For most of the last year, particularly these last several months, he struggled merely to draw a breath. His lungs were ravaged by a disease not well known at all, that does not inspire telethons and 5K races and bake sales, George Lapides was constantly connected to an oxygen tank that assured he could live a little longer.
And then the recording proclaiming him as “the originator of sports talk radio in Memphis” would play — and it darned near could have called him the originator of sports talk radio, period — and his microphone would go hot.