Gorman to enter HOF as 2021 Curt Gowdy Award recipient originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Mike Gorman didn’t know who was calling from a 401 area code early Saturday morning but spying “Springfield, MA” on the caller ID and knowing broadcast buddy Mike Breen was being honored as part of this weekend’s Hall of Fame class, Gorman elected to answer.
It wasn’t the call from the Hall that Gorman was expecting. But it was a Hall call.
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The voice on the other end informed Gorman that he was a recipient of the 2021 Curt Gowdy Award and he will be inducted into the media wing of the Basketball Hall of Fame as part of a star-studded 2021 class that also includes one of Gorman’s favorite players in Paul Pierce.
"I was making some coffee and I looked and saw Springfield pop up. You really don’t get a lot of telemarketers calls out of Springfield, Massachusetts,” said Gorman. "Mike Breen is one of my best friends and Mike was going in this weekend and so I knew he was in Springfield, so I said, ‘Well, maybe it’s Mike.’ Hit the button, said hello. Turned out to be the gentlemen who’s in charge of the Hall of Fame and he said, ‘I just wanted to let you know that you’ve been named the recipient of the Gowdy award.’ And I was like, 'I’m alone here, there’s nobody to celebrate with.’”
The 75-year-old Gorman, now in his fourth decade of calling Celtics games, phoned his wife, Teri, who was in Florida on business, and then some of his friends. He waited a little bit before calling his daughter, Kristen, in Scottsdale, Arizona as not to spook anyone with an early-morning call.
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He’s still wrapping his mind around the honor.
"There really is a wave of emotions because I grew up listening to Curt Gowdy,” said Gorman. "As a kid, you heard him all the time. Now to be mentioned in the same sentence, that’s kinda scary. I look at the list of people that have won this award before me, my good friend Mike Breen just got it this past year, down the list, Johnny Most, Chick Hearn, you name any of them -- Joe Tate … it’s a long list. The more I could think that somebody wanted to put me in that group, the harder it is to talk about it.”
