Enberg enters author’s arena with soft steps

Writing the book, although a painstaking and lengthy process, turned out to be the easy part.

Sports broadcaster Dick Enberg walked into a bookstore a couple weeks ago in Minnesota and hoped to find “Oh My!,” his new book written with Jim Perry, somewhere on the front table. All he saw was the new Phil Jackson book. He went to the biography section and saw more Zen coach, no Finn sportscaster.

He finally wandered downstairs to the sports section and, after pushing aside several more copies of Jackson’s book, found two copies of his own. He then sat across the aisle from a person reading Jackson’s book during a long flight. The reader said he bought the book after unsuccessfully looking for “Oh My!”

“It just stabbed me right in the heart,” Enberg said.

He has negotiated a long career in a business with a notoriously short attention span, but the publishing game is another ball of yarn. Enberg, like many others in the public eye, has put together a collection of memories and anecdotes.

Enberg, nearing 70, is a little uncomfortable with turning the spotlight on himself, and even his revelations of a turbulent family life seem self-conscious. He is much more comfortable writing about those more famous than he is.

It is much the same way he called the games, letting personalities like Al McGuire, Billy Packer and John McEnroe take the soapbox.

Enberg doesn’t want to paint a dark picture of sports, and said the empathetic profiles of athletes are just as valuable.

“Since Watergate it seemed like, unless you’re interrogative or investigative, those are the only pieces that are journalistic,” Enberg said. “What I do is journalism, too.”

He does get angry with an athlete who deliberately hurts the game, such as steroid users among baseball players, NBA player-on-fan violence, or McEnroe’s outbursts on the court.

There are no plans to retire. Enberg said the best way to go would be after calling a game, giving the final score and then resting his head on the desk.

By the way, McEnroe, whose talk show was just canceled by CNBC, wrote the introduction to “Oh My!” The two became friends once McEnroe moved to the broadcast booth and that inappropriate brattishness was channeled into passionate discourse.

Now that, Enberg could understand.