HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, heard, observed, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here. One exception: No products will be endorsed.

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What: “Jim McKay: My Wide World of Sports.”

Where: HBO, tonight, 10.

Legendary sportscaster Jim McKay is a classy gentleman. Any documentary on his life and career should be equally as classy, something that could be cherished by McKay’s family and passed on to future generations.

Unfortunately, that is not the case with the documentary that begins airing tonight on HBO as part of its “Sports of the 20th Century” series. It is tarnished by two brief profanity-filled sound bites.

Former ABC producer Andy Sidaris, who worked with McKay at times, is a colorful sort. But his colorful language during a barrel-jumping event is inappropriate and out of place in what is otherwise a fine G-rated production.

An HBO spokesman said the profanity, included in advance copies of the show sent to the media, will be bleeped out during daytime showings of the documentary. It should be bleeped out of all showings. Maybe there is still time to do that.

But why even use the profane sound bites in the first place? Even without the profanity, his comments are insignificant. With the profanity, they belong on the cutting room floor.

The documentary, written and narrated by McKay, covers his entire life, beginning with his childhood in Philadelphia.

He moved to Baltimore with his family when he was 15 and still lives there with his wife Margaret, whom he met when he was a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun.

Overall, the documentary is of HBO quality. Among those who appear in it are Arnold Palmer, Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Olga Korbut, A.J. Foyt, Jim Nantz, wife Margaret, daughter Mary Guba and son Sean McManus, the president of CBS Sports.

-- Larry Stewart