Al McGuire, who as a coach led basketball’s Marquette University Warriors to a 1977 NCAA championship and later became a popular and eccentric commentator for NBC and CBS sports, will return to the sidelines (even in death) as North Coast Repertory Theatre presents Dick Enberg’s bioplay “McGuire” on Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 25 and 26 at 7:30 p.m. La Jolla resident Enberg, one of the most prominent and respected sports announcers in network television history with a career spanning nearly 45 years, is the San Diego Padres television play-by-play announcer and winner of 13 sports Emmy Awards, nine National Sportscaster of the Year honors and several lifetime achievement and community-involvement accolades. He is the only sportscaster to win Emmys in three categories (broadcasting, writing and producing) and in 1973 became the first American sportscaster to visit the People’s Republic of China. In 2015, he was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Enberg, 81, started broadcasting with the Padres in 2009. He announced last year that he’ll retire from the Padres organization after the 2016 season. He also covers golf and tennis matches for CBS. Enberg and New York native McGuire were broadcast partners and close friends, with Enberg called into service refereeing McGuire’s good-fun rows with co-announcer Billy Packer. In 2000, he told a Chicago newspaper he put the over-under at the 10-minute mark amid the three men’s on-air reunion – that’s how long he believed it would have taken Packer and McGuire to get into their first fight. “Al will say white and Billy will say black,” Enberg said. McGuire, who coached Marquette from 1963 to 1977 and had played professionally with the New York Knicks and former Baltimore Bullets, died of leukemia in 2001 at age 72. “McGuire,” which mounted at North Coast Rep twice in 2008, debuted at Marquette in 2005 and drew positive reviews as an accurate portrayal of the eccentric McGuire. It was later mounted at Hofstra University, near McGuire’s old Long Island neighborhood, and has since booked in several cities nationwide. Cotter Smith plays the coach in the one-man show. His wife Heidi directs. “This is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done,” Enberg has said of his play. “Writing in the first person, it was almost as if Al was standing over my shoulder saying, ‘No, Dickie; I wouldn’t have said it that way. I would have said it this way.’ He was not only in my head; he was in my soul.” Enberg will host talkbacks after each performance. Meanwhile, McGuire was unabashed in his self-descriptors. “A team should be an extension of your personality,” he once told a Chicago radio station. “And my teams are surly, obnoxious and arrogant.” On the leukemia that claimed him, he was at no less a loss for words as he reflected on his life. “I had a dark side, a blind spot, like everybody,” he quips in the play. “I think on my final confession, I’m gonna need a deaf priest.” North Coast Repertory Theatre was founded in 1982. Currently celebrating its 34th season, it has evolved into one of the area’s leading performing arts organizations. It is located at 987-D Lomas Santa Fe Drive in Solana Beach. For more, call (858) 458-1055 or see northcoastrep.org.
