Mark Madden: Norm Macdonald hosting the ESPYs will never be forgotten

Norm Macdonald loved sports. He hosted the short-lived “Sports Show with Norm Macdonald” on Comedy Central in 2011. He often live-tweeted golf tournaments. The Canadian-born Macdonald was a hockey and Montreal Canadiens fan.

Macdonald gambled: “Never bet football ‘cause the ball ain’t round.” He went broke twice.

Macdonald’s viewpoint toward sports wasn’t reverent. He didn’t worship at the altar of the athletes.

That was evident when Macdonald hosted the ESPYs in 1998.

Macdonald died Tuesday after dealing with cancer for nine years. He was 61.

Macdonald was “your favorite comedian’s favorite comedian.” (He was my favorite comedian, period.) He was brilliant hosting “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live,” arguably the best at that. His 1998 film “Dirty Work” is an underrated classic. Macdonald’s book, “Based on a True Story: Not a Memoir” is a remarkable blend of fact, fiction and exaggeration. He was the ultimate talk show guest.

Macdonald made you work for the jokes. He didn’t churn out cheap laughs for simpletons.

Macdonald could eviscerate. He used the bludgeon and rapier to equal effect.

Macdonald used both plenty on Feb. 9, 1998, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. He hosted the sixth annual ESPYs, ESPN’s annual orgy of self-congratulation that makes us laugh, cry but mostly vomit. The ESPYs are everything that stinks about ESPN.

ESPN had no idea what they were getting with Macdonald. They couldn’t have. They clearly didn’t have editing rights to Macdonald’s monologue.

It was a bloodbath, and that’s meant in the funniest way possible. On a show designed as a platform for the glory and good of sports, Macdonald pricked the balloon. He put sports in proper perspective — much to the chagrin of ESPN and the athletes assembled.

After Macdonald told a joke, the reaction shots told the story: Ken Griffey Jr., in particular, looked like he wanted to kill Macdonald. (I always figured Griffey for a jerk after that.)

Michigan’s Charles Woodson became the first defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy that year: “Congratulations, Charles. That’s something no one can ever take away from you. Unless you kill your wife and a waiter, in which case all bets are off.”

Macdonald was always ahead of the curve when it came to O.J. Simpson’s guilt. It got him fired from “Saturday Night Live.” He never hosted the ESPYs again.

Macdonald was relentless at the ESPYs.

• “Quoting” owner Jerry Jones on his Dallas Cowboys: “ ‘We have to get back to what made us a championship team: strippers and crack.’ ”

• On a conversation between New York Yankees pitcher Hideki Irabu and his interpreter: “ ‘What did they say?’ ‘They say you suck. They say you should go back to Japan, you dirty foreigner.’ ”

• On a film being made about the NBA’s hapless Denver Nuggets: “It’s called ‘Black Men Can’t Jump, Either.’ ”

• On Michael Jordan’s impending retirement and induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame: “He wants his plaque to bear his basketball nickname, ‘Air Jordan.’ Not his baseball nickname, ‘Senor Crappy.’ ”

• On the tight outfits worn by Olympic speed skaters: “There was an East German woman — I swear, you could see the outline of her entire penis.”

The New York audience went nuts. The athletes and ESPN squirmed.

“Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN” is an oral history published in 2011. In it, Macdonald remembered those ESPYs thusly:

“The audience was laughing like crazy, but I did hear later that some people were offended. I guess it was their night to shine and they didn’t want a double homicide brought up.

“They were showing pictures of athletes’ faces, and they were angry, because they weren’t used to people joking around about them. It’s like you’re in (expletive) high school and there’s some big jock. Do you think that guy wants some (expletive) making jokes about him? No, and his natural instinct would just be to beat the (expletive) out of you.”

Macdonald summed up the superfluous nature of the ESPYs perfectly: “The (expletive) winners are already known, so only one guy’s there from the category, but you have to pretend anyway. It’s always, like, ‘Achievement of the Year!’ And then it’s the (expletive) team that won the World Series, you know?”

Self-importance has made sports lose the plot.

Macdonald got it: “I relate humor with watching sports. Drinking beer and watching Hockey Night in Canada and having a laugh with my buddies.”

I wish I could have done that with Norm Macdonald just once. RIP.

By the way, cancer didn’t beat Macdonald. It was a tie. The cancer died, too.