Sports
Shelly’s first love was always sports. His father and his Uncle Louie both played football for the Boston Braves (today, the Washington Redskins), his Uncle Eddie pitched for the Boston Braves baseball team (today, the Atlanta Braves), and his Uncle Miltie played for the Philadelphia Athletics (today, the Oakland Athletics). Shelly spent much of his childhood playing sports, attending Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves baseball games, and even attempted to play professional basketball. He would go to be a professional sportscaster and play-by-play announcer under the name of “Art Sheldon” with a career that included stints as a basketball coach, a baseball umpire, and a boxing ring announcer. Shelly is also among the founders of several professional and amateur sports organizations including the Phoenix Suns and the New Orleans Jazz basketball teams and was the first President of Fox Sports.
Shelly also handled the worldwide promotion of the Muhammad Ali / Joe Frazier boxing championships, was co-creator of the 1970s “Challenge of the Sexes” TV shows, a key promoter and business partner in the failed Snake River Canyon rocket-cycle jump by motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, and for a time managed the careers of such sports stars as Canadian NHL hockey player Wayne Gretzky and American boxing champion Thomas Hearns.
Read more about this topic: Shelly Saltman
Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behaviour, attire, grace, learning and all their words aimeth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“In the past, it seemed to make sense for a sportswriter on sabbatical from the playpen to attend the quadrennial hawgkilling when Presidential candidates are chosen, to observe and report upon politicians at play. After all, national conventions are games of a sort, and sports offers few spectacles richer in low comedy.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“It was so hard to pry this door open, and if I mess up I know the people behind me are going to have it that much harder. Because then there’s living proof. They can sit around and say, “See? It doesn’t work.” I don’t want to be their living proof.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)