Hockey Making Simply Marvelous Network Return

Hockey will return to network television for the first time in a decade Sunday when NBC carries the NHL All-Star game, with Marv Albert doing the play-by-play.

Marv Albert?

Wait a minute. Doesn’t he do boxing for NBC? Or is it football?

Wasn’t he announcing a Nevada Las Vegas basketball game last weekend?

Didn’t he just win an Ace Award, cable TV’s version of an Emmy, for his work as a Knicks’ announcer for the Madison Square Garden Network?

Isn’t he the sometimes tough, sometimes flippant interviewer on various NBC pregame and postgame shows?

Didn’t he, until a couple of years ago, do the nightly sports for WNBC in New York?

The answer to all of those questions is yes.

So what is he doing on hockey?

Well, Albert is also a hockey announcer. He has been working New York Ranger games on radio or television since he was 19 and a student at New York University. He’s now 46.

Albert is sort of a New York version of Chick Hearn, Bob Miller and Fred Roggin rolled into one.

If there is a harder-working network sports announcer, he’d be hard to find.

What’s more, Albert handles all his assignments as if each were his speciality.

Just about any hockey fan in Los Angeles will tell you Miller is the best announcer in the sport. But more than likely, a New Yorker would say it is Albert.

If you haven’t heard him do hockey, you’ll get a chance at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

Joining Albert at the Civic Center in Pittsburgh will be John Davidson, Ranger cable commentator and a former all-star goaltender.

Mike Embrick, play-by-play announcer for the Philadelphia Flyers and SportsChannel America, will be stationed behind the benches to provide reports and interviews.

Albert has two brothers in sports broadcasting. Al, 43, does Denver Nugget games and boxing for the USA cable network. Steve, 40, does the New Jersey Nets for SportsChannel New York and boxing for Showtime.

Their father owned a grocery store in Brooklyn. “He was only a casual sports fan,” Marv Albert said.

Albert, on the other hand, was obsessed with sports.

“I wanted to be a sports announcer ever since I was in the third grade,” he said. “I’d turn down the sound on TV and call the game.”

Albert, through persistence, got a summer job as an office boy for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and with it came a pair of season tickets.

“I’d take my tape recorder to games,” he said. “I bothered the people around me, but it was good practice.”

He was later a ball boy for the Knicks and met broadcaster Marty Glickman. He soon began doing statistics for Glickman.

Albert went off to college at Syracuse, but transferred to NYU when he got a chance to do some fill-in work on Ranger and Knick games.

“I guess if I’d sat down and mapped out the way I wanted my career to go, I couldn’t have ever come up with all this,” Albert said. “I never even daydreamed about some of the things I’ve gotten to do.”

And now there’s another Albert getting into broadcasting. Kenny, 21, Marv’s son and the oldest of his four children, is a hockey player at NYU and has done some fill-in broadcasting work on New York Islander games.

Eddie Alexander, the former L.A. and San Diego sportscaster who in 1983 was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud, is in trouble again.

Last week, he was ordered back to jail in San Diego to await hearings on whether or not he violated his probation. He posted $150,000 bail, and, at a hearing Wednesday, his attorney said he would plead guilty at the next hearing Feb. 20.

This latest episode stems from charges in San Francisco that Alexander tried to interest investors in his “One on One” Bay Area show by telling them it was going to be syndicated in 117 markets.

He is also alleged to have said that several major advertisers had agreed to sponsor the show.

In the mid-’70s, when Alexander was working at Channel 7, he asked a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader to be his co-host on a proposed nationally syndicated show. The cheerleader, Suzie Holub, was twice flown to Los Angeles by Alexander, who wined and dined her.

The hoax was exposed when a story about Holup and the proposed show appeared in the Cowboys’ weekly newspaper and was seen by a Los Angeles reporter, who checked it out.

U.S. District Court Judge Earl Gilliam, who is presiding over Alexander’s current case, is also the judge who sentenced him in 1983. At the time, Gilliam described Alexander as “a con man who could sell refrigerators to Eskimos.”

The sad thing is, Alexander actually has some broadcasting ability. Had he traveled a legitimate path, he probably would have had a decent career.

Lee Hamilton, popular host of a weeknight radio sports talk show on San Diego’s powerful XTRA (690) and also the play-by-play voice of the Chargers, has agreed to a new two-year deal with the station.

As part of the agreement, Hamilton’s show, beginning Monday, will have new hours--5 to 8 p.m. instead of 6 to 9 p.m.

KMPC had shown some interest in Hamilton as both a sports talk-show host and a replacement for Bob Starr on the Rams. Starr has taken a job with the Boston Red Sox and may not be able to continue as the radio voice of the Rams.

Talks between Hamilton and KMPC might have broken down because the station’s contract with the Rams has expired, and there are rumors that negotiations for renewing it are not going well. The Rams reportedly are asking too high a price.

KMPC has carried the Rams since they came to Los Angeles from Cleveland in 1946.

TV-Radio Notes

On Saturday, leading up to Sunday’s NHL All-Star game, SportsChannel will televise three hours of festivities, 12:30 to 3:30 p.m., highlighted by an old-timers game and skills competition for current stars. . . . Sunday’s game, at 10:30 a.m., will get some stiff competition from an NBA doubleheader on CBS. It’s the Lakers and Detroit at 9 a.m., followed by the New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls.

There’s another old-timers game on television Saturday. At 3:30 p.m., Channel 4 will carry the Pro Football Legends Bowl, in which 40 former NFL players square off in a game of flag football. Tom Landry and Hank Stram are the coaches. Among the players will be Jack Youngblood, Jim Plunkett, Roger Staubach and Bart Starr.

Coming up at the Coliseum Feb. 3 will be the Pig Bowl, pitting the LAPD against the Miami police. Prime Ticket will televise the event the next day. . . . Prime Ticket will televise “It’s Your Call” from New Orleans, beginning next Wednesday. . . . NBC golf commentator Johnny Miller is working the early rounds of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic with Charlie Jones on ESPN, then Saturday will join Bryant Gumbel for NBC’s weekend coverage.

As reported here, SportsChannel has named Joel Meyers and Ron Cey as its Dodger announcing team. . . . Getting tired of all those promos for the All-Madden team? The big announcement finally arrives Sunday at 2 p.m. . . . HBO offered an update on 49er safety Jeff Fuller on “Inside the NFL” Thursday night. Fuller was temporarily paralyzed in a game Oct. 2 and still can’t use his right arm. Cris Collinsworth is the host of the piece. “Inside the NFL” repeats tonight at 7 and Saturday at 10 a.m.

Bill Shoemaker will be a popular figure on radio and television leading up to his final ride Feb. 3. Among his appearances: “The Pat Sajak Show” on Monday, “Good Morning America” Jan. 31, “It’s Your Call” later the same day, and the “Today” show and “CBS This Morning” on Feb. 2. . . . An unpopular move by ESPN was switching “Sportslook” from its 11 p.m. time slot to midnight. Host Roy Firestone said efforts are being made to get it switched back.

CBS already has made the ticky-tack call of the year by objecting to the Nike commercial that includes ABC’s Al Michaels and NBC’s Dick Enberg and Marv Albert along with CBS announcer Pat Summerall and others. The commercial, to be shown during the Super Bowl on CBS, has been re-shot. . . . Has Jim Healy gone the Leonard Tose route? He gave the odds on the Laker-Sacramento game Martin Luther King Day after the game had been played.