It’s a funny thing meeting a celebrity.
Pretty much everyone has had a brush with one, be it a chance encounter with an actor at an airport, a famous musician in a restaurant or glad-handing a politician or astronaut in some random place. It happens, and it usually makes for good conversation at summertime barbecues.
I now have my barbecue story.
Yeah, I’ve met some famous sports types over the years, but they were pretty much all arranged through news conferences or personal interviews. Among the highlights were Bobby Knight, Lance Armstrong, Shaquille O’Neil and one my childhood heroes, Joe Theismann.
It’s quite a bit different when it’s a random thing like serving pizza to Garth Brooks or, well, what happened just a few days ago.
Last weekend I did what I usually do when attending social events tied to work-related stuff. In North Carolina for a thing, it was an easy decision to skip the symposiums and crowded lecture rooms to do what any sports-minded person might do when staying on Tobacco Road: Jump in the car and tour the holy grounds of Cameron Indoor Stadium and the Dean Dome, aka the Dean E. Smith Center.
Yes, the idea of walking around empty arenas of historical value in the offseason is more appealing than sitting in a conference room listening to people talk about work.
Extroverted introverts, whattyagonnado?
It was worth it to experience the nondescript stone facade of Cameron Indoor, a building that can easily be mistaken for a random lecture hall if you’re not paying attention. Aside from a chest-high sign that showed its name and address, there was nothing to suggest it was the place that birthed a dynasty under Coach K.
No neon signs, no flashy banners, no soaring entrance that boasted about the value of the place.
It was also worth the trip to Tar Heel country and visit the place where his Airness took flight, to see his original UNC arena and walk through a museum with so much history.
My wife and I were still soaking it all in as we walked into the lobby of our hotel and waited for an elevator. The doors opened and none other than Joe Buck came walking out. He introduced himself as if we had spent the last quarter decade living under a rock and had no idea who he was.
I may or may not have said I was from New Mexico. It could have been complete nonsense, I’m not sure.
Buck was in town to be inducted into the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame, an honor that similarly went to fellow inductees like Andrea Kremer, Jayson Stark, Tim McCarver and Roger Kahn. Dozens of national sports journalists you’ve seen or heard about were there, like Kevin Harlan, Kenny Albert and Jeff Passan.
Full disclosure: I was never a huge fan of Buck’s for reasons I never quite understood. Maybe he was too polished, too privileged, too … whatever. He never felt real, almost as if he were 3-D printed and programmed with faulty AI software.
All it took was a genuine greeting, a couple of brief conversations and an entertaining night of his deliveries to change all that.
He was funny, engaging and not unlike most of us — except for the fact he makes more money delivering sports than most of us will make in a dozen lifetimes.
As soon as his induction speech was over, he and I did the exact same thing: Retreat to our rooms to change into sweatpants and a T-shirt, then take the elevator back down to the lobby.
We laughed about immediately dumping our business attire, happy to be headed for a lobby with snacks, drinks and a chance to unwind and escape. In that moment I almost felt bad for not liking the guy who, in my mind, called the 2002 World Series with a Giants-esque slant and who seemed, in my mind, to be a perpetual Cowboys apologist year after year.
On that night, in that circumstance, in that series of face-to-face encounters not likely to happen ever again, the most famous play-by-play announcer our country has to offer was just a normal dude who seemed to be enjoying a not so normal night with a random guy from New Mexico.
Not to get all fan boy, but Joe Buck is now my favorite announcer of all time.
Sorry about that, Vin Scully. You’ve been bumped.
