BRENT MUSBURGER SIGNS OFF BY INVITING FANS TO JOIN HIM IN LAS VEGAS AND 'SHARE A COLD ONE, AND MAYBE A WIN OR TWO.'

Brent Musburger is being remembered for many famous calls during his legendary broadcasting career. Missing from the narrative was the infamous call that changed his chosen path. Musburger grew up around baseball. His father, Cec, founded the Little League organization in Billings, Mont. Brent played against David McNally, a four-game 20-game winner with the Baltimore Orioles.

Musburger, three years older, wasn’t in McNally’s league. Not many were. But he wasn’t ready to walk away from the sport. Baseball was his calling, he thought.

He decided to become an umpire, a major league umpire. After graduating from Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, Minn., in 1957, he headed off to umpiring school.

A year later, he was starting at the bottom in the Class D Midwest League.

He told me the story back in 1978 when he was a rising star at CBS, preparing for his second stint as a pre-game host of the Super Bowl. I was a Montana-raised AP sportswriter based in Cincinnati.

I knew his father from my days as sports editor of the Billings Gazettte, but had never met Brent.

The Super Bowl was in New Orleans and I was 800 miles away in Cincinnati, looking for a feature.

Musburger returned my call.

I was interested in the turning point in his career.

“It was 1958, in Michigan City, Ind., in the Class D Midwest League,” said Musburger.

Juan Marichal, a super prospect in the San Francisco Giants farm system, was pitching and the game was tied at 1-1 in the eighth inning. "A batter hit a ball that bounced over the fence," recalled Musburger. "But I lost it in the lights and called it a home run. I ended up kicking three guys out of the game. I led the league in ejections that year with 15. I needed a police escort to get off the field."

“It was that point in my young life that I decided to go into sportswriting because I could use an eraser when I made a mistake,” he said.

At Shattuck, he had dabbled in sports broadcasting. But after a rough umpiring season he decided to pursue a journalism degree at Northwestern University.

He joined the now-defunct Chicago American, where his participation on sports-talk radio shows attracted a local broadcasting executive. Musburger soon landed at CBS-affiliate WBBM where he became a radio and TV sports anchor.

“I wanted to take the chance, figuring I could always come back (to writing),” he said.

“I had always felt the biggest weakness in radio was the absence of good reporting,” he added.

In the mid-1970s he moved to Los Angeles where he co-anchored KNXT’s evening newscast with Connie Chung from 1978 until 1980, when he became CBS’ lead sports voice for a decade.

The last call of his nearly 50 years in sportscasting came Tuesday night when he teamed up with Jay Bilas at Rupp Arena for ESPN’s broadcast of the Kentucky-Georgia game.

Last week he announced he’s moving to Las Vegas to assist his family in starting the Vegas Sports Information Network based in a studio at the South Point.

At the end of the game, a 90-81 overtime win by Kentucky, Musburger looked into the camera and signed off with, “What a road we’ve traveled together."

“Thanks so much to you for sharing your time with me. What great memories we had over the last almost 50 years. But now it's time for me to turn over the play-by-play to those fine young announcers growing up at ESPN."

“Make no mistake about it I’m going to miss games like this. I’m going to miss working with all the great analysts that I’ve been with through the years but maybe you’ll pay me a visit out at my new place in Las Vegas. Why not? We can share a cold one, and maybe a win or two."

“Anyway, thank you so very much for all the appreciation and all the great moments we’ve shared together. God bless.”