On an October night of perfect weather Dave Brown surely dialed up, when one tale after another was told as Jack Eaton and several others were inducted into the Memphis Sports Hall of Fame, Big Jack had to be looking down and laughing along like only the late, great Memphis Tigers radio play-by-play man could.

So many in Memphis over a certain age, it sure seems, have a favorite Eaton story. A special memory. A brush with Big Jack.

Two quickly come to mind for Mayor Jim Strickland.

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One is tuning in to Eaton’s call of a long-ago Memphis Tigers basketball visit to Louisville, the program’s despised rival back in the day.

“And Jack welcomes listeners to (the) game at Freedom Hall,” Strickland said, sharing an anecdote more than one would offer up Tuesday, “and explains that it’s called Freedom Hall because ‘the referees allow the Cardinal players the freedom to do whatever they want.’”

Great Scott!! They sure did.

“I hated Louisville,” Eaton, who by his own loose count worked 25 games at Freedom Hall and watched the Tigers lose 19 of them, once told Geoff Calkins on The Daily Memphian columnist’s old WKNO Sports Files show.

Former Memphis Redbirds general manager Allie Prescott, who also was inducted into the Hall in a ceremony on Tuesday night at AutoZone Park in Downtown Memphis, knows the hate.

“Every call that went against the Tigers and in favor of Louisville when we (Memphis) played them,” said Prescott, also a former interim Tigers athletic director, “Jack was sure that (Cardinals coach) Denny (Crum) was intimidating the referees.”

Among the many hats he’s worn over the years, Prescott – a lifelong Memphian who said “grew up loving Big Jack” on the radio and later became good friends with him – also worked for a while as an SEC and Conference USA referee.

“He never liked … that Denny Crum became one of my favorite guys to referee basketball for, because he (Crum) was a consummate gentleman,” Prescott said, smiling at the memory.

Big Jack made words sing

Smiles may only have been outnumbered by the laughs as one Memphian after another touched by Eaton at some point in their lives shared a memory Tuesday.

And there were lots of them.

Smiles, that is. And laughs. And folks who treasure whatever time they were blessed to be around Big Jack.

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“When we would visit Jack those last few years,” said AutoZone Liberty associate executive director Harold Graeter, a longtime friend of the Eaton family, “I would tell him, ‘Guys my age, my generation, there are so many of us that are Tiger fans because of you.’”

The nicknames.

The rhymes.

The pure poetry.

Eaton would make them all sing, and not just in his capacity as a play-by-play announcer but also in his role at WMC-TV, where the Pennsylvania native arrived in the 1950s, became a fixture as sports anchor and director, and did not leave until his retirement in 1991.

“Among my first sports heroes were Larry Finch, Ronnie Robinson, Larry Kenon and those guys on that ’72-73 (Memphis State) team that played for the national championship,” said Graeter, whose longtime best friend was Eaton’s late son Todd and who later worked alongside Eaton on the sports team at WMC.

“That came from listening to Tiger basketball on the radio, and Jack describing the games in his unique way of painting the pictures, being all about the Tigers, being a homer.

“Some people think being a homer is a negative thing. As a Tiger fan, I always thought ‘That’s great; I’m a Tiger fan, I want you to say those things.’ I know it drove Tennessee fans, Ole Miss fans, Louisville fans … crazy, but he was ‘our guy’ and he saw it through the prism of Tiger blue and grey.”

Long after his work on the radio was done, Eaton was still calling Tiger games.

Kevin Kane, president and CEO of the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau, remembers the time Eaton, by then a retiree, and son Todd joined him in a suite at a Tigers basketball game.

Kane and Big Jack sat quite close.

“I was just watching the way he was processing the game,” Kane said, “and I asked him, ‘Hey, Jack, when you watch a basketball game are you still kind of announcing the game as every play unfolds?’

“He says, ‘One hundred percent.’ … He was sitting there, he was on that mic – in his mind.”

The ‘great communicator’

Eaton died in February 2016, at the age of 86.

Seven-plus years later, Eaton stories remain alive and well in the hearts of Memphians who welcomed him into their living rooms night after night.

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For a stretch starting in the early 1980s, Dave Woloshin was the sports guy then at Ch. 13 in Memphis, an ABC affiliate at the time.

Today, Woloshin sits in the same seat Eaton once sat – calling Memphis games as the voice of the Tigers. Woloshin remembers Eaton as “a great communicator,” someone so easy-going he didn’t hesitate to offer advice and perspective, even to a competitor.

“One day he pulled me over,” Woloshin said, “and he said, ‘Young man, you need to relax. You’ve got to remember: We’re only here to fill time between commercials.’”

Like a beloved uncle, you didn’t want Eaton to leave the room so quickly.

Two minutes on TV was never enough. Tiger games always seemed to end too soon.

From beginning to end they were a joy to listen to, from Big Jack’s eyes and mouth to your ears like you were the only one he was talking to. The radio was his vehicle. His voice – Great Caesar’s Ghost, can’t you hear him now? – signaled an inevitable wild ride.

“Back in the heyday,” Graeter said, “the power of Jack’s play-by-play, and the following he had, and how he made Tiger sports special, was (evidenced by) the fact that when we got to the era of all the games are on TV, the hardcore, diehard Tiger fan would turn down the sound on the TV and listen to the radio broadcast of Jack Eaton.

“He made it special.”

Yet, like that very same uncle, he left you on the edge of your seat, wondering what he might say next.

Graeter recalls the time the Tigers were playing an exhibition game against the touring national team of an Eastern European country.

“And he says, ‘Here come the Commies’ on a fastbreak,’” Graeter said. “He could get away with that back then.”

Yucking it up with Dave, Mason and Carl

When Eaton delivered the sports on WMC, Brown – the station’s, and the city’s, longtime beloved weatherman – was right by his side.

Also at the desk in the early 1980s were Brenda Wood and Mason Granger, and at 5 p.m. they all teamed to bring a broadcast of Action News 5 that at the time was ranked by Nielsen as the No. 1 local newscast in the nation in its time slot, as WMC history has it.

“I loved the guy,” Brown said Tuesday, under perfect Memphis skies.

“His sense of humor was just tremendous. He had a thing that if … he said something to you, you had to respond in two seconds or it didn’t count.

“One night we were sitting, waiting to do promos to promote the 10 o’clock news. Mason Granger, Jack Eaton and Dave. And Jack yawns. Jack did everything big. Big, huge yawn. So Mason just deadpans, ‘Are we boring you Jack?’ And Jack said, ‘No, Great Scott!! Mason, it’s a lack of oxygen to the brain. It’s a proven, scientific fact.’ And Mason says, ‘Why do you think you have a lack of oxygen to the brain, Jack?’ And Jack says – one, two – ‘Because, frankly, you’re boring the h--- out of me.’”

Jarvis Greer, a former Memphis Tigers football player, spent more than 43 years working sports for WMC.

He knows Eaton’s humor as well as anyone.

“I was lucky I got to work with Jack Eaton, because he was my boyhood idol,” Greer said. “He’s the reason I became a Tiger, actually.

“I got a chance to work with him, which was the ultimate great thrill. It was like going to a comedy store every day.”

Asking Greer to pick his favorite moment with Eaton is like asking him which blade of grass on a football field is best.

He plays along anyway and recalls the time Eaton was sitting at a TeleMation machine – used to input fonts and game scores that pop up on your TV.

“Jack, he was over there putting the scores in and one of our new photographers – a guy named Carl Jones, big guy, very hard to impress about anything – came over and was watching Jack do this,” Greer said. “He (Eaton) goes, ‘Hey, hey Carl, how are you doing?

“And Carl’s just looking ahead of him, and Jack’s sitting there, and turns around, and goes, ‘Oh, hey, this is really simple; any fool can do it.’ Carl goes, ‘Hmm. I see.’

“And Jack just popped out laughing, because he loved when people gave him zingers.’

Two seconds. Carl beat the shot clock. Count it good.

And the crowd goes wild

Eaton didn’t just bring the Tiger scores.

He sometimes brought the Harvard scores, joking to Granger about having gone there.

“Oh, Great Scott!!, my alma mater won tonight,’” Graeter remembers Eaton so often telling Granger.

Eaton, of course, did not attend Harvard. But he also sometimes brought scores from Pennsylvania’s Washington & Jefferson. And he did go there – dear ol’ W&J.

Like Great Scott!! and Great Caesar’s Ghost, it was part of the schtick. Yet it was delivered with such sincerity and joy that each line became one with Big Jack.

“Like Harry Caray had ‘Holy Cow,’” Prescott said, “he (Eaton) had ‘Great Scott!!”

Eaton had an audience of folks eating it up, too, as Mayor Strickland’s second favorite memory shows.

It stems from Strickland’s time as a Memphis State student. The Tigers are preparing to play Villanova in the 1985 Final Four at Kentucky’s Rupp Arena.

“We students get there early and watch warmups,” the mayor recalls.

“When Jack walks in and goes to his … seat near the court, we erupted as if he as an All-American player. I’ve never heard an announcer get such a huge cheer. He was beloved.”