Thirty years ago on April 6, Al Campanis sat behind home plate in Houston's Astrodome and put on earphones.
Until that moment he was "The Chief," a Dodgers employee for 44 years and now the imperious, formidable general manager, a man who reverberated throughout baseball.
A few minutes later he was a punchline and a metaphor.
Two days after that he was fired.
Campanis' "Nightline" interview with Ted Koppel handcuffed his name to "necessities" and "buoyancy." It made him the face of baseball's institutional bigotry.
He was not the first self-inflicted victim of the "gotcha" ethic in the media world, but his was the biggest scalp it ever claimed.
