The George & Ken Show Is Historic

Two of the Brett brothers, George and Ken, made a little television history Wednesday night. When George got his 3,000th hit at Anaheim Stadium, Ken was in the SportsChannel broadcast booth, working as a commentator.

“I couldn’t be prouder, I couldn’t be happier,” Ken Brett said over the air after George’s seventh-inning single against the Angels.

The Bretts’ mother was shown wiping the tears away. “I know my mother is very happy,” Ken said.

Reached at home on Thursday, Ken said he would just as soon have been watching in the stands. “That way I could have relaxed and checked out the reactions of the people around me,” he said.

“I’m glad it’s over, and I’m sure George is glad it’s over.

“I was happy for George, but I wouldn’t say I was emotional. I’m not a real emotional guy, at least not about something like that. Now, when our dad died (last May), I was very emotional.”

Ken Brett was able to grab a one-on-one interview after the game, and then KMPC carried George Brett’s news conference with the writers live.

That’s always a little risky, since there is a pretty good chance of some expletives getting out over the air. And some did.

George, in explaining how he got picked off by reliever Tom Fortugno after the big hit, said he was talking with first baseman Gary Gaetti when it happened. “I said, ‘Aw, . . . !’ ”

That one, in bleeped form, also made Jim Healy’s KMPC show Thursday.

California bashing? When ABC was looking ahead to Saturday’s national telecast of Florida State-Miami and discussing ideas for a strong halftime feature, someone suggested a look at the recruiting battle for Florida prospects among the Seminoles, Hurricanes and Florida Gators.

Since USC-Washington, at 12:30 p.m., is ABC’s second game in most of the nation Saturday, someone else suggested a look at the exodus of California recruits, particularly Southern Californians, to Washington.

The second idea was selected, even though it will be shown during the Florida State-Miami game. Reporter Julie Moran and a crew were assigned to the project, and the footage was shot last week. It was edited this week.

Among the Huskies featured are Beno Bryant, the 1988 Los Angeles City player of the year from Dorsey High, and sophomore tailback Napoleon Kaufman, from Lompoc.

Both got away from USC and are among 53 Californians on the Washington roster.

From USC’s vantage point, it’s not a pretty picture, and the timing of ABC’s feature is not good. It’s not the kind of national television coverage the school needs the week a player has been shot by a stray bullet at practice.

“The shooting is not part of the piece, but (studio host) John Saunders will do a report on it as a lead-in to the piece,” Moran said.

According to Moran, Bryant says in the piece that he “had to get away from L.A.,” although he plans to someday return.

ESPN also will examine USC’s recruiting problems in a piece put together this week by West Coast correspondent Mark Schwartz. It will be on “College GameDay” Saturday at 8:30 a.m.

Said Tim Tessalone, USC’s sports information director: “Defending our location is something we’ve been doing for many, many years. We have a very safe campus, and we have the statistics to prove it. We have the largest security force of any university in the country.”

Raider bashing: ESPN this week dispatched reporter Chris Mortensen to El Segundo, his stomping grounds when he was a sportswriter for the South Bay Daily Breeze.

Mortensen’s assignment was to see what has happened to the Raiders’ mystique. Mortensen will report on “GameDay” Sunday morning that it no longer exists.

Net results: Rick Kulis of Palos Verdes, the promoter of last Friday’s Jimmy Connors-Martina Navratilova pay-per-view tennis exhibition, is calling the event a success. Kulis says the early indications are that the number of subscribers was more than 100,000, but short of the hoped-for 200,000.

An independent survey by QV Publishing indicates that the buy rate was between .5% and 1%, which is higher than the projected .3%-to-1% rate.

Kulis is already talking about a possible Connors-Monica Seles match sometime next year at a site to be determined.

The handicap?

“Maybe we’ll have clay shipped in from France, since Monica does so well on clay and Jimmy doesn’t,” Kulis said.

TV-Radio Notes

The baseball season ends Sunday for the Dodgers, but not for Vin Scully. He will work the World Series again for CBS radio with Johnny Bench. . . . It will be Keith Jackson and Bob Griese on Florida State-Miami at 9 a.m. Saturday, with Brent Musburger and Dick Vermeil calling USC-Washington. . . . NBC, in an effort to drive up ratings, lies to viewers about the starting times for its Notre Dame telecasts. Network ads and press releases say the games begin at 10 a.m., but that is the starting time for the pregame show, “Notre Dame Saturday.” The games, such as Saturday’s with Stanford, begin shortly after 10:30 a.m. It’s probably asking too much of NBC to deal with viewers more honestly. That would be breaking with tradition.

With John Robinson making his CBS debut this weekend, working Green Bay at Atlanta, Prime Ticket will use Craig Fertig as the commentator for its USC-Washington replay Sunday night at 10:30 p.m. . . . Prime Ticket will have UCLA-Arizona live at 7 p.m. Saturday. . . . The Rams at San Francisco is CBS’s featured game Sunday, with Pat Summerall and John Madden reporting. . . . The early game on NBC, Buffalo at Miami, with Dick Enberg and Bob Trumpy reporting, should be the game of the day. . . . Worst game of the day is New England at the New York Jets on TNT at 5 p.m. TNT’s Bob Neal called this the “Doughnut Bowl,” since both teams are 0-4.

TNT is coming off its most successful event ever--last Sunday’s San Francisco-New Orleans game, which got a 10.0 cable rating. . . . ABC averaged a respectable 17.0 national rating, second highest of the season, for the Raiders and Kansas City Monday night, but it was down to a 15.4 by the end of the game. . . . NBC gets back into the boxing business Saturday after Notre Dame-Stanford, with Troy Dorsey facing Jesse James Leija in San Antonio, Leija’s hometown.

The Victor Awards, taped at the Las Vegas Hilton on June 20, will be televised Saturday night at 7 on TBS. Among the 30 honorees are Bill Shoemaker and Olympic figure skating gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi. Danny Glover is the host of the event that benefits the City of Hope. . . . ESPN begins its hockey coverage with Philadelphia at Pittsburgh Tuesday at 4:30 p.m., with Gary Thorne and Jim Schoenfeld reporting. . . . Prime Ticket offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Kings on Sunday at 7 p.m. . . . The play-by-play voice in the Disney film, “The Mighty Ducks,” belongs to the Kings’ Bob Miller.

Santa Anita’s new $6-million, state-of-the-art broadcast center will be ready for use when the Oak Tree meeting opens next Wednesday. It is located on the grandstand level across from the eighth pole. There’s a window for those who want to peek inside. . . . The nightly replays, now back on Channel 56 at 8 p.m. and also on SportsChannel, usually at 10:30, will have a higher-quality look to them. Also, Santa Anita will go to the same kind of split-level telecasts--a close-up of the front-runners on the top of the screen, the whole field on the bottom--that Hollywood Park has been using.

Fans at Santa Anita will notice new, bigger monitors, and there will be a multitude of angles of the races and post parades. Said Amy Zimmerman, the track’s broadcast coordinator: “No other track, at least no track in California, has a broadcast facility like this.” It includes enough equipment so that a network could come in to cover a race and wouldn’t have to bring in any of its own equipment, unless it choses to.

Channels 9, 4 and 2, which broke away from regular programming to cover Magic Johnson’s news conference Tuesday, got ratings of 3.6, 2.8 and 3.3, respectively. Channel 7, which did not, got a 6.5 for the soap opera “One Life to Live.” . . . Both all-sports radio stations KMPC and XTRA covered the Johnson situation, but XTRA’s Lee Hamilton was claiming a clear-cut victory. “We broke the story at 10 a.m. that Johnson was coming back and we had all the details,” Hamilton said. “We kicked KMPC’s (rear end) and we’ve been kicking their (rear end) for weeks. But you won’t put that in the paper.” Countered KMPC’s Joe McDonnell: “We had a direct line and XTRA had to hold up a telephone. We had Jerry West, Randy Pfund and A.C. Green on right after Magic’s announcement. I think we kicked their (rear end).” . . . Added Hamilton: “How is that old man at KMPC doing, that guy who is always ripping me? What’s his name? I can’t think of it. . . . Healy, isn’t that it?”