Dick Vitale is ‘nervous,’ but back where he belongs, calling college basketball for ESPN

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Dick Vitale called back, and immediately apologized. He couldn’t do an interview and he couldn’t talk for long. These were his doctor’s orders, and Vitale wasn’t leaving anything to chance on the cusp of returning from nearly two years of cancer-induced, on-air silence.

“I must do stuff to save my voice,” Vitale explained over the telephone. “I’m still working on coming back from a tough situation.”

But the voice that became synonymous with college basketball over the past five decades still has something to say. So Vitale instead sent over a statement to express the wave of emotions coursing through him at the moment. It began with the phrase, “Oh Baby” and ended with the word, “baby” as well. It also included eight exclamation points and featured eight instances in which he wrote in ALL CAPS.

Dickie V, in other words, is thrilled to be back entertaining a national ESPN audience again, and the rest of the sport is rejoicing along with him.

Vitale is set to broadcast his first game since the international radio broadcast of the 2023 national championship when he returns to his role as a college basketball analyst for Saturday’s men’s basketball matchup between Clemson and No. 2 Duke.

“The past few years have tested me like never before,” Vitale wrote. “There were moments I wasn’t sure I’d ever sit courtside again.”

For more than three years, Vitale, 85, has been dealing with the effects of melanoma, lymphoma, vocal cord and lymph node cancers. It required multiple surgeries, 65 radiation treatments, rounds of chemotherapy and significant stretches of time in which the former NBA and college coach couldn’t speak at all.

Vitale previously announced he was cancer-free in 2022 but was diagnosed a year later with vocal cord cancer and had to undergo radiation treatments. In November 2023, he was also deemed to be cancer-free before undergoing a procedure last summer following a biopsy that showed a lymph node in his neck had cancer.

Vitale…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/dick-vitale-nervous-back-where-111616012.html

Author : USA TODAY Sports

Publish date : 2025-02-07 11:16:00

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