‘NIGHTLINE’ HANGS OUT BASEBALL’S DIRTY LINEN

Don’t blame Ted Koppel or ABC’s “Nightline” for the demise of Al Campanis.

“When I first heard what he said, my impression was that ‘He can’t be saying this,’ ” Koppel said by phone from New York Wednesday night. But Campanis was saying it.

Campanis, who was forced to resign Wednesday as Los Angeles Dodgers vice president in the stormy aftermath of a devastating--and revealing--”Nightline” interview two nights earlier, simply self-destructed. TV gave him the opportunity, but it was Campanis who pulled his own plug by making abhorrent statements about blacks that caused such negative reaction that his ouster by the Dodgers became mandatory.

The “Nightline” staff believes Campanis is the first guest to lose his job because of what he said on the show.

“I feel terrible that the man’s career is over,” Koppel said before Wednesday’s “Nightline” following up the Campanis affair. “But by the same token, I don’t know how a man who holds views like that can carry out what is clearly an important role in this day and age, and that is ending racism on all levels, not just on the field.”

Campanis had praised the athletic abilities of blacks, but suggested that they generally don’t have what it takes upstairs--in the old noodle--to handle baseball’s executive jobs. At another point, he also declared that blacks are not good swimmers “because they don’t have the buoyancy.”

Had he been beaned with a baseball or something?

Campanis was in the Houston Astrodome when he was interviewed live by Koppel after the Dodgers season opening loss to the Astros. In Campanis’ defense, it’s not easy being questioned on TV in Houston by someone sitting in a New York TV studio. Communication is ideal for the interviewer, awkward for the interviewee. The 70-year-old Campanis was connected to Koppel only through a tiny earpiece. He could hear, but not see Koppel.

Not easy at all.

But Campanis said what he said, and there was no mistaking it. And what he said sounded very much like racism and was compelling evidence why blacks continue to be excluded from the managerial posts, board rooms and executive suites of professional baseball.

Pictures were essential. The printed word alone would not have done Campanis justice. You also had to see his face, the almost casual, untroubled, bemused way in which he gave his opinion.

The “Nightline” interview also was one of those rare times when live TV had a positive effect instead of being merely a ploy to give news more entertainment value by conveying a false sense of immediacy and excitement.

In issuing an apology a day later, for example, Campanis said his statements were “construed as indicating a belief that blacks lack the ability to hold” management positions. “I hold no such beliefs,” he added.

What was to construe? Because the interview was on live TV (aired on a three-hour delay here), Campanis could not claim that he was misquoted or taken out of context or that his remarks were butchered in editing. He spoke and the nation heard.

What’s more, Campanis had chances during the show to retract his remarks, but didn’t.

That evening’s “Nightline” was designed merely to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson being picked by the old Brookyn Dodgers to break major league baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Campanis was a teammate of Robinson’s in the minor leagues and thus a logical choice to appear on the program.

No controversy intended.

“This (Campanis) is not a man that I knew and this is not a subject that I knew intimately,” Koppel continued by phone about Monday’s “Nightline.” “He was brought on the program because he was a teammate and friend and supporter of Robinson’s. And I asked him a question that I thought he was gonna hit out of the ballpark. There were any number of answers that he could have given.”

Campanis was quoted afterward as claiming that Koppel had asked him a loaded question. Nonsense! Here was Koppel’s question:

“Why are there no black field managers and few blacks in baseball management positions? Is there still that much prejudice in baseball today?”

And Campanis gave this reply to an astonished Koppel:

“I don’t believe it’s prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager . . . Well, I don’t say . . . all of them. But they certainly are short (in numbers). How many quarterbacks do you have? How many pitchers do you have that are black?”

Campanis was feeding critics of professional football, for example, who charge that racism--white owners and executives believing that blacks haven’t the intelligence to make decisions or direct teams on the field--is behind the traditional paucity of black quarterbacks in the NFL.

“That sounds like the same sort of garbage that we were hearing 40 years ago about players,” Koppel told Campanis.

A brilliant interviewer but admitted sports novice, Koppel needed neither journalistic nor sports savvy on this night. Campanis just talked on and on.

The implications of his comments were rejected not only by Koppel, but also by a second guest, Roger Kahn, a friend of Robinson and author of “The Boys of Summer,” a classic book about the 1955 Dodgers.

Was it possible that they were not hearing racism, but merely a tired, elderly man unable to express himself on live TV, a man whose words came out differently than he intended?

“I felt that I was hearing the kind of talk that goes on in the locker room a lot,” Koppel said, “the kind of thinking that I thought had gone out of style 20 years ago, that suggests an entire race of people is incompetent to carry on beyond a certain level. If that is not what he meant, I certainly believe that I made every effort to give him the opportunity to say what he meant.”

Indeed. Koppel was unusually gentle and gave Campanis several opportunities to reconsider and back away. After one commercial, for example, Koppel told Campanis: “From everything I understand, you’re a very decent man and a respected man in baseball . . . I’d like to give you another chance to dig yourself out because I think you need it.”

Instead, Campanis continued to dig himself in. “He made a series of replies, and he just kept getting in deeper and deeper,” Koppel said.

Not that America’s racism is confined to sports or a single sport.

Campanis did correctly point out to Koppel that the TV industry has a shoddy record in hiring blacks for critical on-air and management positions in news. ABC News itself, for example, presents nearly monolithic whiteness on the screen. Koppel agreed with Campanis, but added--also correctly--that blacks have been held back by TV and some major newspapers not because of being unqualified, but because of the attitudes of white management.

Just like baseball.

This week’s aggressive media coverage--including Wednesday’s “Nightline” on which baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth pledged to right baseball’s racial imbalance--may have put to rest any worry that the firing of Campanis would obscure the larger issue of racism. “They may be ramblings,” Ueberroth said about Campanis’ statements, “but they should be taken seriously.”

Meanwhile, the local TV crews rushed to Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda as he returned from Houston Wednesday. He told them that Campanis’ words were “incorrect and inaccurate. Unfortunately,” Lasorda added, “he made a mistake.”

Which left a nagging question: Was Campanis, a Dodgers employee for more than four decades, fired for being racist or for being honest on national TV?