'Nightline' became nightmare

LA AT 50: One in a series marking 50 years of the Dodgers in L.A.

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It was 21 years ago and it remains as clear as yesterday. Al Campanis imploded on national TV, and both the Dodgers and baseball swayed wildly for a while.

A baseball team's public-relations nightmare became an entire sport's.

What happened that night has been well documented. How it got so quickly to the Los Angeles public that hadn't seen the show, with that speed carrying great impact, has not been.

From a newspaperman's standpoint, it was both a nightmare and an awakening. I lived it, and still do. I learned things I will never forget. Campanis lost his job as executive vice president and general manager of the Dodgers and several of us got the ultimate on-the-job training.

It was April 6, 1987. The Dodgers had opened the season that night in Houston.

About 8:30, the phone rang and it was Randy Harvey, then a Times sportswriter in Augusta, Ga., covering the Masters; my replacement two years ago as the sports editor of this paper. Our conversation was short. He said he had just caught a few sentences of the ABC show "Nightline."

"Ted Koppel had Al Campanis on," Harvey said, "and I think something controversial happened, because Koppel seemed kind of riled up. But I didn't catch it all."

The message was simple. Better check it out.

Calls were made. Reporters were dispatched. But it was late in Houston, where Campanis had done the interview, and an hour later in Washington, from where Koppel had hosted the show, and in New York, from where longtime baseball writer and author Roger Kahn had participated in a TV studio.

"Nightline" would come on in Los Angeles too late for our deadlines, so we would have to wait until the next day to get a tape and analyze. That seemed OK for a while, until our reporters started checking in. There seemed to be plenty of smoke and maybe some fire.

Campanis was reached at his hotel by The Times' Sam McManis, in Houston with the Dodgers, and Campanis told him he hoped he hadn't been misunderstood. McManis hadn't seen the program and didn't know exactly what had been said to be misunderstood. Suspicions and likelihoods are not printable.