Holidays Mean More to Bob Starr Now

Ram announcer Bob Starr and Brenda, his wife of 17 years, spent a quiet Thanksgiving together, driving back from a three-day respite in Palm Springs to their home in Orange.

There was no big family get-together, because Starr’s two grown sons are in St. Louis and Brenda’s grown son and daughter were going to their respective in-laws’.

But this Thanksgiving was special for Starr.

He has much to be thankful for, and not just because life on the whole has been good to him.

Starr is thankful to be alive.

After broadcasting the Rams’ final exhibition game against the Raiders on Aug. 28, he went home feeling ill.

The next nine days were a nightmare. He was extremely weak, could barely breathe and was continuously nauseated.

“I was so weak I couldn’t walk from our bedroom to the family room at the other end of our house without collapsing,” Starr said.

Brenda tried playing nurse but it soon became apparent that Starr had something worse than a bad case of flu.

During those nine days, Starr went to see the Angel team doctor, Jules Rasinki, and cardiologist David Johnston. Starr had suffered a heart attack in 1985, but this time there was nothing wrong with his heart.

“When I went to see the doctors, I was in such bad shape I couldn’t even sit up in the waiting rooms,” Starr said.

The doctors believed Starr might have pneumonia, but they weren’t sure. He was referred to a pulmonary specialist, Raymond Casciari, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange.

There it was discovered that Starr had Legionnaire’s disease. He was admitted to the hospital immediately and began receiving heavy doses of a special antibiotic. He was in the hospital for 10 days.

Legionnaire’s disease, a lung infection, is so named because it killed 29 people who had attended an American Legion convention in a Philadelphia hotel in 1976.

It killed seven people in Southern California in 1988, four who lived in a West Los Angeles retirement home and three others in separate cases that were treated at UCLA Medical Center.

The disease is believed to be caused by dirty air-conditioning units. The symptoms are similar to pneumonia or debilitating flu.

Starr, who went back to work after missing the Rams’ first four games, is still recovering.

“I’m still a little weak and huff and puff more than I should,” he said.

An avid golfer with a 14-handicap, Starr said he recently was able to get back onto the course, although it was a chore.

“Nobody told me just how sick I was during those days in the hospital,” Starr said. “Maybe they were afraid to.”

Now well along the road to recovery, Starr is breathing much easier. And saying thanks with every breath.

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College football fans, outraged that ABC does not plan to show Saturday’s Florida State-Florida game on the West Coast, will get two other games today that have national championship implications.

Oklahoma-Nebraska will be on ABC and West Virginia-Boston College on ESPN. But those games will be going head to head about half the time. Oklahoma-Nebraska starts at 11:30 a.m., West Virginia-BC at 1 p.m.

ABC also has Arizona-Arizona State at 3 p.m.

The big game Saturday is Florida State at Florida, but ABC, in one of the biggest scheduling blunders imaginable, has chosen to show Penn State-Michigan State on the West Coast.

The switchboard at Channel 7 no doubt has been lighting up over this one.

The game won’t be on pay-per-view, either.

One more thing: The ABC announcers on the Penn State-Michigan State game will be Mark Jones and Tim Brant, the pair that bumbled and stumbled through the UCLA-USC telecast.

At least Florida State-Florida will be broadcast by KMPC live at 9 a.m. This may be a case of a radio broadcast having a bigger audience than a competing game on television.

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Add college football: The game at Tokyo on Dec. 4 between Wisconsin and Michigan State, which will determine whether Wisconsin or Ohio State plays UCLA in the Rose Bowl, has been picked up by ESPN.

The kickoff is scheduled for 8 p.m., PST, but ESPN is trying to have it moved to 8:30. ESPN has a Kansas-DePaul basketball game at 6:30 p.m., and the plan is to join Wisconsin-Michigan State in progress.

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KMPC update: Latest word is that the all-sports radio station is close to being sold to Cap Cities, the parent company of ABC and ESPN.

Supposedly, the plan is to move KMPC, now located on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, to the KABC radio studios on La Cienega and change the format from sports talk to “smart talk.”

But even if the sale were to go through within the next week, legal entanglements would hold up the move until April at the earliest and more realistically until the end of next year, one source said.

According to another source, a possible lineup at the new KMPC would be Charlie Tuna, 5-9 a.m.; G. Gordon Liddy’s syndicated show, 9-noon; Larry King’s syndicated show, noon to 4; and a local show in the evenings. And, of course, Jim Healy at 5:30.

TV-Radio Notes

The saga of Michael Andrew Fizzell, the former regular caller known as Drew on XTRA’s nighttime “Too Much Show” program, is becoming more and more intriguing. After calls from Drew stopped coming, it was learned from a letter he wrote to the show’s hosts, Steve Mason and Rick Schwartz, that he was in prison in Seattle. It was later learned that he was charged with a series of bank robberies.

Dave Michael of Seattle, a friend of Drew’s from high school and college days, after seeing a report by Channel 11’s Rick Garcia that was carried on the Fox network, called XTRA, stunned with the news. Michael was booked as a guest on “Too Much Show” Wednesday night, and said that no one knew, including Drew’s wife, that he was leading a double life as a bank robber.

NBC this week added Julius Erving to its NBA pregame show cast as a replacement for Quinn Buckner, now the coach of the Dallas Mavericks. NBC’s NBA coverage begins Christmas Day. . . . NBC has a college football game Saturday--the 12th Bayou Classic between Grambling State and Southern at 11 a.m.

After the Florida State-Florida game on KMPC, Larry Kahn and newcomer Jeff Fellenzer will talk college football and basketball for about two hours leading into the UCLA-Loyola Marymount basketball game at 2:30 p.m. at Pauley Pavilion. . . . ABC has the Skins Game from Bighorn in Palm Desert on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3:30 p.m., delayed both days.

An unusual boxing event will be offered on pay-per-view Friday, Dec. 3, from Bay St. Louis, Miss. Sixteen heavyweights, including James (Bonecrusher) Smith, Bert Cooper, Tony Tubbs and a group of young prospects, will square off in a succession of three-round fights, all in one night, vying for a $1-million prize.