Friday, May 16, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
The story goes something like this:
The conversation is about boxing and the audience at the Stardust Race and Sports Book is riveted. One of the panelists uses the phrase "cotton pickin'" to emphasize his point and Jim Brown, the Hall of Fame football player, stares coldly at him.
Before all hell can break loose, a commercial break arrives in the nick of time. The panelist who uttered the politically incorrect remark bolts from his seat and sprints down the aisle faster than Carl Lewis before Brown, whose mother was a sharecropper in Alabama, can get a chance to tear him limb from limb.
That was back in 1979, long before political correctness was en vogue. It was also a time when talk radio was melancholy and you could tell tales and reminisce. For that's what storytellers do.
Lee Pete, who has been telling stories on the airwaves for what seems like forever, laughs at the one about his buddy, Jim Brown. Together, they co-hosted "The Stardust Line" for nearly five years. A generation grew up listening to the two swap stories, tell jokes and entertain millions up and down the West Coast late at night.
Pete, who has been on the air in Las Vegas for four decades, no longer talks much about sports. His daily two-hour gig on KRLV (1340 AM) deals more with politics and local issues rather than if the Dallas Cowboys can win the Super Bowl.
Endangered species
"I'm so far removed from it," Pete says of today's sports scene. "And to be honest with you, I don't give a damn."
But that's the only thing that's changed. At 72, Pete says he can't change. He can't become a yeller and a screamer. He says he's too old to hate the world.
His is a breed on the verge of extinction. He's one of the few buffalo remaining.
"What good does it do?" he said of being bitter on the air. "It's scary to know there's a lot of disappointed people in the world."
But if someone wants to know what's wrong with the Dodgers' offense or questions why Kobe Bryant would be put in position to shoot a 3-pointer in overtime of a Lakers playoff game, Pete will oblige. He still follows sports. It just doesn't consume his life the way it used to.
"You get older, your priorities change," said Pete, who is trying to keep his head above the medical waters as he deals with diabetes. "I listen to some of these kids today (on sports talk radio) and I'm not critical of anybody. But it's the same old story when you go from station to station. Everyone says the same thing."
Packing it in
Someone who got a $1,000 raise as a second-year player with the Green Bay Packers in 1951 could never relate to the salaries paid today's athletes and coaches. Pete was turned off long ago.
"When baseball had its problems about 12 years ago, it broke my heart," he said. "It was no longer a game. It was a business.
"I liked the baggy flannel uniforms the players wore, the chewing tobacco and the spiting. Now it's hair dryers, cologne. When (George) Steinbrenner has seven managers in five years, there's something wrong with that."
Despite where things were going, Pete stayed in the sports talk game as long as he could. Finally, after spending last year trying to figure out why people like Michael Irvin, Albert Belle and other miscreants get paid millions while having no regard or respect for common decency, he removed himself from the game.
For 13 years, he had hosted "Proline," a televised football gaming show where handicappers would give out picks for the week's college and pro games. He stepped down from that last year.
For years, he has served as Nevada's chairman for the Heisman Trophy balloting. He's walking away from that, too. He hasn't stepped foot on UNLV's campus since Jerry Tarkanian left in 1992 and he hasn't had any desire to return to the Thomas & Mack Center.
Instead, the majority of his time is spent with his wife Lila, who has waged a brave battle against cervical cancer. The battle cost her her right leg a year ago and every day's a struggle.
"She's what keeps me going," he said. "I'm her caretaker. But there's nobody, and I mean nobody, tougher than her."
Therapy sessions
Pete's daily two-hour gig on KRLV allows him to get out of the house. And it's great therapy.
"I don't know what the hell I'm talking about now," he says of his free-flowing show, which is co-hosted by Bill Fitzgerald. "I'm just filling up a chair."
He's also filling up time by telling stories about the old days of Las Vegas when 100,000 residents was considered "booming." His easygoing manner hasn't changed.
There are thousands of Lee Pete stories. But people usually ask him about Brown, about the old days of sports and Donnie Bader, who was his sidekick on KDWN for a dozen years.
"I never intended to do this," he said of his talk show schtick which began at a small station in Toledo, Ohio, in 1954. "It was all pretty much on a dare.
"It was me, a microphone and a telephone. I was running my joint and I'd leave for a couple of hours and I'd go on the air. Nobody even missed me.
"When I moved here (to Las Vegas), I had no intention of going on the air. But I was at Caesars Palace one day and I ran into someone who knew me from Toledo. One thing led to another and ..."
And a Las Vegas sporting icon was born.
Jim was dandy
Pete was doing five nights a week at the Stardust and Brown, the former Cleveland Browns great, was working at the hotel at the same time. One day, it was suggested the two team up on the air.
They hit it off immediately.
"There was an air of mystery about Jim," he said. "You never knew what would happen so you had to be very careful about Jim. You had to tip-toe with what you said."
But the show took off. Pete said people would show up at the Stardust on weekends two hours before they went on the air. The race and sports book where the show originated would be packed.
"They loved Jim," Pete said. "And he's a very bright, intelligent man."
And if the listeners loved Jim Brown, they adored Donnie Bader.
What a team
When asked how he and Bader became a team, Pete laughed.
"I'm on the air at KDWN at the Union Plaza and a guy calls up wanting to know why I didn't give the high school scores," he said. "I said, 'high school scores? Where am I going to get high school scores?' and I told the guy 'You get me the scores and I'll give them out over the air.'
"The next day, this short guy with a squeaky voice comes over to me and I say, 'Yeah, what do you want?' and he says, 'I've got the high school scores for you.' So I put him on the air and Donnie was with me for 12 years."
Bader quickly became a popular sidekick. One night, Pete suggested to his KDWN listeners that they should feel free to drop him or Bader a line. He gave out a post office box number in Las Vegas.
A week later, he received a call from the postmaster, telling him to come down to the post office right away.
"The postal box was too small for all the mail," Pete said. "They had sacks of mail sitting on the floor. I had to get a bigger box."
Pete said he and Bader were getting 200 letters a week. And when word got out about Bader's T-shirt collection, the mail got bulkier as shirts from all over the country were arriving in Las Vegas.
"One guy came by the studio and dropped off 107 T-shirts for Donnie," Pete said. "Donnie is one of God's chosen few. He's as pure as a person can be. He was fun to be with."
Come on in
An entire generation learned about Las Vegas from Pete. He was a one-man Chamber of Commerce.
"I used to tell the people who were driving to come over, say hi, have a little fun," Pete said. "That's what it was all about back then. I was just trying to get people into the casinos.
"I remember Bill Friedman at the Castaways came over to me one night and said, 'You saved me.' I said, 'From what?' He said, 'Look at all the people in here' -- and his place was a hole-in-the-wall operation.
"I was never a polished radio guy. I just showed up and had fun."
And he made friends. Pete has had thousands of people approach him over the years and thank him for being their friend on the air. He never thinks much about it, but when the subject comes up on how many millions of lives he has touched, it strikes a chord.
"I had a guy come up to me at the Boulder Station the other day and he says, 'Mr. Pete?' and I say, 'Yes,' and the guy says, 'Mr. Pete, I just want to thank you for being my friend.
"Now I don't know this guy from Adam, but I know where he's going with this. He was a retired Chicago cop who moved out here and would listen late at night. He said, 'I would fall asleep every night listening to you tell your stories and it was wonderful and I just wanted to thank you for that.'
"Well, what do you say to something like that? It's a nice feeling knowing you can make people happy. The people who run the casinos never owed me anything. But if I could help get the word out and get people involved, that's all I wanted to do."
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