The truth was, as jarring as Roye's sudden and spectacular meltdown was, family members felt that some part of him was almost relieved to be free of the maddening stress of television news: the crushing deadlines, the cutthroat competition, the eternal search for the next big story. As his aunt, Miriam Moorman, told the Record, Roye had grown tired of news, and to some degree, he saw in the turn of events an opportunity to do what he had always wanted to do. Ever since he had been a kid, growing up in California, Roye had been almost obsessed with sports. In fact, the competitive nature of journalism shares much with athletic contests; after all, television news is all about the day-to-day battle to beat the other stations, to get the big story before they do, to find that special angle or that one remarkable interview that leaves the newspapers in the dust. Sometimes journalism is practically a blood sport. Roye might have lost his heart for the news game, or so he may have thought, but he still loved sports.
Secretly, like many other journalists, Roye had privately dreamed of starting his own business. In the waning years of the 1980s, he took the settlement from RKO and did something about his dream, combining it with his love of professional sports. He opened a small kiosk in the Garden State Plaza, a moderately upscale mall in suburban Paramus, New Jersey, selling sports memorabilia. He called it "The Only Game in Town."
The late 1980s was a bad time to start a boutique business. The economy had hit hard times, and even in the comparatively affluent enclaves of New Jersey's Bergen County, few people were in the mood to spend much money on sports-related knickknacks and collectible baseball cards. By 1990, Roye was ready to throw in the towel. His business had gone bust, and he had been forced to declare bankruptcy. That was also the last straw for his rocky marriage. A short time later, he and Stephanie filed for divorce.
Broke and broken, Roye, then in his mid-forties, decided to return home to Southern California.
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