Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993 TAG: 9307030051
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Collins, working his 22nd Wimbledon for NBC, knows more tennis than anyone on the tube. In his commentary, he certainly goes beyond the baseline at times. Collins can be loud, but even when he isn't, his trousers are.
Dick Enberg, a Collins cohort in the Centre Court NBC booth at the All England Club, remembers his first trip to London for the network's "Breakfast at Wimbledon" debut show in 1979.
"I saw those pants," Enberg said, "and I accused Bud of wearing the flag of some country you've never heard of.
"He said, `You're close.' "
Collins' trousers have become a tradition at Wimbledon, where anything other than white attire on the grass courts raises eyebrows. For NBC's Wimbledon shows today and Sunday (9 a.m., WSLS Channel 10), he will wear chili peppers one day, strawberries the other.
At a mundane Wimbledon to be remembered for Andre Agassi's hair-today, gone-tomorrow act, Collins' trousers at least offer some needed color.
"Some of the things he's worn, I'd be arrested if I wore the same thing on the street in San Diego," Enberg said.
Collins recalls that his first "wild pants" day came in Cleveland at a 1966 Davis Cup match, when he showed up in a madras plaid. That's tame for Collins now. He has been a college coach, a national mixed-doubles champion (1961) and a Boston sportswriter since 1955, but it is his pants that have left many breathless.
"I don't really know how I got started wearing the wild trousers on the `Breakfast at Wimbledon' telecasts," Collins said. "My oldest pair is 25 years old this year - as old as NBC's coverage of Wimbledon. They won't be seen, though, because I forgot them.
"They were, in their original form, a huge Italian election banner that an Italian journalist friend and I sort of purloined one night in Sardinia. It had wonderful colors - black, green, red and white. After we'd taken this thing, my friend said we had to get rid of it, that it was a terrible offense."
Depending on one's taste, the terrible offense may have been that Collins has worn the flag-turned-trousers "at least once a year for a long time." In 1974, Collins covered the "Rumble in the Jungle" - the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in Zaire. He went to a shop and bought material plastered with the faces of the two boxers.
He has worn those at Wimbledon, and Collins' pants often become a subject for discussion when he interviews the finalists as they leave Centre Court following the championship match. It seems the players aren't the only ones who have noticed.
"When Bud's waiting for the players to come off, he's standing down there next to the court, right in front of the Royal Box," Enberg said. "The one year the Duchess of Kent, who goes down to greet the players, was walking off. She gave Bud a nodding look and said, `Nice . . . uh . . . pants.' "
Collins then told the duchess, "Wait until you see tomorrow's!" To which the duchess replied, "Oh, you haven't let me down." Collins appeared in the strawberry pants the next day.
"I wore the pants with the strawberries on them when Michael Stich won in 1991," Collins recalled. "After he won and we went off the air, he said to me as he was leaving the interview, `I want those pants.' When I saw him later, I told him I'd give them to him, but they wouldn't fit, and I told him I'd look for the fabric again.
"I had bought the strawberry material in Rome. I was walking down the street and I passed a draper's shop, and in the window I saw material with strawberries all over it. I can speak enough Italian to say, `How many meters do you need for a pair of men's pants?' The woman in the store looked at me like I was crazy, but she gave it to me, and I had them made."
Collins couldn't find the material in Rome again, but in Como, Italy, he located some different strawberry cloth last year. He had two pairs made, one for himself, one for Stich.
After all these years, it's obvious Collins tailors his game just for Wimbledon.
by CNB