Deseret News: Rock: Mortimer back to covering sports

You might remember David, a.k.a. Sparky. He was the precocious kid on the “The Late Show” with David Letterman in the mid-1990s. Former KUTV anchor Michelle King discovered him at a BYU football game, doing a mock play-by-play from a nearby seat. The next week, she had a camera crew on hand to film the pint-sized announcer.
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Soon the Letterman people had invited Mortimer onto their show. Then they started dispatching him to sporting events as a correspondent. It was good television, a prepubescent kid asking questions of star athletes. He was on hand for the 1995 World Series and a few weeks later covered Super Bowl XXX. He was also asked “for some random reason” to represent Letterman at the Grammy’s before his career as a sports journalist ended — at least Phase I of his career.

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The thing he recalls most was fighting through the crowd to get to Fred McGriff’s locker during the 1995 World Series between Cleveland and Atlanta.

“I just stood next to him and held the microphone way up in the air,” says Mortimer.

Unlike the incorrigible Albert Belle, who Mortimer later said, “blowed me off,” for an interview request, McGriff played along.