Back at the dawn of Baltimore television, when the Sunpapers owned the first station here, a 25-year-old Evening Sun reporter named Jim McManus agreed to work in front of the camera for $65 a week. It was 1947. The station, WMAR-TV, had to fill hours upon hours with original programming. So its crews did remote telecasts, running from the races at Pimlico to supermarket openings to professional wrestling matches at the old Baltimore Coliseum.
McManus, a reporter and announcer, didn't care for the pro wrestling assignment.
"I knew it was fake," McManus, better known to the wide world as Jim McKay, told me during a visit to his Monkton farmhouse. "I didn't want to lie on the air. I never said it was fake. But I didn't lie. I knew it wasn't real blood. I knew it was [red liquid] from a squib. So I never called it blood."
The wrestlers sensed that the young, bow-tied commentator from Channel 2 wasn't completely on board. One of them, who went by the ring name Billy Graham, decided to teach him a lesson. During a televised match, the wrestler picked up his elderly opponent, the Super Swedish Angel, and threw him out of the ring - right at Jim McKay.
"There!" Graham roared at the stunned announcer. "Is that fake, kid?"
Though offered as amusing reflection, I mention this story because it spoke to the integrity McKay believed essential, and that he maintained, throughout his career. Refusal to take pro wrestling seriously may not seem a daunting test of journalistic fortitude, but I always considered the diminutive McKay's near-death experience with the 300-pound Super Swedish Angel an example of his grace under pressure.
And he survived, with his credibility intact.
"Being involved in television at that time must have been a lot like being a writer at the invention of the printing press," said McKay, who passed away yesterday at age 86.
Many elements of the new medium of television were created for entertainment value - and they were being made up literally on the run - but that didn't mean McKay would give up the values and fundamentals he'd learned in the Evening Sun newsroom.
He'd cut his journalistic teeth as a police reporter in Baltimore's Western District, and though he'd moved to the world of sports, the job still called for truth, accuracy and objectivity.
Sports broadcasting benefited from that. The nation and world benefited from that.
