Masekela is a man of action

Sal Masekela is often referred to as the voice of action sports. As the host of ESPN’s Summer and Winter X Games, he is familiar to anyone into such things as skateboarding, surfing, freestyle motocross and BMX -- all of which are part of this weekend’s X Games 13 in Los Angeles.

But to those not in the know, the 35-year-old Masekela, who wears his hair in dreadlocks, might seem out of place at the X Games.

That’s OK with Masekela. He has spent much of his life out of place.

The son of South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela, he found a new passion in skateboarding at age 14 and by 16, after the family moved from the East Coast to Carlsbad, surfing took over.

“There were only three blacks at Carlsbad High,” he said. “One was on the football team, one ran track, and then there was me, a surfer.”

Of course Masekela had never surfed before.

“The beach was only a mile away -- it seemed all the kids there surfed -- and I wanted to fit in,” he said. “I remember one kid saying to me, ‘Black people don’t even swim, how are you going to learn to surf?’ He said it without the least twinge of racism. It was pure naivete.”

Six months after hitting the waves for the first time, Masekela and four of his friends tried snowboarding.

“We had no idea what we were doing,” Masekela said. “We wore our wetsuits, thinking they would protect us from the cold. But what it did was dehydrate us. One of my friends passed out and we all ended up going with him to an emergency room.”

It was his love for skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding that drew him to action sports. He eventually served as the host of a surfing show “Board Wild” on Fox Sports Net, and reported on a few action sports events for MTV.

By 1998, he was the co-host of MTV’s “Sports and Musical Festival” with Carson Daly and also the marketing director for an action sports clothing company, Alphanumeric, which among other things sponsored a snowboarding team. Masekela was with the team at a Vans Triple Crown event in Breckenridge, Colo., when Phil Orlins, executive producer of ESPN’s X Games coverage, approached and said he wanted to hire him as a reporter.

“My first reaction was, OK, who put you up to this?” Masekela said. “I didn’t believe this was for real.”

It was, and Masekela ended up reporting on the snowboarding competition at the Winter X Games that year in Crested Butte, Colo. By 2001 he was the host of the Winter Games and moved into the same role for the Summer Games the following year.

Masekela can recall many highlights, including touring with the legendary Tony Hawk for three summers. “It was like touring with a rock star,” he said

It was Hawk who provided what Masekela calls “the definitive moment for the X Games -- and action sports as a whole.”

At the 1999 X Games at San Francisco’s Pier 30, Hawk pulled off the first 900 in skateboarding competition history, turning 2 1/2 rotations high above the halfpipe, landing with a slight touch of his right hand, and then riding the trick out clean to the wild ovation of a capacity crowd of about 5,000.

“That kicked open the door to the mainstream,” Masekela said. “And there was Tony holding it open and saying to everybody, ‘Come on in.’ ”

Masekela calls Travis Pastrana’s double back flip in Moto X competition at Staples Center last year “a carbon copy energy-wise of what Tony did in 1999.”

“I’ve been to a lot of Laker games and seen a lot of great moments -- I was there when Robert Horry hit that shot against the Sacramento Kings -- but I’ve never seen Staples Center as electrified as it was that night,” Masekela said.

But Masekela also knows that such great feats can lead to serious injury or even death. “It’s always in the back of my mind,” he said of having to cover a serious accident. “I’d be a fool to say I never think about it and dread the thought. These are trained professionals at the highest level, but at the same time anything can happen.”

Short waves

All told, counting Thursday’s coverage on ESPN and the 9 p.m. highlights show on ESPN2, there will be 14 1/2 hours of X Games coverage on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. Sunday’s coverage on ABC is highlighted by the skateboard vert final and rally car racing final. . . . As is the case with all major events on ESPN, there is coverage on multiple platforms, including EXPN.com, ESPN360.com, ESPN Mobile TV, Apple’s iTunes and Dish Network’s interactive channel 100. . . . KSPN 710 will have extensive X Games-related coverage through the weekend. . . . Part of Thursday’s opening was shown on 18 ESPN International networks around the globe, reaching a potential 267 million viewers in 145 countries.

The NFL Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be televised by ESPN and NFL Network on Saturday at 3 p.m. NFL Network will also have a two-hour pre-ceremony show plus a one-hour post-ceremony show. . . . The Hall of Fame game, with New Orleans playing Pittsburgh, will be televised by NFL Network on Sunday at 5 p.m., with Bryant Gumbel and Cris Collinsworth announcing. . . . Former “Monday Night Football” director Craig Janoff is now with NFL Network. . . . NFL Network will televise 52 exhibition games, but most will be on a tape-delayed basis.

Pat Summerall in September will begin doing a national sports talk show for VoiceAmerica, an Internet talk radio network.

The Dodgers’ 6-4 victory over San Francisco on Wednesday night on Channel 9 got a 6.4 rating, the team’s highest local rating for a regular-season game since June 25, 1998, when a Dodgers-Angels game on Channel 5 got a 7.4. The average audience for Wednesday night’s game was 505,000, more than double Channel 9’s season average.

Channel 9 has announced it will commit considerable airtime to ThinkCure, the new official charity of the Dodgers that benefits the City of Hope. . . . The Jim Hill Urban League celebrity golf tournament, which annually raises between $150,000 and $200,000, will be held Monday at Industry Hills, Pacific Palms. (Information: 323 299-9660).

larry.stewart@latimes.com