Jim Lampley had a long and mostly successful career in sports broadcasting, most notably for his work in boxing for HBO. He writes about his life and his ups and downs in both his professional and personal lives in this very good memoir.

Most memoirs and biographies will follow the timeline from childhood to either the present or death. This one does not do that at all, aside from the beginning, when Lampley describes his childhood and early adulthood. I found that the biggest drawback of the book because unless one is a fan of Lampley and followed his career closely, it was hard to determine where in his life or career he was at. It felt like he wanted to jump to the next story or topic that was on his mind, whenever it might have occurred relative to the last one.

But the stories he can tell are so good, especially those from his days of covering “Wide World of Sports” and the Olympics (both Summer and Winter Games). His accounts from his vantage points of Frank Klammer’s exciting downhill skiing gold medal run in 1976 and the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid were two of my favorite stories in the entire book. But the excellent stories are not limited to the Olympics. His account of the George Foreman-Michael Moorer fight and the upset of Mike Tyson by Buster Douglas are also great. Especially the Foreman-Moorer bout where Foreman told Lampley before the fight what he was going to do to his opponent. That was the fight in which Lampley exclaimed his famous line whis is the title of the book, “It happened!”

What makes Lampley’s career even more interesting is the sheer variety of sports he has covered in his career: college and NFL football, Major League Baseball, college basketball, golf, tennis to name just a few as well as boxing. Just about any sport a reader enjoys could be covered in this book.
There is also plenty of material on his personal life, which is not quite as successful, starting with the fact he has been married four times. To his credit, no matter what happened in his relationships with those women or his children, he never criticized them or had anything bad to say about them. When it comes to stories about this part of his life, the best ones involve his daughter Brooke, whom he had with his second wife Joanne.

Overall, I felt this was a very good, entertaining and easy to read memoir even if it jumped around at times and felt like it needed more boxing since that is what Lampley is best known for. Nonetheless, if a reader wants to learn more about this very interesting and versatile broadcaster, it is highly recommended.

I wish to thank Ben Bella Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own

Jim Lampley who has had more than fifty years as a network television broadcaster who got his start when the people at ABC sports had the foresight to search for a college age sideline reporter for college football games. Now of course it is so common in most sports. This took place in 1974 so depending on your age and if you were in to sports you may have followed Mr. Lampley's career. He covered college football, pro football, professional golf, major league baseball, many Olympics, Wimbledon, by working with or being assigned to the Wide World of Sports he covered many Eunique sports like the World Lumberjack Championships or the triathlons when they started check out one called The Crawl of Shame that was about Julie Moss. And of course, his long career (31 years) as a ring side announcer for boxing. It is interesting to read that his mother had to be responsible for developing his love of boxing at an early age by making him sit-down and watch a televised boxing match. His mother was also responsible for Jim and his brothers' views of supporting the civil rights movement, equality and to push back against the ugliness of racism in the 1950's and her coming from a family that definitely did not hold the same views. There are many stories about his relationships with fellow broadcasters and sport stars and his own personal relationships that were not as successful as his career. There are many great stories but one that stuck out for me was the fight between Mike Tyson and Buster Douglas that took place at the Tokyo Dome and the crowd was so quiet that you could hear the fighters' shoes on the canvas, definitely not that way here in the United States. There are many great stories in here so pick it up and give it a read.

I’m really interested in boxing and sports in general so this autobiography of Lampley ticks a lot of boxes-plus I went to Duke and he went to Chapel Hill. Anyways this was a quick read, serviceably written that was enjoyable. My major complaint is that Lampley covers so much ground that he seems to skim the surface of many personalities that he covered and worked with. Would have like more in depth of Cosell, Ali, Foreman , etc… still worth a read for an overview of many key sports events of the last half century.