T he first time I ever appeared on television with Bob Lobel was during a live shot before Game 3 of the 1986 World Series at Fenway Park [map] .
I wish I could tell you that Lobel had read my stuff in the Portland Press Herald and said, “This is the kind of analysis and dissection we need.” The truth, alas, is that I had wandered in front of the camera while Lobel was doing an interview with Joe Garagiola.
It would be another four years before Lobel would have me on the set for his Sunday night “Sports Final” on WBZ-TV, an invitation for which I will be forever grateful.
There is no other way to say this: Bob Lobel is, and always will be, one of the giants of Boston sports media. And if you want to put it out there that he isn’t the player he was back in the rip-roarin’ days of Larry Bird, Roger Clemens and Cam Neely, then you’re missing the point.
It’s like that old Norma Desmond line from “Sunset Boulevard.” When the onetime silent picture star is told she used to be big, she icily replies, “I’m still big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
And so it is with Bob Lobel. He’s still big. It’s the sports segments at 6 and 11 o’clock that got small.
We live in an era when the serious Boston fan, in pursuit of every last nugget of information available, is best served by watching “Sports Desk” on NESN, or “Sports Tonight” on Comcast SportsNet, or “Sports Late Night” on NECN. You’ll get a half hour of highlights, interviews and opinion, delivered by a lot of very smart people who go to the games, who ask the questions, who get the scoops.
Tune in to the old-fashioned network affiliates, though, and it seems as though the sports segments are grudgingly wedged into the newscasts. You get a highlight or two, a quickie live shot from the Garden and a “package” that’s on and off the screen in the blink of an eye. And then it’s over.

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