TV sports report tells boy he is going to die

Press, 11 August 1977, Page 9

TV sports report tells boy he is going to die

NZPA Chicago Scott Crull. a 12-year-old Chicago Cubs baseball fan who has been suffering from bone cancer for three years, watched his favourite team on television on Monday night and learned he was going to die. “It was a terrible misfortune that it got out on nation-wide television,” Scott’s father, Mr Dwight Crull, said later. Scott and millions of other baseball fans watching the Cubs play the

Pittsburg Pirates on the nationally televised game of the week got the word of his impending death from unwitting American Broadcasting Company announcer, Keith Jackson. It struck like a thunderbolt in the suburban Calumet City home of the Crulls as they, Scott, and two of their other children watched the game. The word about Scott came when the Cubs rightfielder Bobby Murcer — Scott’s favourite player — slammed the first of

his two home runs for the evening. Scott had talked to Murcer on the telephone earlier in the day and Murcer had promised he would try to hit a home run for him, his father said. When Murcer delivered, a Cubs official passed a note to Jackson in the broadcast booth. Jackson then told the national audience that the homer was hit for Scott Crull, a boy dying of cancer. The fact that he was dying was news to Scott.