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One of Madden's early broadcasting partners, Dick Stockton, says flatly, "Nobody else is even in his league. You know why? He sees through things." Six years ago, Madden joined Pat Summerall in the broadcast booth, and they have become an institution. Summerall, a former New York Giants place-kicker, smoothly handles the play-by-play and generously provides Professor Madden time to explain what just happened and why.
In the course of Madden's curious sojourns, amounting to more than 100,000 miles a year, he might bus from New Orleans to Dallas to Washington for three games in eight days. Though the comforts of the new $500,000 Maddencruiser range from an outsize bed and shower to a full kitchen and dinette -- "plus I got all my stuff on there," such as two televisions and a VCR -- he misses the strangers on the trains he used to subsidize single-handed. "But then, a train can't veer off the track," he says. "I love the small country towns and the cafes. It's fun going to the Mexican restaurant in Van Horn, Texas. The guy's wife is the cook." Showing why he usually avoids fancy restaurants, Madden surveys the menu at one, declares, "Nothing here looks like food," and orders a cheeseburger. "On occasion, I've been over 300 lbs.," he confesses, though he is happiest when he is carrying 270 lbs. on his 6-ft. 4- in. frame. Madden is more likely to wash down his cheeseburgers with Diet Coke than with Lite beer, but he is as faithful as a near teetotaler can be to the product that has forged his fame. When passersby shout out, "Tastes great!" he dutifully responds, "Less filling!" Miller Lite commercials have become a kind of folk art.
Despite the elegant address in New York and the family's place near Oakland (where he largely spends the seven-month off-season and from where two sons have sprung to Harvard and Brown), Madden feels especially at home on the road. "America is my home," he likes to say. "I look out my window, and I see Wyoming and Nebraska, and the sycamores of Indiana, and the Hudson River. That's my front yard." Like a John Steinbeck traveling without his dog Charley, Madden is turning his journey into the third (and probably last) book. "I enjoy writing them a lot more than reading them," he says. "It's like I never watch tapes of the broadcasts. I was that way as a kid. I never looked at the photographs. When people hear their voice on a tape recorder, they can't believe that's the way they really sound. I don't want to hear it. I'm not anactor."
If he were, he would have taken one of his earliest television offers and become the original bartending coach on Cheers. If he were, he would be the mountainous John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (rather, make that Trains and Buses but No Planes), alternately waving his arms and shrugging.