BROADCAST SIDEKICK : KEITH ERICKSON’S JOB: CHICK HEARN’S SECOND

Batman had Robin, Sherlock Holmes had Watson, Captain Kangaroo had Mr. Greenjeans, and Chick Hearn has Keith Erickson. It has never been easy to play second banana to a charismatic star. It usually entails just hanging around, keeping your mouth closed and marveling at the super-human talents of your celebrated partner.

Winding up his eighth season as Hearn’s color man in the Los Angeles Lakers’ broadcast booth as the team shoots its way through the final rounds of the NBA playoffs, Erickson is the prototypical television sidekick. In an era when other sports commentators endlessly mug and pontificate before the camera and often get to do their own Lite beer commercials, he may be the only broadcaster in America who never feels compelled to steal the limelight.

“Keith’s job is to carry Chick’s bag in his left hand when they are on the road,” some of Erickson’s friends tease. “When Chick has two bags, Keith is supposed to carry them both.”

Erickson admits that the joke is a good analogy for his role in the press box. Hearn is probably the one play-by-play basketball announcer in the country who simultaneously provides his own color commentary without missing a “ticky-tack foul” or even one “hippity-hop dribble.” No one doubts that Hearn could entertain Laker fans for an entire season all by himself.

That probably would discourage most television personalities, whose egos generally demand more reassurance than “we could get along just fine without you.” But Erickson is entirely content to punctuate Hearn’s opinions with quick observations of his own and to give Hearn’s rapid-fire vocal cords an occasional rest with his half time and postgame interviews.

“Chick is the star,” Erickson says. “It’s his show. If I felt it was my show, then I would feel stepped on. I might feel I wasn’t getting my due if I didn’t understand coming in that there wasn’t going to be any due.”

Erickson, 43, a former UCLA basketball star, a pro player for 12 years and a member of the 1964 U.S. Olympic volleyball team, has been sitting beside Hearn since Pat Riley, the Lakers’ current coach, vacated the chair in 1979.

During those eight years, Erickson has been criticized for his deferential on-air relationship with Hearn and his apparent reluctance to contradict anything the “star” has to say. Accustomed to the flamboyance and contentiousness of other basketball color men on TV such as Al McGuire, Billy Packard and Tommy Heinsohn, many fans have poked fun at Erickson for failing to assert himself in the heat of the game.

“Any idiot can do the color for television,” Hearn says, defending Erickson by pointing out that his critics don’t understand that the Lakers’ televised games (on KHJ-TV Channel 9 and the Prime Ticket pay-TV service) also are broadcast on radio (KLAC-AM 570). I have to keep the radio going. I don’t have time to wait for Keith or anyone else.”

Erickson, who worked as a commentator at CBS Sports for two years following his retirement from basketball in 1977, says he has had to learn to anticipate the infrequent dead spots in Hearn’s perpetual chatter. In a radio broadcast, his comments are often limited to moments when the ball is out of bounds or during free throws. But even then, Erickson must compete with a barrage of mini-commercials and KHJ’s station IDs.

Though Hearn insists that Erickson excels at offering authoritative opinions about the game that are often contrary to his own, Erickson says that he is not there to carry on a debate in the booth. Instead he tries to describe what the players might be feeling or thinking in a particular situation based on his own experience as a championship competitor.

Back when he was playing for the Lakers and the Phoenix Suns, Erickson never dreamed of becoming a sportscaster. A devoted husband and father of five, Erickson looked forward to the end of his playing career, with its pressures and grueling travel demands.

But several of his basketball buddies had found that broadcasting offered them both a second career and a way to stay close to the game that had dominated their lives. Erickson too decided to give it a try.

“I was uncomfortable doing public speaking back in school,” Erickson says, “and the first few times I stepped in front of the camera, realizing how many people were out there watching, I was real nervous.”

Over the years, Erickson, who is as calm on and off the air as Hearn is excitable, has learned to take the camera and the jitters in stride, though he still hates the traveling. He has graduated from halting, incomplete analyses of the Lakers’ set offense to concise, witty comments about the overall pace of the game that teach even Hearn, the Lakers No. 1 basketball authority for nearly 27 years, a thing or two.

He still relies heavily on meaningless superlatives such as “sensational” and “did you see that?” But his real strength, according to Hearn and many of their fans, is his quiet, mischievous sense of humor. Erickson seems most comfortable when he is joshing around with his pal Chick.

“I wish we had a chance to put more humor into the broadcast,” Erickson says. “This is entertainment. It certainly is not life or death.”

A few years ago, Hearn promised to buy dinner for all 17,505 fans at the Forum if Magic Johnson, who’d had trouble shooting all night, missed two consecutive free throws near the end of a big game. Johnson missed both shots. Hearn, for once, was rendered speechless, and to this day Erickson never misses a chance to razz Hearn on the air about his embarrassing blunder.

One of these days, Erickson says, Hearn will put the game “into the refrigerator” (Hearn’s trademark description for a lopsided game essentially being over)--”the door will be closed, the light will be out, the eggs will be cooling, the butter will be getting hard”--and the losing team will come from behind and ruin Chick’s perfect record. “I can’t wait for that to happen,” Erickson adds with a grin. “I’ll never let him forget it.”