Break a Leg

Lesley Visser never saw it coming. On June 23, 1993, Visser was
running in Central Park when she tripped over a crack in the
sidewalk. Her left knee hit the pavement so hard that it drove
her hip out of the socket, shattering her pelvis. She also fell
on her face and suffered wounds requiring 25 stitches to close.
Visser, who was an NFL sideline reporter for ABC, was sidelined
for 10 weeks. "That was my biggest previous trauma," says Visser,
"but this was a body blow."

The this she refers to was a phone call she received almost seven
years to the day after her freak injury. It was a morning after
the Yankees had beaten her beloved Red Sox, and the call was from
ABC senior vice president John Filippelli. "This isn't about Andy
Pettitte, is it?" she asked in mock annoyance.

"I wish it were," he replied.

You know the rest. After two years as a sideline reporter for
Monday Night Football, Visser was sacked. MNF executive producer
Don Ohlmeyer, who has carte blanche for on-air personnel
decisions, fired her, saying only that he "wanted to go in
another direction." Again, she never saw the blow coming.

"It was surreal," says Visser, who last week was rehired by CBS
Sports, where she had begun her TV career in 1984 after 10 years
with The Boston Globe, to cover, among other things, the NFL. "My
husband [Fox NFL broadcaster Dick Stockton] took the newspaper on
the morning after the announcement and hid it in the piano
bench."

Visser, 46, was replaced as MNF's sideline reporter by former
ESPN correspondent Melissa Stark, who is 26. (Eric Dickerson was
also hired by MNF as a sideline reporter.) During the June 22
conference call to announce the revised MNF lineup, a newspaper
writer asked Ohlmeyer and ABC Sports president Howard Katz if the
Stark-for-Visser swap was age discrimination. Before either could
answer, new color analyst Dennis Miller asked the reporter, "Do
you have something against 26-year-olds?"

Visser speaks with equanimity for the most part, saying, "It was
Don Ohlmeyer's party, and I wasn't invited." Then again, she
notes, "People are excited about Dennis Miller being young and
hip, but the truth is that he and I are the same age."

The bigger irony is that CBS has the rights to the upcoming
Super Bowl. Thus Visser, who worked Super Bowl XXXIV for ABC
last January, will be on the sidelines in Tampa for Super Bowl
XXXV. "Who else in the NFL in August," she asks, "can guarantee
that they're returning for that game?"

--J.W.

People are excited about Dennis Miller being young and hip,"
says Visser, "but he and I are the same age."