Craig Sager, best known for his work as a NBA sideline reporter for Turner Sports as well as his seemingly limitless wardrobe of gaudy sports jackets, died Dec. 15 after sparring with leukemia for over two years. He was 65.
Sager covered a number of high-profile sporting events outside of basketball over the course of his 44-year career, including the World Series and the Olympic Games. He was just 22 when he leapt over the railing of the third base photo well at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium and interviewed Hank Aaron moments after hitting his historic 715th home run in 1974.
Craig Sager ran out *on the field* in a sweet trenchcoat when Hank Aaron hit 715: https://t.co/xtiEvQUT0F pic.twitter.com/Dwt9csQADo
— Seth Rosenthal (@seth_rosenthal) December 15, 2016
Craig Sager worked the National League tie-breaking playoff at Denver’s Coors Field for TBS Oct. 1, 2007. It was the network’s first foray into postseason baseball. The San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies had finished with identical win-loss records that year. One more game was added to the schedule to decide which team would take part in the first round of the NL playoffs. I was shooting the game for the Pueblo Chieftain. It was my first postseason baseball game, too. Sager wore a relatively sedate blue pinstriped jacket, grey slacks, and shoes that were robin’s egg blue. I was probably wearing my blue Hansen Surfboards hoodie, jeans, and white low-cut Nikes.
“Time is simply how you live your life.”
It turned out to be a thrilling back-and-forth game that went extra innings. The Padres took an 8-7 lead into the bottom of the 13th inning. I was in the third base photo well next to the visitors dugout, as was Sager. He sat in the rear of the well, making notes on a legal pad, preparing perhaps for a San Diego victory. But the Rockies rallied, winning the game 9-8 after Matt Holliday hit a RBI triple, then tagged up from third and scored on a Jamey Carroll fly out. Just moments later, there went Sager over the railing and hustling toward home plate—just like he had 33 years earlier in Atlanta— to get postgame interviews before I even set my camera down.
I never crossed paths with Craig Sager again. TBS covered the Colorado-Philadelphia playoff series, then had to give way to Fox Broadcasting, who owned the broadcast rights to the Championship Series and World Series that year. The Chieftain missed the MLB credential deadline and the Rockies’ improbable postseason run. Colorado swept both the Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks to reach the World Series for the first time in team history before being swept themselves by the Boston Red Sox.
Last July, Sager received the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance from ESPN. I ran across some of his remarks from the ceremony from a number of online sources: “Time is something that cannot be bought, it cannot be wagered with God, and it is not in endless supply,” he said. “Time is simply how you live your life.”
While it might be a bit garish to say so, it does seem fitting: you can’t spell “Sager” without “sage.”
