SPECIAL REPORT / SPORTS MONTHLY : TV-RADIO : ‘Back-Back-Back’ to ESPN’s Roots : He has been with the network virtually from its inception and is truly an original--the cream of the crop, Chris ‘Berman Shave.’

There are now eight buildings where once there was one. There are more than 30 large satellite dishes where there were only a few.

When ESPN launched 20 years ago today in this middle-America town in the middle of Connecticut, it reached about 1.25 million homes. It now reaches more than 76 million in the U.S. and countless millions more worldwide.

There were about 70 employees 20 years ago; there are now more than 2,100--and that doesn’t seem like many considering ESPN’s impact on our daily lives.

Through all the growth, all the change, Chris Berman has been one constant. Bob Ley has been another, and Tom Mees would have been one too had he not drowned in August 1996.

Berman, Ley and Mees were all hired shortly after ESPN launched. Not to shortchange the immensely talented Ley, but it was Berman who emerged as ESPN’s marquee figure and who has maintained that stature over the years.

Maybe it’s Berman’s catch phrases--”Back-back-back,” and “He . . . could . . . go . . . all . . . the . . . way,” to name a couple.

Maybe it’s his nicknames--Dominik “Burning Down the” Hasek, Ed “For Whom The” Belfour, Bert “Be Home” Blyleven, Roberto “Remember The” Alomar, Frank “Tanana Daiquiri,” to name a few of hundreds.

Maybe it’s his home-spun style that makes him appear to be a guy you’d enjoy talking to in a sports bar.

Maybe it’s his loyalty to ESPN.

Actually, it’s all of the above that makes Berman Mr. ESPN.

It is Berman whom ESPN chose as host of a three-hour special that will air today at 4 p.m. to commemorate ESPN’s anniversary. Ley and SportsCenter mainstay Dan Patrick will also have significant roles in the show that will trace ESPN’s evolution, but Berman is the star.

Berman, known as “Boomer” since grade school because he was always the loudest kid in class, has been named Sportscaster of the Year five times since 1989. He has won Emmys and CableAce Awards, has had his picture on the cover of TV Guide and other magazines.

But you sit down with Berman, 44, over dinner and you realize he’s still pretty much the same guy he was in ESPN’s early days, when he and his employer were struggling for identity.

Berman was hired Oct. 1, 1979, to work the late-night edition of “SportsCenter.” It aired at 3 a.m., Eastern time.

“It was basically a night light in a few homes and a companion for fathers handling the overnight feedings,” he said.

For Berman, a 1977 graduate of Brown, going to work for a fledgling cable network was hardly a daring move.

“I had nothing to lose,” he said. “I was 24, single with long hair and a Luis Tiant fu manchu mustache. My career at that point could stand some risk-taking. I was working for a radio station in Waterbury, Conn., not exactly a major media market.

“I also was doing weekend sports for a TV station in Hartford--the No. 4 station in a four-station market. I was making $23 a day.”

Berman signed with ESPN for $16,500. “And I bargained hard for that extra $500,” he said.

These days he earns about $1 million from ESPN and ABC.

“The early years were so special,” he said, “doing the overnight shows with Tom Mees--God rest his soul.”

To this day, Berman gets choked up when he talks about Mees. One story he likes to tell about Mees, whose duties included hockey play-by-play for ESPN2, was what happened after the Pittsburgh Penguins were eliminated by the Florida Panthers in Game 7 of the 1996 NHL Eastern Conference finals.

“Tom asked Mario Lemieux for a one-on-one interview, and Lemieux, even though the Penguins had lost, told him, ‘Anything for you, Tom.’

“What’s significant is I heard that story [from an ESPN technician] after Tom died. Anybody else would have come back bragging about how he got Lemieux to do a one-on-one. That wasn’t Tom’s style.”

In the early ‘80s, he and Mees were working the 2 a.m. “SportsCenter.” There were few rules for those hours. When the NFL season started in 1980, Berman created “the Swami,” who made predictions. “Amazingly I was right more than wrong,” he said.

“I remember taking a vacation to California in ’81 or ’82. We were in a restaurant in Newport Beach, I believe. I was with my wife Kathy, although that was before we were married, and the waiter says, ‘And what does the Swami want to drink?’

“I was blown away. Then I realized people in the West were watching us at 11 p.m. It was at that point that I knew we would be OK, that I had made the right decision.”

Berman said there have been a few times he came close to leaving ESPN. In 1983, he considered going to KGO in San Francisco for $40,000, which would have been a hefty raise. And he mulled over an offer to do play-by-play for the San Francisco Giants--his favorite team--in 1988.

But the closest he came to leaving was the next year, when NBC dangled a salary of nearly $800,000 in front of him. He was making $185,000 at ESPN.

He asked ESPN if it could come “within a nine-iron” of NBC’s offer. He wanted to stay. He thought of the Bryan Adams hit “Straight From the Heart” as he drove to a final meeting with Steve Bornstein, his longtime friend who was then executive vice president and would later become the fourth of five ESPN presidents for whom Berman has worked.

“When I heard that song I knew where my heart was,” he said. “You can’t put a dollar sign on that.”

But ESPN did anyway, giving him a new contract worth $600,000 a year.

“I want to be like George Brett and Tony Gwynn; I want to retire with the team I came in with,” he said. “ESPN has been great to me, better than I could have ever hoped.”