By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
June 9, 2016
Back in the 1980s there was a local sportscaster named Bob Page who worked various media jobs in Detroit, including gigs at WJR and WXYZ-7. But he might have been best known for his “SportsView” program on local cable with co-host Ron Cameron.
The show was basically a version of CNN’s “Crossfire” but mainly focused on the Detroit sports scene. How much did I enjoy watching Page? Well, I absolutely despised everything about Cameron — from his awful sports takes, to his slovenly appearance, to his annoying way of talking — yet I still tuned in for every show in to get an honest appraisal of the Lions, Tigers, Pistons and Wings from Page.
(And remind me to ask former WDFN program director Gregg Henson about his experience with Cameron the next time 3-G is on the podcast. Some of the stories you just can’t make up.)
Anyway, Page left Detroit for New York City in 1988 and ended up with a prestigious gig at MSG. He also worked with Howard Cosell.
The truth is, Page basically had to leave this city for the Big Apple because it was becoming quite apparent that Detroiters didn’t want to hear the truth about their local teams. This provincial market was changing. The days of Al Ackerman were ending and the era of Don Shane and Bernie Smilovitz was beginning.
I received an email from Page earlier this afternoon about Ackerman’s death as Page had read my article posted yesterday about Al’s passing. Bob shared an email with me that he had been sending out to friends about Ackerman and I asked Page if it was okay to share it with you.
Page graciously said yes, so here are Bob Page’s thoughts on his mentor …
When I was teenager in Detroit in the late 60’s and early 70’s I watched Al most every night on Channel 4. He always wore these wild, mismatched sports coats and ties but that, of course, was merely the sideshow.
I thought it was soooo cool that a guy could just get on TV and say whatever he wanted to, criticize and even rip people and teams to shreds WHEN it was warranted.
Moreover, he told the truth about what was going on when not a single other sportscaster of his era would. I think it was at that point that I knew I wanted to be a sports commentator too. I was never one of these guys who went out and practiced announcing games, hoping to someday be a play-by-play man.
I wanted to be Al Ackerman and, nationally, I wanted to be Howard Cosell, never dreaming that I would wind up working with both of them!!!
Channel 7 hired me in early 1977 to be the third man in a three-man sports department. The news director warned me that Al and Larry Adderley did NOT get along and wanted me to be kind of a buffer between them.
Larry was and is a great guy. It turned out that I needed a buffer between Al and me. He was crazy. Insecure as the day was long, he was a yeller and immediately disliked me because of my background.
He’d actually scream at me, “You Grosse Pointe motherfucker!” And I’d reply calmly that times had a changed; that as a Jew, if he wanted to, he could now buy a house in Grosse Pointe too.
But I guess I won him over eventually because I was his reporter and I hustled and dug up stories constantly for him. We wound up getting along very well. He’d sometimes come to me before the 11:00 news at night and say, “Watch. I’m really gonna do a number on this son of a bitch tonight.”
And he DID. Then when the show was over he’d come back to our office and with me sitting at the desk across from him, he’d immediately call his beloved shiksa (second) wife, Terese, and actually purr sweet nothings over the phone to her right in front of me.
Al Ackerman sounding like that?! He had an Indian woman named Bela who ran a small upscale shop in Birmingham and he’d have her come over almost every single day with a nice present he’d ordered so he could bring it home to Terese that night.
In turn, when I once asked him why he had worn those bizarre outfits on the air, he actually turned red and said that he just didn’t know how to dress properly until Terese came along!
Nobody liked Terese — cold, standoffish, kinda plastic — but Al, which was all that mattered, obviously. Al’s best running buddy prior to this marriage was Sonny Eliot, as many of you know.
Sonny and I were sitting in the press box one night at Tiger Stadium and he said some tough things about her. Surprised, I remarked, “Sonny, I thought you liked Terese!” He looked back at me and said, “Bob, I never liked her when I liked her!”
Other times when our show was over we’d come back into the office and some fan had gotten through on the phone and would begin screaming at Al.
Al would call him a choice name or two, slam the phone down in the guy’s face, then turn to me and deadpan, “Well, I just made another fan for life!”
Other times the phone would ring after a show, Al would pick it up and say, “Yes, Phil?” Within ten seconds the phone call would deteriorate into a shouting match with Al eventually screaming, “Fuck you, Phil!” and hanging up on him. I’d then ask, “Uh, Al, was that our BOSS, Phil Nye, you were just speaking with?” And it had been, of course.
When Al left Channel 7 to go over to Channel 4 it was obvious that he would bring his protege, yours truly, with him.
After all, my best friend in the biz, Eli Zaret, was already working at Channel 4 too. We woulda had a blast! It never happened — and I resented it for a number of years afterwards until I wound up in New York where I (ugh) met and worked with Howard, so what had happened with me at Channel 4 no longer mattered.
Still, I was so disappointed in Al that I never asked him why he didn’t fight to hire me at a time when my career really could have used a boost.
I only saw Al one time after I moved to NYC in ’88 — maybe 15 years ago in Florida. We went out to lunch near his home on Marco Island.
Al had been in some kind of accident, went to Henry Ford for treatment and the doctors messed up an operation on his leg leaving him with a limp the rest of his life — but also leaving him with HUGE money after a malpractice settlement.
He looked, other than the cane he had to use — well, just as they used to say about Billy Martin: “tanned, rested and ready to go.” But nobody ever hired him again.
TOO hot to handle in THOSE days of mealy-mouthed sportscasting wimps. I fought for a few years with the abject morons who run the bogus “Michigan Sports Hall of Fame” to induct Al.
He was the greatest, most famous and most powerful television sportscaster in the history of Detroit — but he pissed off too many people by telling the truth and, when it comes down to it, was not a very nice guy, on or off the air.
It actually hurt me to watch so many lesser-lights and undeserving sportscasters go into the Michigan Hall while Ackerman didn’t. He was a trouper to the end.
I remember him saying a number of years back, “What I wouldn’t give to be slipping and sliding through the snow on the Lodge in February, driving down to channel 4 to deliver one more commentary.”
Sonny, Bonds, now Al — and so many others — gone.