“It’s even worse than it appears.
But it’s alright. …
I will get by
I will survive…
We will get by
We will survive”
— Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey.”
On the day he told ESPN2 viewers from his San Diego home that he would “forever be able to say I was here” in Corvallis when Oregon State knocked off USC earlier this week, analyst Bill Walton woke up to his Pandora music shuffle.
Popping up first, fittingly, was Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey,” the hit 1987 single that has been interpreted as something of a pick-me-up in the face of adversity.
“We will get by. We will survive,” Walton said, quoting his favorite band’s song. “And we are alive. I knew it was going to be a great day.”
So, probably, will be Thursday. That’s when Walton will step into his home office again to call Arizona’s game at ASU along with partner Dave Pasch, who also won’t leave his home … even though he lives in Phoenix and the game will be in Tempe.
“You know, it’s a virtual world,” Walton says. “We’re trying our best. I try to live by the mantra that things work out best for those who make the best of the way things work out.”
So Walton has continued his enthusiastic, tangent-prone ways throughout another college basketball season, telling viewers not only about how nice it was to “be” in Corvallis but also talking to Maui Invitational viewers as if he were in Lahaina despite the fact that neither he nor the players were anywhere near the islands, with the event having been moved to North Carolina.
Same goes for Pasch, the Arizona Cardinals broadcaster who has also worked NFL, college football, NBA and college basketball games mostly from home with some exceptions for actual on-site appearances since the pandemic began.
In a different way, Pasch has also tried to roll along with it as best as possible. He’s even tweeted about how odd it was to call a Cardinals game from his State Farm Stadium booth last month — while the Cardinals were elsewhere and the San Francisco 49ers were actually in front of him playing in a different game.
On Halloween, Pasch also posted a photo to Twitter a sign pleading with trick-or-treaters to let him get his job done while he called a Notre Dame-Georgia Tech football game from his home office.
“I am on television right now. Please don’t ring the doorbell,” Pasch wrote. “Take as MUCH CANDY AS YOU WANT!”
Pasch said he was “just trying to have fun with the situation” because, well, what else could he do?
Like so many other things about COVID-19 era, what else can anyone do?
“You just try to keep it as normal as possible,” Pasch said. “That sounds weird when you take your headset off and it’s completely quiet in your office as opposed to taking your headset off at a game and there’s fans everywhere and it’s loud. It’s awkward but you try to make it as feel as normal as you possibly can.”
For Pasch, who normally plays the straight man to Walton’s sometimes over-the-top antics, there are advantages to this sort of thing.
Because while Walton may be virtually next to Pasch, he’s not actually next to Pasch.
In this case, that’s a big difference.
“I’m not as sore from getting boxed out,” Pasch says, chuckling. “I don’t have to worry about him giving me a present, like last year for (UA forward) Stone Gettings, he gave me a big stone to carry around. But occasionally the gifts are pretty good, like a Mick Fleetwood-signed album, which is certainly better than a rock or a saguaro cactus that he got from somewhere — or dirt from Temecula.”
Pasch also doesn’t have to worry about Walton wagging a finger full of peanut butter at him, dusting off his head with feathers, eating a cupcake with a lit candle or any other tangible aspect of Walton’s shtick.
As much as Walton might like the chance to do any of those things.
“I would prefer to be right next to him so I could elbow him,” Walton said. “Dump the popcorn on him. Rub the Temecula dirt on him. Present him with Saguaro cactus carcasses. But right now we can’t do that.”
Walton has a more serious way to express his frustration, too.
“Chemistry without proximity is a difficult challenge,” he said. “But we’re not afraid of challenges. We’re not afraid of hard work.”
Technology, with the help of ESPN staffers whom both Pasch and Walton rave about, makes it much easier.
Both Pasch and Walton have big monitors in their home offices that bring the exact picture that viewers see, while their computers are hooked up to a Zoom conference, with boxes that feature another feed of the game and a view of each other.
Walton says his main ESPN feed is streamed on a gigantic Sony 4K TV, while he also has a MacBook Pro sitting in front of him with a split screen.
“The top half of that screen is the game and at the bottom is Dave. I think that’s Dave,” Walton says. “He goes by a lot of names. … I think that’s his name. I don’t know. He looks different every time.”
Of course, Walton’s “forgetfulness” of Pasch’s name is another back-and-forth aspect of their odd-couple relationship that both of them try to recreate despite the challenges of remote technology.
If it is difficult to change Walton’s train of thought in real time, in real space, imagine how it is virtually. That’s one of Pasch’s special skills, yet it is being challenged, too.
“Usually, I’ll have Bill on a separate small window, and I’ll kind of look back and forth so that I can try to get a feel for when he’s done talking,” Pasch said. “It’s hard enough when you’re next to each other not to step on one another. It’s even harder when you’re in two different places and I think there’s a minor audio delay. So you’re just trying to navigate all that, and it just takes some getting used to.”
Pasch didn’t have to worry quite as much about that while doing college football games with Mike Golic, who worked from Bristol, Connecticut, while Pasch was in Phoenix. But Pasch said football is more challenging in general to call off a monitor.
“You’re so used to being at the stadium and being able to see things that are going on behind the play — like a flag from the back judge that’s harder to spot on TV,” Pasch says.
“Basketball is a little bit easier but you still don’t catch everything you do when you’re in person and you don’t have access to the officials like we normally do when we’re on the court.
“A lot of times if there’s a controversial call, the officials will run over to the table and tell us ‘Hey, this is what we’re calling, this is what we saw, this is what we’re reviewing.’ We’re not getting that. So that that’s been challenging, but you adapt. You just wait until it’s announced.”
You will survive. They will survive. College basketball will survive.
Walton’s heard that one somewhere.
“In life, you always want better and more,” Walton said. “But because of the circumstances today, we’re not right to come out and make excuses.
“We have to come out do the best job we can, just like when you’re a player, just like when you’re a coach. Just like if there was no pandemic.”
