On the Waterfront : Ex-Player Is on Sidelines Again--as Olympics Anchor

James Kruse has been participating in the summer Olympics since 1976.

A member of the U.S. water polo team in the Bicentennial year, he returned in 1984 and 1988 as a TV commentator. He will be in Spain for the games next month, once again anchoring the water polo events.

Much has changed since his stint four years ago. Vice President Bush has become President Bush. Communism has fallen. And commercial real estate--Kruse’s other vocation--has hit the skids.

What better time for a broker approaching the big four-O to face up to a midlife crisis?

“I’m sitting in the locker room at halftime, getting ready to go out for the second half,” said Kruse, a principal at Schneider Commercial Real Estate in Orange. “That causes you to pause and think: ‘What do I want to do with the next 40 years of my life?’ ”

He has a fantasy: “I’ve often dreamed about getting that call from some big network executive in New York saying, ‘Jim, we’ve got a seven-figure contract lying here we’d like you to sign.’ ”

It’s not that the real estate world hasn’t been good to him. Kruse began his career as a broker in the late 1970s after a brief stint of teaching English and coaching water polo at Corona del Mar High School. He joined Schneider in 1987 as general manager and, with three partners, bought the firm the next year.

Today, Kruse sits in a well-appointed corner office two blocks away from St. Joseph Hospital, where he was born 39 years ago. He also owns several small office and industrial buildings in Orange County.

“I’m not telling you I was a savvy investor,” Kruse said, going on to explain that, unfortunately, he bought the property in the peak years--1988 and 1989--right before prices and rents did a belly flop.

“There’s a lot of misery in the market right now, but that’s the way markets are. Orange County had been on a roll for 20 years. At some point or the other, we had to suffer a hangover.”

That brings him back to his midlife crisis--and his part-time career, which is really more of a hobby at the moment.

“Howard Cosell didn’t start until he was 39 or 40,” Kruse said of the well-known TV sports commentator. “Of course, I would have to summon a lot of courage to step out of something I’ve done 14 years and start over.”

His TV adventure began with a phone call. In 1984, ABC was scouting for someone to anchor the water polo events during the Olympics in Los Angeles.

It was no easy feat for the network. While popular in Europe, water polo is not high-profile entertainment in the United States. So finding a person who knew about the sport and, just as important, had a camera presence, was a bit trickier than finding, say, a gymnastics commentator.

“Somehow, my name was suggested to them,” Kruse said. “They interviewed some college coaches and ex-players, and I got the job. I was lucky enough to have played in the Olympics and to be able to string two sentences together.”

Indeed, Kruse possesses that certain television charm. He is handsome in an unobtrusive way and swims regularly to maintain his athlete’s physique. He speaks with a pleasant, Southern California-bred voice. He is self-assured yet humble.

That helps to explain why NBC tracked him down for the 1988 Summer Olympics, held in South Korea, and again for the upcoming games in Barcelona.

This time around, Kruse’s duties will be more grueling. Through a joint venture, NBC and CableVision combined resources to win the bid to televise the Olympics. So instead of narrating only those events in which the U.S. team competes, Kruse will provide cable subscribers with ongoing commentary on most of the water polo games.

“Before, I did a lot of standing by and waiting,” he said. “Now I’ll be on the air much more frequently.”

To prepare for the daunting task, Kruse pores over volumes of information on each of the 16 competing teams. “I have to learn everything I can about the players, pronunciations of names, the teams’ strengths,” he said.

He likes telling viewers what the players do in their real lives, when they are not basking in sports’ grandest hour: “You want to have something to say other than that he’s No. 11 and weighs 200 pounds. Perhaps he’s a stockbroker on the London exchange, or a veterinarian. People can relate better to an accountant or a doctor than they can to an Olympic athlete.”

The hardest thing about broadcasting, Kruse said, is turning on the obligatory effervescence at a moment’s notice. “You might have taped three other games that day,” he said. “But when they come to you live, you have to be absolutely as excited and spontaneous as you’d be if it were your first game of the day.”

It has been 16 years since Kruse was one of those players discussed by commentators. His plunge into water polo began at Fullerton High School, continued at UC Irvine, then culminated at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. The U.S. team placed 11th out of 14, Kruse noted with chagrin. “We were pathetic.”

After college, he coached high school water polo for a couple of years but did not find the experience fulfilling.

“I wanted to win more than my players wanted to win,” Kruse said,laughing. “These kids had so many choices. They could wander off and hold their girlfriend’s hand, they could go to the beach or they could practice a little longer. Practicing a little longer usually lost out.”

The youngsters’ lack of dedication frustrated him, for his own perseverance at their age had taken him to the Olympics. “I wanted everybody on the team to pay the price I paid,” Kruse said. “But looking back, I can see that I was too immature to coach at the time. Beating Newport Harbor or Fullerton High at water polo isn’t necessarily the most important thing in the world.”

The same self-discipline and perseverance have served him well in his brokerage career, Kruse said. Still, starting at the bottom was an adjustment after excelling in sports for so many years.

“You get your teeth kicked in every day in this business,” he said. “There are people who mistreat you and reject you. Resiliency is a quality that’s vital in both sports and business.”

Although he occasionally daydreams about leaving it all behind to become a famous TV commentator, for now he will keep his day job. But the idea of changing sports in the middle of the game sounds exciting, he said.

“Would I sacrifice everything I’ve done to go into broadcasting?” he asked himself for the third time in an hour. “I just don’t know.”

In the meantime, moonlighting once every four years pays handsomely. The extra pocket change Kruse will pick up this year will pay for a European honeymoon for Kruse, who is getting married in July, shortly before the Olympics begin.

“The salary is just fine,” he said. “It’s more than I’d make sitting at home and watching the games on TV.”