Bob Brooks and I went way back.
Way back to the middle of the previous
 |
| Bob Brooks |
It was in the 1940s and 1950s that I recall the man a lot of us referred to as Brooksie broadcasting football, basketball and baseball games on the radio in Cedar Rapids.
Brooksie was quite the sportscaster.
And quite the man.
I mean, Brooksie was doing games on the radio even before he was awarded his degree from the journalism school at the University of Iowa in 1948.
And he never quit.
Retirement was not in the man's vocabulary.
The only thing that took Brooksie away from the microphone was death.
He died Saturday at 89, and I'll miss him a lot.
Bob Brooks and I sat in press boxes at Iowa City and many other places around the nation for a lot of years.
He'd carry a big tape recorder and talked into a microphone.
I carried a portable typewriter, then later a small computer and wrote abut the games.
Those were fun times.
I mean, really fun.
A guy called me today and said he thought it was a mistake that Brooks never retired.
"I disagree," I said. "Sports were Brooksie's life, and he wanted to attend every Hawkeye game and every Hawkeye press conference right up to the minute he died. He went out happy."
Brooks and I were among the 20 charter members of the University of Iowa's Kinnick Stadium media Wall of Fame.
I talked to Brooksie a lot, both inside and outside of stadiums and arenas.
We'd have lunches in Iowa City, lunches in Cedar Rapids.
Brooks was everyone's friend.
I referred to Brooksie a number of times in my three [a first edition and two updated versions] "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" books that chronicled the long, rich tradition of Hawkeye football.
One was in a segment titled The Young Bob Brooks:
In 1939, Bob Brooks was a 13-year-old student at Franklin Junior High School in Cedar Rapids.
His father Ira was an Iowa sports fan who bacame a season ticket holder in 1939. Young Bob loved tagging along with his parents to Iowa City for Hawkeye games.
This is the same Bob Brooks who would later make his mark in the University of Iowa athletic scene. He became a play-by-play radio broadcaster, did Hawkeye football games for 55 years for Iowa stations and, in 2002, was presented with the Chris Schenkel Award as a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
"I saw my first Iowa game in 1938," Brooks said. "Iowa played Colgate and lost, 14-0."
But then came 1939.. It was coach Eddie Anderson's first season and Nile Kinnicak's last season.
Asked when he could see the magic developing that year, Brooks said, "Well, Iowa beat South Dakota, 41-0, in the opener and nobody knew who Nile Kinnick was, to speak of. Then the game that kiind of got things rolling was the next one against Indiana, which Iowa won, 32-29.
Erwin Prasse, who caught the winning touchdown pass from Kinnick against the Hoosiers said it was so hot "that it seemed like 100 degrees in the shade.I lost 18 pounds that day, and Kinnick lost 12."
Iowa football was still not a big hit. Only 20,000 fans were in the stadium, but the Hawkeyes were fashioning a personality. They passed up what likely would have been a tying field goal to go for the critical touchdown against Indiana. People liked that.
"I had one foot in the end zone and one foot out of the end zone," Prasse said of the winning play. "But the pass counted."
Brooks said he saw most of Iowa's home games in 1939 as a member of the Knothole Club.
"Kids got in for 25 cents for the season, and that enabled us to stand or sit in the end zone," said Brooks, who added that those in the end zone would jump the fence and go into the grandstand.
Brooks talked of the two big national headline-makers on Iowa's schedule--the successive home games against Notre Dame and Minnesota.
"What I remember about the Notre Dame game is that I thought I probably wouldn't see it," he commented.
"All of a sudden, it was evident that the Iowa athletic department was going to sell out the game.
"So the kids' Knothole Club was canceled. My parents had two tickets to the game, but I didn't have one. I believe tickets then cost $5, and I remember sitting around the evening dinner table at home when the subject came up as to how I was going to get a ticket to the game. I didn't have $5.
"So I finally contracted with a neighbor to mow his lawn for the next year to get my five bucks."
Brooks said the Knothole Club was restored for the Nov. 18 game against Minnesota, a team that had beaten Iowa eight consecutive times. But the stadium was so jammed that it could out without selling discount tickets to kids.
"I stood under a sumac tree in the north end zone," Brooks recalled.
"Bill Green caught the winning touchdown pass from Kinnick, and Iowa won, 13-9.
"Minnesota was a national power, and Bernie Bierman, its coach, was the Bear Bryant of his time. After the game, the field was flooded with fans, and I was down there, too.
"I watched Bierman come off the field. I thought, by the look on his face, that the bricks in the stadium were going to crack. He was boiling mad."
I also have done a lot of writing about Brooks on the Internet over the years.
Here's one segment, when Brooksie was a mere 80 years of age:
It's not true that Bob Brooks broadcast the first Iowa football game that was played in 1889.
But he might have been the student manager on that team.
Just kidding.
Brooksie did see the 1939 Ironmen play when he was a kid, and he says he attended his first Iowa press day in 1943.
"Slip Madigan was the coach then, followed by Clem Crowe," Brooksie said. "For press day, we met under a tree on the practice field. It was a beautiful tree and we had a lot of shade.
"We solved the world's problems and we talked a lot of football."
Rest in peace, Brooksie.
Like I wrote earlier in this column, I'll miss you a lot.
