Jesse Owens’ remarkable accomplishments at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin are unimpeachable: a record four gold medals won under the eye of Adolf Hitler, who was no doubt humiliated and infuriated by the black man’s achievements on his turf.
But according to a new book, one of those medals — for the 4x100m relay — almost went to Marty Glickman, the man who was the voice of New York sports for decades.
In “Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend” (NYU Press), author Jeffrey S. Gurock explains how Glickman, then an 18-year-old student at Syracuse University, was scheduled to run the relay but was inexplicably pulled from the four-man team — along with fellow Jewish teammate Sam Stoller— and replaced with Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.
Glickman had no doubt what had happened.
“Only once in the 100-year history of the Olympics have any athletes who were fit and qualified not been allowed to compete for the American team,” he said later. “And that was the two Jews.”
Despite public denials, it was clear that the American Olympic Committee (AOC) and its boss, Avery Brundage — a documented anti-Semite and Hitler appeaser — had decided that, while it had been awkward enough for the Fuhrer witness a black athlete dominating the Nazis’ Games, to have Jewish competitors standing on the winners’ podium would have been beyond the pale.
“Brundage,” Glickman later said, “was an American Nazi.”
Martin “Marty” Glickman was a one-off. Born in 1917 to Romanian immigrants, he was brought up in Brooklyn and became a standout sports star at James Madison HS in Flatbush, excelling at football, basketball and track and field.
At Syracuse, he qualified for the US Olympic track team for the Berlin Games, although he could have just as easily pursued a career in pro football.
When the disappointment of Berlin subsided, Glickman instead threw himself into a broadcasting career: From the 1940s into the ’60s, he was, variously, the voice of the Giants, the Rangers, and the Jets — but, above all else, he was synonymous with the Knicks.
“Marty was really the first jock turned broadcaster,” veteran sports broadcaster Bob Costas told The Post. “He virtually invented the descriptions of the geometry of the basketball court and how we still refer to it today. He was the man behind terms like ‘the key,’ the ‘top of the circle’ and, of course, he came up ‘Swish!’ — his famous call for the perfect shot that goes in without ever touching the rim.”
Glickman had taken his broadcasting lead from Red Barber, the pioneering baseball announcer, who once told him to “never raise his voice” and “never yell” when describing the action.
According to Costas, Glickman knew instinctively what made for great sports broadcasting. “He had a wonderful, vibrant voice and he could become very excited but without ever shouting,” he said.
“He used his voice like an instrument, going up and down the scales to convey the action. Today, it often seems that the more hysterical an announcer is the more people like it. But it shouldn’t be about them. They’re there to enhance the action, not be the focal point of it.”
Glickman’s mantra: “The only person who tunes in to listen to an announcer is his mother.”
But, as Gurock writes, “For the generations that grew up next to a radio, Marty was at least as big as the players.”
It wasn’t always easy for Glickman to catch a break.
Though he had impressed in local radio working for WHN in New York, his desire to break into national broadcasting ran into some obstacles, not least his Jewish name. He was even advised by executives to change it to something less obviously Jewish, like “Marty Manning or Marty Mann.”
But Glickman’s loyalty to his family and the Flatbush community trumped any fears he might lose out because of his name.
“Marty Glickman would not betray his origins as he sought to advance beyond Brooklyn,” writes Gurock. “He would assert, ‘Our name is Glickman, not some phony name so I could get ahead.’”
There was another reason.
One of Glickman’s chief rivals was Howard Cosell who, Glickman believed, had abandoned his heritage by changing his surname from Cohen in a bid to trade his Brooklyn background for fame and fortune.
Seeing Cosell as a denier of his Jewishness only added to his antipathy of a nemesis who, in his view, epitomized all that was wrong with his profession,” writes Gurock, who is a professor at Yeshiva University.
That said, Glickman understood why his protégé, Marv Albert, wanted to change his name. After all, “the family name Aufrightig was difficult to pronounce,” writes Gurock.
Costas said he grew up listening to Glickman’s commentaries and met his hero in 1980, Costas’ first year at NBC Sports, where Glickman had been hired as a broadcasting coach.
“He gave me some very good advice,” Costas recalled. “I was 28 at the time but I looked about 15 and I was too young and eager. He told me that my head was so full of information and that I was so well prepared that it was coming out of me in torrents.
“His advice was simple but brilliant: Slow down and pace it.”
As Glickman rose to pre-eminence in sports announcing, though, he continued to keep his counsel on what had happened at the 1936 Olympic Games, only ever describing the events as a “political decision” that was out of his hands.
Indeed, he hid it so well that the real story all but disappeared. His protégé Albert, for instance, once said that, “As a young Jewish boy, growing up in the Brooklyn area it was more of a legendary thing that I heard about.”
It was only in later life that Glickman finally felt empowered enough to address the events.
In 1979, he gave a long interview to the American Jewish Committee’s oral history project. “In order to save the Nazis from more embarrassment,” he said, “the Jews were kept off the team by an American Nazi named Avery Brundage.”
In 1994, meanwhile. Marty Glickman returned to the Olympiastadion in Berlin which should have been the stage for his greatest day. As he looked up to where Adolf Hitler sat during the Games, he realized that he had outlived all of his Nazi tormentors, including “American Nazi” Brundage, and that his Olympic story had come full circle.
Marty Glickman died on Jan. 3, 2001, just weeks after undergoing heart bypass surgery. He was 83.
While he never got a medal to show his grandchildren, he was resolute to the end, writes Gurock, and “unflinching in telling the many people, who he believed were ready to hear him, that he was victimized by Jew hatred.”
In that respect, the legacy of the Jewish boy prevented from running because he was Jewish, lives on.
“Marty Glickman – The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend” (NYU Press) by Jeffrey S. Gurock, is out now.
