Fred Cusick

[KEVIN VAHEY <fenway@zip1.ziplink.net>]

With Fred Cusick retiring, there really isn't anybody left that goes back
to the golden years. 

Attached is the Globe story for those of you outside the area....


   
Cusick unseats himself: Broadcast career ends after 45 years

   By Howard Manly, Globe Staff, 04/16/97
   
   Fred Cusick, the elegant voice of the Boston Bruins, has resigned from
   Channel 38, ending an era of radio and television play-by-play
   announcing that spanned 45 years and an estimated 3,100 games.
   
   ``Enough was enough,'' said the 78-year-old Cusick. ``It's time. My
   voice has held up pretty good over the years, but if [Mario] Lemieux
   can quit at 31, then I think it's my time, too.''
   
   Surgery to repair a detached retina in his left eye two years ago
   caused a slight loss of vision, said Cusick. That, along with what he
   regarded as poor broadcast locations in arenas across the country,
   including the FleetCenter, caused him to rethink doing a job that he
   said made him ``the luckiest man alive.''
   
   ``The thing I pride myself on is accuracy,'' he said. ``The last game
   I did was in New Jersey. It was no problem. I had a good location and
   I called the goals. But if you are in a somewhat tough spot, then you
   lose perspective. If you blow a goal, then that is not good. I said to
   myself, `Why strain?' I've had a good run. It's time.''
   
   Cusick's resignation prompted his analyst partner for the last 10
   years, Bruins great Derek Sanderson, to also call it quits.
   
   ``I wouldn't want to work without Fred,'' Sanderson said. ``He was my
   mentor and helped bring me along. It wouldn't be the same.''
   
   Channel 7 broke the story on its 6 p.m. news last night. Stu Tauber,
   general manager of Channel 38, the station where Cusick worked the
   last 25 years, told sports anchor Gene Lavanchy, ``Fred will be sorely
   missed.''
   
   Cusick and Sanderson worked telecasts for Channel 38, which in general
   covers all Bruins road games. New England Sports Network televises
   home games, with Dale Arnold and Gord Kluzak announcing. For several
   years, Cusick and Sanderson worked both Channel 38 and NESN telecasts.
   
   Cusick, a former Northeastern hockey player, began his career
   announcing the Bruins on radio in 1952. Four years later, he called
   the ``NHL Game of the Week'' on CBS, becoming the country's first
   national hockey broadcaster. He would later win the Lester Patrick
   Award, emblematic of special contributions to hockey, and be inducted
   into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
   
   In Cusick's early days, the black-and-white broadcasts, with no
   slow-motion replays, got terrible ratings across the country, but in
   hockey-crazed Boston, they were a hit, even outperforming NBC's NBA
   package, which consisted of mostly Celtics games, three to one. The
   Bruins were mediocre then. The Celtics were winning championships.
   
   After CBS gave up the sport, Cusick became the driving force behind
   local television's discovery of the Bruins. It would have happened
   eventually, because Bobby Orr was just around the corner. But Cusick
   accelerated the process.
   
   During the early '60s, Boston's television programmers cared little
   about hockey, rejecting Cusick's premise that there was an enormous
   audience waiting to be tapped.
   
   The breakthrough began in 1963 when Channel 9 in Manchester, N.H.,
   accepted $250 from the Bruins for an hour of its air time each Sunday
   morning at 11, before its regular programming began.
   
   Cusick would drive to Montreal on Saturday nights when the Bruins
   played there and the game was on Canadian television. He would pick up
   a tape and drive overnight back to Manchester.
   
   The next season, Channel 5 showed films of Saturday night games on
   Sunday afternoons. The following year, the new Channel 56 signed on
   the Bruins, but it gave up after two seasons, handicapped by a
   terrible signal.
   
   The Bruins then were picked up by another new independent, Channel 38,
   which had a powerful signal. This coincided with the beginnings of the
   Big, Bad Bruins.
   
   The winning, fighting Bruins, led by the magnetic Orr, achieved
   ratings on Channel 38 during the next six years that would never be
   approached in the regular season by any other Boston team. Cusick was
   proven a prophet.
   
   The announcer's career didn't flow as smoothly. He spent two years out
   of hockey after Channel 38 picked up the Bruins rights in 1967, but
   rejoined the team on radio in 1969 and took over Channel 38's
   broadcasts in 1971.
   
   ``I didn't set out to set a record for longevity,'' Cusick said in a
   recent interview. ``It just worked out that way. If you have good
   seats, which I used to have at the Garden, it's the easiest to
   announce.
   
   ``You don't have to come up with 6,000 stories to fill the gaps, like
   in baseball. It's much better if I come to a game with my mind blank
   and not with seven things I want to say because I don't get the chance
   to say them.''
   
   He preferred to keep himself in the background.
   
   ``I just did the game,'' he said. ``I don't stick myself into it. That
   is why I have lasted so long. I don't think anybody else has done as
   many games. It's been incredible. I have been very lucky doing a job
   that thousands of guys would have loved to have done. I have no
   complaints.''
   
   There is no word on replacements, but candidates would include Bob
   Neumeier, the Channel 4 reporter who does radio play-by-play; Arnold,
   NESN's play-by-play man; and former radio analyst Barry Pederson.
   
   Neumeier grew up on the South Shore listening to Cusick.
   
   ``He is a giant in the industry,'' Neumeier said. ``I have been amazed
   and astounded by his energy level and love for the game of hockey that
   has lasted so long. All of us are in his debt.''
   
   This story ran on page d1 of the Boston Globe on 04/16/97.
   

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