(As published in the April 2005 issue of Palm Beach Illustrated)
Only one story tops the amazing events that sportscasters Dick Stockton and Lesley Visser have covered—and that's their own.
By Kevin Kaminski
April 2005 Palm Beach Illustrated
It's hard to know where to begin when writing about Dick Stockton and Lesley Visser. It's equally difficult, once you do start, to know when or how to stop.
That's because every picture in the couple's Boca Raton home tells a story, from the framed newspaper and magazine articles hanging in the hallway to the photographs in their respective offices to the Max Hayslette painting in the living room. Better still, they have stories about the stories. Great stories. The type of stories that make it seem like no two people are enjoying their time on this planet more than Stockton and Visser.
This is both the blessing and the curse of interviewing a husband and wife who've spent their professional careers at the doorstep of sports history, and who are not only passionate about life but about their life together. The writer is left with an embarrassment of riches, and no clear idea about which nugget to dust off first.
Do you start with the obvious — that Stockton possesses one of the most recognizable voices in play-by-play broadcasting, and that Visser blazed a trail like no other in sports journalism? That he called one of the most storied home runs in World Series history? That in 1976 she became the first female beat writer to cover the National Football League?
That, as lead announcer for the NBA (National Basketball Association) on CBS in the years 1982-90, he was courtside when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were at the height of their careers? That, in the role of sideline reporter, she became the first woman (1998) to join the Monday Night Football announcing team — or that, last year, she was the first female sportscaster ever to carry the Olympic torch? That both can be heard on any given Sunday during football season — he as a play-by-play man for Fox, and she working the sidelines for CBS?
Or do you trot out a love story that plays like a scene from the movie Good Will Hunting?
Stockton met the woman he would marry prior to Game 6 of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. But unlike the character in Good Will portrayed by Robin Williams, Stockton couldn't blow off the game to "see about a girl." He had to work; so did she, for that matter.
Stockton, the voice of the Red Sox in 1975-78 for WSBK-TV in Boston, was part of NBC's broadcast team that night, along with Palm Beach resident Curt Gowdy. Visser, attending Boston College and earning her stripes as a high school writer at the Boston Globe, was part of the newspaper's massive contingent at Fenway Park.
"We were killing time in the press box before the game, and someone introduced us," Stockton recalls. "I was the luckiest man in the world, and didn't even know it yet."
Later that night, at 12:34 a.m., Stockton was again in the right place at the right time. In the 12th inning of a game most baseball aficionados rank among the greatest ever, Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk launched a towering shot down the left-field line. As the ball was curling toward the foul pole, Stockton solidified a place in baseball history — and Beantown lore — with the call, "If it stays fair — Home run!"
But when Visser went home later that morning, her five college roommates did not want to talk about the Red Sox's dramatic victory. "I walk in," she says, "and they're like, ‘Oh my god, did you meet Dick Stockton?' "
Shortly after the Red Sox lost Game 7, Stockton called Visser and invited her to dinner at Café Budapest in Boston. The next day, Visser found a note on her typewriter at the Globe. "Before you get too crazy about Dick Stockton," the note read, "you should know that was the third time this week that he took a girl to the Budapest."
"You know, the chicken paprikash was such a great dish," Stockton quips, "that I just kept going back for more."
Yes, the love story isn't a bad place to start. The only problem is that, now, you have to jump ahead to 1982. And that means you can't do real justice to the seven years in between, when Visser was being denied access to locker rooms, and players and coaches were being condescending — all because she was a woman doing what less-enlightened folks felt was a man's job.
Suffice it to say that those who weren't wearing chauvinistic glasses could see quite clearly that Visser belonged. She had cut her journalistic teeth at the Globe alongside some of the legendary figures in sports writing, from Bud Collins (tennis), to Peter Gammons (baseball) to Bob Ryan (basketball) to Will McDonough (football) — "the Murderer's Row of sports writers," Visser calls them. And she more than held her own.
"People who know her only from television have no idea what a great writer she is," says award-winning Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who started at the paper with Visser and remains a close friend. "She was a dynamo, she was smart, and people gravitated to her."
Those virtues weren't enough to open every door for Visser, but if the occasional verbal brushback bothered her, she never let it show. Except once.
At the 1980 Cotton Bowl, University of Houston football coach Bill Yeoman blocked Visser from interviewing his players — even though his team had just defeated Nebraska on a last-second play. "I don't give a damn about the equal rights amendment," Yeoman said as he not-so-gently led Visser away. "She's not coming into my locker room." The other media swarmed to the scene; Visser was humiliated.
"I remember thinking earlier that afternoon that it was a new decade, and that I was so excited to be doing this job," Visser, 51, says. "But after it happened, I went back into the stadium, walked to the top of the Cotton Bowl, and just sat there and cried."
Better days were ahead. Which brings us back to the love story.
Stockton and Visser would bump into one another at games and events over the seven years since their Café Budapest dinner, but nothing ever came of these encounters. Then, by chance, the two found themselves on the same shuttle flight — which Jack Nicholson was aboard — following the 1982 NBA Eastern Conference final. They agreed to meet in Los Angeles during the NBA Finals between the Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers.
"We were in a hurry because Dick had to be somewhere for CBS," Visser recalls. "So we went to what had to be the only cheap restaurant on Rodeo Drive. It didn't matter. I was thrilled to be out with him. I had been spoiled hanging around all those incredible people at the Globe, so a guy had to be really special to catch my attention. And Dick is."
The feeling was more than mutual. Stockton waited only a few months to propose.
"We were walking down 54th Street in New York when I asked her," Stockton, 63, says. "I don't think she even heard me because of all the traffic going by."
"You were proposing?" Visser says.
The couple married in January 1983, and the only thing more striking than the guest list was the bride in her Christian Dior gown and red sash. Among those in attendance were Boston Celtics owner Red Auerbach and Celtics legend Bill Russell. A few years later, the notoriously crusty Auerbach, not the least bit softened by the wedding invite, tried to keep Visser out of the locker room following a Celtics loss.
Stockton and Visser even selected the week between the NFL championship games and the Super Bowl for the wedding, just to accommodate their friends in the sports media. But not everyone was thrilled about the timing.
"Lesley was supposed to be covering the Masters tennis championships with me in New York that weekend," says Bud Collins, the writer and television commentator, and member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. "I didn't think that a wedding was an acceptable excuse to miss work. She could've picked another day."
Twenty-two years later, it's apparent that, whether or not the wedding date was perfect, the marriage is. The heartfelt connection between Stockton and Visser is evident in everything from the way they laugh at the same things to the way they automatically connect meals and cities to the sporting events they covered — "Our dinner in Ogden, Utah? Yes, that was during North Carolina State's 1983 title run [in college basketball]," Stockton says.
Then again, what's not for the two to like about each other? Besides being at the top of his profession, Stockton is an accomplished pianist — his rendition of Two for the Road by Henry Mancini is enough to make you drop a few dollars in a brandy snifter, were one sitting on their baby grand. And he's a major-league romantic.
Last summer, knowing how much Visser loved the Hayslette painting in their Boca Raton house (they also have an apartment in New York), Stockton arranged for the couple to travel to Annecy, France — about an hour east of Lyon. Their goal was to find the country home featured in the work, Little Canal at Annecy.
"He actually gave this to me as a Christmas present," Visser says. "We went all over this wonderful medieval town with our photograph of the painting — and we finally found the house."
As for Visser, she's every man's dream come true. She's attractive and witty: "My career has spanned so long, I'm now getting fan mail from the sons of prisoners who wrote me 20 years ago from jail." And she's probably the only woman who, after her husband plays a round of golf with Carl Yastrzemski, notices that the Red Sox legend and baseball hall of famer's golf handicap and uniform number (8) are one and the same.
"You don't know how many single friends, whether they're in sports or not, say to me, ‘How do I find a Lesley Visser?' " Stockton says. "Do you know what she is? You know those markings at the bottom of an art print that indicate how many are in a series? Lesley is 1 of 1. Not 1 of 122. She's an original."
So is the story of Stockton and Visser. And it just keeps getting better and better.
Kevin Kaminski, editor of Palm Beach Illustrated, can be reached at kkaminski@palmbeachillustrated.com.