Turner Sports' Huber to Visit Grand Strand

by Alan Blondin | TheSunNews.com | 07.24.2010

The battle against prostate cancer led Emmy Award-winning Turner Sports essayist and commentator Jim Huber to develop a bond with Arnold Palmer, and it is leading him to the Grand Strand for a couple events in the next five weeks.

Huber is the 2010 national spokesman for the "Know Your Score: Fight Prostate Cancer" campaign, and he'll be appearing in that capacity at two events sponsored by marketing cooperative Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday.

Golf Holiday and ZERO - The Project to End Prostate Cancer are teaming up to offer free screenings for men in the area in a Drive Against Prostate Cancer event from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday at the Martin's PGA Tour Superstore location at 2310 Highway 17 in North Myrtle Beach.

The 40-foot screening van will be making its third visit to the area to give free PSA blood tests to screen for the disease. The process takes about five minutes and will save participants about $200, the average cost of the test in a doctor's office. Results will be sent to each person in four to six weeks.

The Drive Against Prostate Cancer features a mobile medical bus where local licensed physicians conduct a two-part early detection procedure consisting of a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test and a physical exam.

Men are encouraged to receive a PSA number that can be regularly checked and compared to detect abnormalities. More than 100,000 men have been tested in the bus since the program started in 2002.

Huber will also participate on his birthday Aug. 28 in the Know Your Score Links & Laughs celebrity golf tournament and gala/comedy show. Golf will be held at Long Bay Club and the gala at Embassy Suites Kingston Plantation Resort.

"It's been an interesting year," Huber said. "I've done an awful lot of television, radio and newspaper interviews all over the country talking about [prostate cancer]. It's been really good for me."

Huber is the third Know Your Score spokesman in three years, having followed Ken Griffey Sr. and Jim Boeheim. He was asked to be Boeheim's successor by Conway resident, actor, sports announcer and prostate cancer survivor Mitch Laurance.

"I've known Mitch Laurance for years, and I think because of our friendship he asked me to follow in Jim Boeheim's footsteps, which is tough to do, but I was honored," Huber said.

Baseball legend Ken Griffey Sr. and jazz musician Branford Marsalis are expected to participate in the Aug. 28 golf tournament, and will be joined by other celebrities who will be named in the coming weeks.

Comedians booked to perform at the gala are Bobby Collins, Daniel Forestier (aka Mutzie) and Karen Mills. Golf is $100 per person and the gala is $100, and a four-player team cost of $800 includes eight gala tickets. Players can register at knowyourscoreMB.com. A 350-ticket raffle for 13 prizes will also be held, with tickets costing $150 each. Prizes include an all-expense paid South African safari, Pittsburgh Steelers weekend, Chicago and New York multi-sport adventures, and four passes to the PGA Tour Championship.

Huber has been a newspaper reporter in Miami and Atlanta, spent seven years at an Atlanta television station and 16 years as an anchor and feature sports reporter at CNN, and has spent the past decade at other Turner Broadcasting stations including TNT. He has won an Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in writing.

Huber has never been diagnosed with prostate cancer. But his father, Bob, a mailman in Florida, was in the 1990s about the same time Palmer was diagnosed.

"I was covering Palmer at the time and we kind of developed an inter-family relationship that was very strange, and my father thought of it as kind of an honor that Arnold would check on his numbers and see how he was doing," Huber said.

Palmer asked Huber what his PSA numbers were, as well. "I said, 'I have no idea,'" Huber recalled. "He said, 'You'd better find out; it can be life or death.'" Through Palmer I got the urgency of knowing what your numbers are. When you get older, it's so easy to do and so important because if you catch it early enough, it's pretty beatable."

Huber's father died in 1999, but was free of cancer at the time of his death.

According to ZERO, more than 217,000 men in 2010 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and 32,050 will die from the disease. Studies have shown regular PSA blood testing reduces prostate cancer deaths by 44 percent.

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