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March is Women's History Month!

Blind Sportscaster Bob Greenberg Remembered

Bob Greenberg died this week at the age of 67. He was a sportscaster who happened to be blind. When I've told people he's one of the most extraordinary people I've ever worked with, there's usually polite incomprehension: A blind sportscaster?

Bob worked for WBEZ in Chicago, and he could be cranky, blustery and loud. But it was a marvel to watch him work.

A helper would read box scores to him every day, and Bob would pound a Braille keyboard to punch them into cards. If a football player caught a pass, Bob would rifle through his cards like a riverboat gambler, find the dots and stats he wanted and announce, "That's the third fourth-down pass Baschnagel has caught this year!"

In the early 1980s, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar could be a little sullen with reporters. After a hard game on a cold night, the press cornered him in the locker room, barking questions. He turned with a cold stare, and saw Bob Greenberg, dressed in rumpled, ill-buttoned clothes, holding a white cane and a microphone.

"How'd you get here?" Kareem asked.

"Not hard," said Bob, who then explained how he knew the exact number of steps to bring him to the Lake Street "L" station; how he felt for the right combination of coins to put in the turnstile; and then the number of steps to take along West Madison to Chicago Stadium.

"Maybe that's why I can remember so many stats about the game," Bob said.

Abdul-Jabbar paused to take that in and finally replied, "Ask your question, sir." Athletes often disdain reporters as snoops and second-guessers who couldn't catch a ball that's laid in their lap. But Kareem saw Bob Greenberg and seemed to think, "You've worked hard to get here, too."

I don't recall Bob saying there was anything he couldn't figure out how to do because he was blind. But I came to feel that having to count and calculate most every step, every day of your life, could make any man a little cranky.

Bob told me once that over the years, he had painted in his mind's eye what most every play in sports — indeed, what most every item on Earth, from beetles to roses to whales — looked like. But he said he couldn't quite "see" home runs. They had a distinct sound: the single stroke of the bat, the crowd's hopes and cheers rising as the ball sailed into the stands, or just fell into a long, dismaying out.

"I sure wish I could see that," Bob said.

Alfonso Soriano of the Cubs hit a home run out of Wrigley Field yesterday. I like to think Bob saw it.

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Scott Simon is one of America's most admired writers and broadcasters. He is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy.