to lunch to see her sister and never came home.” It has been six weeks since Kathy Berman, 67, died in a two-car accident and the outpouring of emotion for one of the most famous sportscasters in American history has overwhelmed him.
“I’m blown away on every level,” Berman says.
Berman was there at the first ESPYs in New York in 1993. He remembers what Jim Valvano said that night, remembers how he said there are three things everyone should do every day. Laugh. Think. Cry. You do those three things, Valvano said shortly before he died of cancer, and that’s one heck of a day.
“I do most of that before breakfast,” Berman says softly. “But I’m OK.”
Berman attended Jim Kelly’s annual celebrity tournament outside Buffalo early in June to benefit Kelly for Kids Foundation. Berman wasn’t sure he was ready to go out. The former Bills quarterback and Berman are good friends. Kelly attended Kathy’s memorial service at Seymour St. John Chapel at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn., May 17. He insisted Berman needn’t worry. Berman called back and said, “I’m coming.”
“I have a good connection with the city of Buffalo,” Berman says. “People were telling me you certainly don’t have to come, we understand. We also want you to understand everybody up here wants to hug you. I’m glad I went. People I hardly knew were saying, ‘We’ve been praying of you.’ It was really uplifting, to be honest, but sad.”
Bill Belichick and Andy Reid also were known to have attended Kathy’s memorial service. Hall of Famers, championship quarterbacks, leaders across the sports world, high profile media personalities contacted Berman with condolences. Berman and San Francisco Giants head of baseball operations Brian Sabean are good friends and Berman was at the GiantsMets game at Citi Field when he got the horrible news. Days later, flowers arrived at the chapel. They were from Willie Mays.
“Seven years old, he made me a Giants fan,” Berman says softly. “At 86, he comforted me. The circle of life.”
Yet it also would be the colleagues and many friends of Kathy, a teacher and later literacy volunteer, who would comfort him. Total strangers, too.
“She made her own footprint in a quieter, understated way in the education channels,” Berman says. “The literacy volunteers, to where she taught, to where our son and daughter went to school, they all came out. It wasn’t Chris Berman and his wife. It was, ‘We look at you guys as the community.’ I’m touched by that. I’m overwhelmed by that.
“I guess if you’re 38 years on national TV, people feel like they know you. There’s not much mystery about me after all these years. Perfect strangers run into you in a store, Rite Aid, where I get the Sunday papers, saying, ‘We’re really sorry.’ I get this feeling from people, ‘Our guy needs our help right now, and here we are.’ “
• Kathy died on May 9. Their son Doug’s wedding was May 27.
“Our son got married, she never saw it,” Berman says. “We were kind of figuring out what semi-retirement was for us. We’ll probably go to Maui, January, February, March. We’ll see what the year brings. Now, people ask me what are you going to do? I don’t know. Are you kidding? We’re just trying to process it.
“She had waited all this time, this is what I said at the eulogy, never complaining and she never saw it. Here it was, our son’s going to get married, there’s our daughter [Meredith], I’m semi-retired. That’s what makes me the saddest. This was right at the doorstep. Doug had a wonderful wedding. It was great, upbeat. But there’s the song my son never got to dance with his mother. That’s rough.”
Berman pauses to gather himself.
“Believe me,” he says, “she wouldn’t want us to mope.”
So he doesn’t. Berman and Kathy had gotten tickets with another couple to see Tom Petty and Joe Walsh at Xfinity Theatre on June 14. He went. He went to see Bob Dylan at Oakdale last weekend. He’s not hiding, but it has been low key, certainly nothing compared to teeing off at the Travelers celebrity pro-am Wednesday. There was a 90-minute window starting about 11:45 at the first tee when Jason Day, Patrick Reed, Russell Knox, Jordan Spieth, Geno Auriemma, Jim Calhoun, Ray Allen, Rebecca Lobo, Randy Edsall and Dan Orlovsky all passed through.
“Pretty strong, hour, 90 minutes there,” Berman says. “Look at the field this week, Spieth, Day, McIlroy, Bubba Watson, etc., we’re elevated more than we’ve been in quite a while. It’s big time, but it’s ours. Travelers has earned this.”
Says Nathan Grube, the Travelers tournament director: “Chris is the personality of our event. “He never turns down an autograph. He will talk to complete strangers like they’re his best friend. I think that’s why so many people embrace him and love him. That’s who he is. That’s part of who we are, too.”
Berman has covered 30 U.S. Opens and knows so many big names on the PGA Tour. This is different. This, this weekend, is just down the road from his Cheshire home.
“I’ve thought about it since [Jim Kelly’s] event,” Berman said earlier this week, “and I think what I’m looking forward to is having folks in my home state saying, ‘How you doing?’ when I walk around for 18 holes. I’m certainly not asking for it. I’m just ready to be embraced a little bit. I hope I don’t tear up, because that’s what I do. I cry at the ‘Lion King.’ ”