People and Pop Culture
Closing Shot: It’s all in the delivery
The Pro Football Hall of Fame honored Andrea Kremer with the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award on Aug. 4. Here, the veteran sports television journalist recounts to SBJ’s John Ourand the most memorable assignment of her career — the 2000 birth of her son William during Super Bowl week in Atlanta.
Andrea Kremer was joined by her son William and husband John Steinberg at the Pro Football Hall of Fame for the award ceremony.Pro Football Hall of Fame
My due date was a month after the Super Bowl, so my doctor, my husband John Steinberg and I agreed that my last trip would be to Super Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta.
The Friday before Super Bowl week, I was in an Atlanta restaurant with my boss, Bob Eaton, and his wife, Betsy, when my water broke. I got back to the hotel at 11 p.m., and Betsy and I went to the hospital.
Because the baby was more than a month early, the doctors decided to wait several days before inducing labor. That meant I could still work. But I couldn’t go anywhere. My producers came to me, and we cut voice tracks from the hospital room.
USA Today ran a story on Tuesday saying that I was in labor. A personal mantra I have is that “it’s our story, but it’s their life.” My job as a journalist has always been to tell someone else’s story. All of a sudden, I had other people telling my story. I got it. I know what a good story is, and this was a really good story.
My son, William, was born on Wednesday. At 37 weeks, he was small but healthy. We stayed in the hospital for a week and a half to make sure he was strong enough to make that cross-country trip back home.
courtesy of the kremer family
I had been working on a big story for ESPN about the financial pressures that families place on players. I felt like I needed closure on that piece before I went on maternity leave. The one time I left the hospital, ESPN took me to the set, I introduced the story, and I came right back. I wasn’t away from my baby for more than maybe two hours.
I watched the game from my hospital room. It was a rare opportunity for me to sort of sit back and be a fan. During the fourth quarter of a close game between the Rams and the Titans, a nurse wheeled my baby from the neonatal unit for me to nurse him. I looked at the nurse and said, “Don’t even think about it.”
We laugh about it now because everything is great, as evidenced by the fact that my son is a big, 6-foot strapping boy about to go to college.
