January 3: From the Field to the Broadcast Booth

Marty Glickman, sportscaster for the New York Knicks for 21 years and of the New York Giants (football) for 23 years, died on this date in 2001. Glickman was a sprinter with the U.S. Olympics team in the 1936 Berlin games, scheduled to compete when he and Sam Stoller were yanked by Avery Brundage, head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, who was a supporter of the Nazi regime and a member of America First, the isolationist group headed by Charles Lindbergh. Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe were the Jewish athletes’ replacements, and Owens, who protested the move, won four gold medals. Glickman gained fame as sportscaster: He “wasn’t the first man to do basketball on radio, but he was the first to establish the precise geometry of the court, using a language and terminology that survives more than half a century later,” writes Dennis D’Agostino. “The key, the lane, the top of the circle, the mid-court stripe, between the circles. . . all Martyisms. ‘Swish!’ — the perfect word for the perfect shot — is a Martyism as well, picked up when Glickman would work out with the Knicks in the early days.”

“How could they keep an 18-year-old kid from competing in the Olympics? Me. Any 18-year-old kid. But they did. They took my dream away from me.” —Marty Glickman