Curtain rises this weekend on play about McGuire written by Enberg

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2005 | by Michael Hiestand

This hasn't happened: One TV sports announcer writes a play about another one.

That wouldn't seem like a recipe for drama. But McGuire, a 70-minute, one-man monologue premiering Saturday at Marquette University, is about Al McGuire, who died of leukemia in 2001.

And it's written by CBS' Dick Enberg, a broadcaster for 50 years who has won seven of his 14 sports Emmys for writing and calls the play "a love letter to Al."

Enberg grew up in rural Michigan, going to eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse with outhouses. McGuire grew up over a bar in Queens, N.Y. But after McGuire coached Marquette to an NCAA men's basketball title in 1977, he joined Enberg and Billy Packer on NBC in 1978 to form a team.

NBC was nervous about an ex-coach who'd go on to be...