Mental Lint

Marty Glickman (1917 – 2001) was a prominent New York sportscaster who did play-by-play for the Knicks, the football Giants, and the Jets, along with college basketball. His energetic style was easily recognized and he even appears briefly in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road:

[Talking about Dean Moriarity]When usually I came to visit him at dusk there was nothing to do. He stood in the shack, counting tickets and rubbing his belly. The radio was always on. “Man, have you dug that mad Marty Glickman announcing basketball games — up-to-midcourt-bounce-fake-set-shot, swish, two points. Absolutely the greatest announcer I ever heard.” He was reduced to simple pleasures like these.

But one of the most memorable episodes of Glickman’s life took place in 1936, at the Berlin Olympics, where he was to compete as part of the US track team. Scheduled to run in the 4×100 meter relay, Glickman and another Jewish athlete, Sam Stoller, were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe (Metcalfe later became a US Congressman, representing Chicago’s South Side). Glickman, along with many others, believed he and Stoller were replaced because Avery Brundage (who was a supporter of the Nazis), head of the US Olympic Committee did not want victorious Jewish athletes to embarass Hitler. The revised US relay team won the Gold Medal, and Glickman and Stoller went home without being able to compete.

Glickman recounts his experience in this interview.