Dan Cook, 1926-2008

As a lifelong fan of Mr. Cook, one of the things I’ve missed most since leaving South Texas twenty years ago is his nightly presence on my television screen and getting to read his frequent writings in the San Antonio Express News.

Cook was from the old school of sports writing – tough, brutally honest, stick with the facts and throw in a few zingers here and there. His columns featuring his alter-ego, Benjamin Broadhind, sitting on a stool at the local bar, having a glass of whiskey and shooting the bull with various and sundry patrons were a joy to read. A regular contributor to the annual Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine for more than 40 years, his piece in the 1965 issue about the 1964 contest between San Antonio Churchill and San Antonio Lee – “The Greatest High School Game Ever Played” – remains in my view the best feature article ever printed by that publication.

His television sports reports were even more fundamental than his sports writing. Cook never got used to all the high-tech gadgetry and rapidly-moving highlights that long ago became the staple of television sports broadcasting. His segments commonly consisted of him sitting at the desk, telling you what had taken place in sports that day, with perhaps a highlight or two thrown in just to get the camera off of his incredibly wrinkled face for a couple of seconds. But there was something special about those reports, because you just felt like if you were getting the sports news from Dan Cook, you were getting it straight.

It received only passing mention in the SA Express News obituary, but Dan Cook is responsible for the advent of the saying “The opera isn’t over ’til the fat lady sings.” Dick Motta is commonly credited with it, but he always gave Cook credit for it when asked.

Motta was coaching the Baltimore Bullets in 1978, and they were in town playing the Spurs in an NBA playoff series. A touring show of the NY metropolitan opera was also in town, and KENS showed a clip of a rather plump soprano singing the closing song of the whichever opera was being performed just before Cook’s sportscast began. The Spurs were down to the Bullets, 3 games to 1, in the playoff series, and things weren’t looking good for the home team. Cook noted this in his report on the 5:00 newscast, and closed by saying something like, “but as we just saw, the opera isn’t over ’til the fat lady sings.”

News Anchor Chris Marrou got so tickled that he wasn’t able to do his into for the traditional funny clips segment that always ended the KENS newscasts.

Motta actually had seen that newscast that day, and after the Bullets had pulled out a come-from-behind last minute win over the Spurs that evening, used the quip to a reporter in his postgame interview. That clip aired hundreds of times on various television sports reports in the next several days, and it became the common wisdom that Motta had come up with it on his own.

But it was Dan Cook, the guy with the wrinkled face, the guy you could count on to give it to you straight. Rest in Peace.

KENS during the ’70s and ’80s and into the ’90s was the best local TV newscast I’ve ever seen anywhere at anytime. Marrou, Fred Lozano, Deborah Knapp were all terrific anchors, and Cook was a rock. The newscasts in Austin and Houston are just uniformly bad jokes and always have been. Only the ABC station in DFW compared in overall quality to KENS.

Chooky also appeared on the “Captain Gus” show and liked Judd Ashworth

“The newscasts in Austin and Houston are just uniformly bad jokes and always have been.”

Gee, thanks.

I’m sure he would make an exception with some Austin sports anchors of days gone by.