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Hutton: Hammond native and pioneering black TV announcer Irv Cross gets personal in fascinating memoir

Irv Cross had to get composed on the phone.

After all these years, it still wasn’t easy to open up about his father.

He was generally a good man who would get drunk on Friday night after he got paid and then beat his mother.

“It tears me up,” Cross said. “It was frightening. You could tell it was coming. We tried stopping him a few times. We’d jump on his back. It’s absolutely raw for me.

“I swore I’d never drink, never smoke and never hit a woman. I never did.”

Cross reveals this and other fascinating details of his life in his memoir, “Bearing the Cross.”

Cross, a 1957 Hammond graduate, was one of the pioneers on pregame NFL shows, along with Brent Musburger, Phyllis George and Jimmy Snyder, better known as Jimmy the Greek.

Cross was the first black television announcer for the NFL in 1971, something he never thought about when he was on The NFL Today show from 1975 to 1989. In 2009, Cross was presented the Peter Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Cross was known for his meticulous preparation, his great voice and an easygoing manner.

It took a lot of work to make it look so polished.

“I was just concerned about doing the best job I could,” he said.

Cross was the eighth of 15 children. He grew up at 1045 Ames St. in Hammond. His mother died during childbirth when he was 10.

His outlet became athletics.

He played basketball and ran track. He starred on the football team as a wide receiver and defensive back.

Cross was such a good athlete he had a tryout for the White Sox, even though he only played summer baseball.

He opted to play football at Northwestern for Ara Parseghian. In 1961, Cross was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the seventh round.

Cross played nine years as a cornerback, finishing with 22 interceptions. He made two Pro Bowl appearances.

After five seasons with the Eagles, he spent three seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and then was traded back to the Eagles, where he finished his career.

In his final season, Cross was a player/coach, helping out with the Eagles defensive backs.

Cross had three choices when he retired.

He could go into broadcasting, coaching or work in a front office.

Dallas Cowboys general manager Gil Brandt offered Cross a job as an assistant GM.

Cross confirmed in the book he couldn’t do it. His loyalty to the Eagles, even though they only had one winning season when he played there, was too intense.

During his playing days, Cross had a side job reading the sports report on WIBG, a radio station in Philadelphia. Eventually, he did the same thing for a TV station in Philadelphia. That led to The NFL Today.

He took the job instead of coaching because he didn’t want to move around.

The memoir is full of interesting anecdotes about working for The NFL Today.

One is a production meeting when he first started.

Duke Struck, the director for the first show, told Cross he “didn’t sound like a black guy.”

Cross was confused and agitated.

“Duke, how does a black guy sound?” he asked.

Cross wrote “the meeting just stopped. There was about 30 seconds of tension in there, no talking.”

After Cross left broadcasting, he worked as an athletic director at two colleges. He lives in Minneapolis with his second wife, Elizabeth.

He has constant headaches from his NFL playing days and short-term memory loss. He still watches NFL games but rarely pays attention to the glitzy pregame shows he helped spawn.

It’s too personality-driven for his taste.

Doctors have told him that he has a 50-percent chance of developing dementia.

Now 79, Cross gets back to Northwest Indiana occasionally to visit his younger brother Ray and several of his sisters. His father stopped drinking after his mother died and lived until he was 86.

Cross never did get to ask him why he quit.

He’s just glad he did.