Picking Blackberries
An Interview with Ernie Johnson
We’re pleased to have Ken Coleman, broadcaster and writer of Life is Sport, provide Trap Door Sun with a great interview of Ernie Johnson. Ernie is an Emmy award winning sportscaster, adoptive parent, and a cancer survivor. His story is compelling so we asked Ken for a small snippet from his long form interview, which you can find here.
COLEMAN: In 2006 you won the Emmy for outstanding sports personality. Describe some of the feelings that went through your mind and your heart as you won the top award in your field and from your peers.
JOHNSON: I think, while it was gratifying, it’s one of those things that’s nice to have but you don’t want to say, “This is everything about me,” and “I won an award, aren’t I great.” I realize that a lot of the support that I had and the balloting that came was because I had this very public battle with cancer, and I had taken the summer off for treatment and then came back to work. When people were voting it was probably tugging at them a little bit. But, to be sitting there with my wife, and to hear your name called is very cool and to share that with your wife of 25 years was really cool.
COLEMAN: Very few people in your industry get to actually do something with their family, and from 1993 to 1996 you got the distinct honor to call Braves games with your dad, famed Braves pitcher and broadcaster Ernie Johnson Sr. What was that like during those years to call games with your father?
JOHNSON: At first, frightening. I remember the first time that I sat down with him. It was a spring training game … he’d been doing games for 30 years and was beloved by Braves fans, so I didn’t want to mess up. I didn’t want him shaking his head in the booth saying, “Oh, this was a mistake!” Once you get over that initial trepidation, it was like sitting down with my dad watching a ballgame—we had a lot of experience doing that over the years. We would just talk through a game as if we were sitting on the couch and I’d call him the Right-hander or Big Guy … “Can I get you a sandwich Big Guy?”
COLEMAN: Beyond your father, who are some other broadcasters that you have admired through the years? How have they influenced your career?
JOHNSON: Well, I think that Bob Costas was a guy that I’ve always watched and respected. as well as Brent Musburger. I remember watching him when I was younger saying to myself, ”I’d like to do that some time.” Skip Perry had an impact. When I got cut from the Georgia baseball team as a sophomore, and was thinking, “What am I going to do with my life?” I couldn’t help but think back to Skip. My dad would say, “You know, you’ve got a pretty good voice and you ought to try this and if see if you like it?”. I’d roll that around in my head and think, “Maybe.” Then once you give it a try and you get into the games for free and it’s pretty cool!
COLEMAN: Your career has provided you with this all-access pass to some big-time sports. Is there one moment, as a broadcaster, that sticks out in your mind as “The Call”?
JOHNSON: For a long time it was Dan Jansen winning a speed skating gold medal at the Olympics in Norway in 1994. His story had been so well chronicled about losing his sister to leukemia. This was back in Calgary in 88’ and he didn’t know if he should skate and he was one of the favorites in the world. He fell twice that week, and for a speed skater to fall, it’s so rare. It was devastating for him at the time, and then to come back in 92’ and not medal, and to come back in 94’ as the favorite - it was his last chance. He broke the world record and won the gold medal. He then took a victory lap with his daughter, who he had named Jane, after his sister. It was, a very emotional time. That was spectacular!
COLEMAN: What are some lessons that you’ve learned from playing sports in your adolescent and youth career, or even college?
JOHNSON: I think that the one that jumps out happened when I was eight or nine years old. I was playing baseball and a kid hit a ground-rule double over my head one day, and the coach called us out to the mound to tell us what was going to happen next. When we went back out to our positions I saw that the left fielder and the center fielder were nowhere to be seen. So, we called time out, and everyone on our team and the umpires were looking for the kids. As it turns out, they had scaled the fence to get the ball after the ground-rule double. There was a little embankment and there they were at the bottom eating blackberries! They had forgotten that the game was even going on!
So, something that happens back in 1965 turns from being a funny story about Little League to something that I’ve talked about on numerous occasions. It’s the need to step away from the game sometimes. So often we get so caught up in the game, whether that’s our job, or anything that is occupying too much of our time that we don’t know when to step away.
The kids saw the blackberries, and even though mom and dad might of said “This is the biggest game of your life!”, they saw the blackberries and said, “This game can wait.” I think we miss a lot of blackberries that are out there. Moments to be savored, moments to be enjoyed. Even though it happened when I was eight or nine, now, at 51, I’m always looking for blackberries and I’m always vigilant that, “you know what?” you’re too wrapped up in the game right now. Don’t be afraid to step away.
COLEMAN: Share with us some about your son Michael.
JOHNSON: We decided to adopt in 1991. We had Eric and Maggie, our two biological kids, and then Cheryl came home from work one day and said, “Here’s what we need to do …” She suggested that we go to Romania and look at adopting one of these kids that she had seen on television. We explored it more and eventually Cheryl went to Romania. She ended up going to an orphanage where they brought out a boy who was almost three years old—he can’t speak or walk, and has all kinds of developmental and mental delays, and then she calls me from Romania and said, “The first boy that they brought ou is so much more than we can handle … but I don’t think that I could go through my life and wonder ‘whatever happened to that first boy I saw?’” It was one of those things where your heart overwhelms your mind because part of your mind says, “Well, Cheryl, we can’t really deal with this!” But I know Cherly’s heart, so I said, “Well, let’s bring him home!”
She brought him home. We took him into the hospital and they fix his foot so maybe now he can begin walking. And he does! He began to walk and then we take him to the doctor again and he says, “We don’t like the enzyme level here.” It turns out that he has muscular dystrophy, and there’s no cure for that. At that point we began to deal with a bit of doubt and frustration. Looking back on it I think it was really not a crisis of faith, it was more like asking not “Why?”, but “How?”
He’s had more influence on other people than anyone in our family will ever have because of his simple spirit and his ability to cut through everything with his simple key phrase: “Love you too!” You don’t have to tell him that you love him first. After you’ve had a conversation with him, he says, “Love you too!”
Now, at the age of nineteen, to see him become a part of so many lives—it has a ripple effect. There’s no way that we could have ever seen the impact his life would have in so many lives that day in the hospital room when we got the news about his condition. Now all we can say is, “You know, there’s a reason that Cheryl went to that particular orphanage on that particular day, and that particular child was brought out. It’s all part of a plan that you don’t see at the time, but God’s hand was all over it.”
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