Only Chick Hearn, 84 years old at the time ... As we pulled up to a corner, a crew was working on the street, the sounds of their jackhammers on the asphalt reverberating against the bus windows.

"Hearn doesn't share a room," Chick is supposed to have announced and stomped across the street to another hotel. In an era of larger-than-life announcers like Marv Albert in New York and Johnny ...