Mortimer back to covering sports

David Mortimer is 13 months from graduation at BYU, and he knows what he wants to be: a sports journalist.

He hopes to one day be interviewing Major League sluggers and hanging out with Super Bowl quarterbacks. It's a nice gig, far as he can tell: nice hotels, quality restaurants, the chance to see the biggest games and greatest stars.

He would love to be at the World Series tonight, covering the winning locker room.

Just the way he did before.

When he was 9.

Fourteen years later, Sparky Mortimer is getting back in the business.

You might remember David, a.k.a. Sparky. He was the precocious kid on the "The Late Show" with David Letterman in the mid-1990s. Former KUTV anchor Michelle King discovered him at a BYU football game, doing a mock play-by-play from a nearby seat. The next week, she had a camera crew on hand to film the pint-sized announcer.

Soon the Letterman people had invited Mortimer onto their show. Then they started dispatching him to sporting events as a correspondent. It was good television, a prepubescent kid asking questions of star athletes. He was on hand for the 1995 World Series and a few weeks later covered Super Bowl XXX. He was also asked "for some random reason" to represent Letterman at the Grammy's before his career as a sports journalist ended — at least Phase I of his career.

Mortimer seemed destined for reporting of some sort. His grandfather was publisher of the Deseret News for 15 years. When Sparky was an infant, his mother would turn on the TV to keep him entertained. The only things he liked to watch were "Sesame Street" and Chicago Cubs baseball. He grew up imitating announcer Harry Caray.

By the time he was 9, Mortimer had his sportscasting routine down. All he needed was an outlet and an audience.

Several million Letterman viewers were just the trick.

The TV people got him credentials and shepherded him around at the big events. There among the hundreds — and sometimes thousands — of media members, was a 41/2-foot kid with a big microphone.

"It was just weird at first," says Mortimer.

The thing he recalls most was fighting through the crowd to get to Fred McGriff's locker during the 1995 World Series between Cleveland and Atlanta.

"I just stood next to him and held the microphone way up in the air," says Mortimer.

Unlike the incorrigible Albert Belle, who Mortimer later said, "blowed me off," for an interview request, McGriff played along.