A Bush League Broadcaster’s Life in the Minor Leagues
I am often asked to name my favorite baseball movie. Considering that I spent most of my working life in the minor leagues, I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s almost like asking someone to name his favorite Beatles song, though, in full disclosure, there are numerous great songs by the Fab Four. Baseball movies? Not quite as many classics, though there are some.
Field of Dreams is a definite classic and is always at or near the top of anyone’s list. I’ve always enjoyed The Natural as an excellent fictional piece of writing and acting. Eight Men Out had solid direction and a strong cast performance; I am a nut about historical baseball movies. The Sandlot is a charming and fun flick, even if it is occasionally overly nostalgic. Major League might not be realistic, but it’s downright funny. How often do we still recite lines from Bob Uecker’s character, Harry Doyle? Juuuuuust a bit outside!
But if I had to choose one, I’d have to go with Bull Durham. It’s a great story, the acting is good, and it’s funny in parts. It is also the most realistic movie about life in the minor leagues. However, I will say that throughout my many years as a minor league broadcaster, I never saw a player try to breathe through his eyelids or wear women’s lingerie under his uniform. I did, however, have a front-row seat to some crazy moments, some of which will remain sealed under oath to protect the innocent.
This is my brief story about life in the minor leagues. I had dreamt of becoming a sports broadcaster as early as age seven. I was enamored with the sounds of baseball on the radio. It was almost like a drug. I was one of those children who would resort to nightly subterfuge by sneaking a transistor radio under the pillow at bedtime and plugging in the earpiece to not alert parents, who had the ears of a bat.
In college (nice hair, dude!!), I worked at the campus radio station, writing news and sports for the station’s hour-long local evening newscast.
I was a field reporter and anchor and even got paid to do play-by-play for a variety of athletic events. I had a college buddy who graduated a semester before me. When he told me he had accepted a job as a news director in some Podunk town for $500 a month, I laughed. How can you possibly live on such a pittance, even in a small town twenty-some years ago? It turns out the joke was on me. I graduated shortly after that and giddily accepted my first minor league broadcasting position for the whopping sum of… $500 a month.
As a broadcaster, you live a nomadic life during the summer, much like the players. Life in the minor leagues entails one bus ride that blends into another. You forget the names of hotels on the road and wake up at 4 a.m., unable to remember where you are for a quick minute. Life in the minor leagues includes eating enough Waffle House and Wendy’s to turn your arteries into concrete Sonotubes. Then you repeat the process over five months. You rejoice when your road hotel offers complimentary breakfast. After all, $15 a day in meal money doesn’t go too far, even in the ’90s.
You deal with all of this because of the steadfast love of the game, not to mention the hope that there might be four or five people tuned into the broadcast that night. Ah, yes. Life in the minor leagues.
When a player retires from a sport, you will often hear them say that they miss the camaraderie with their teammates – the stuff behind the scenes. You make many unforgettable memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead.
I’ll never forget my first year in the industry. We were on a bus trip a couple of hours from home and a few hours from our destination when the bus was pulled over for speeding. The driver was driving on a suspended license while carrying precious cargo.
The bus company had to send a replacement driver. So, we all piled off the bus and sat there like a house on the side of the road, waiting for a new driver to be shuttled over so we could continue the trip. Smartphones didn’t exist, and laptops were a rare commodity. Even if I had one, wireless internet didn’t exist. We somehow made it to our destination without a minute to spare before the series’ opening game.
A year later, I witnessed a bench-clearing brawl. That isn’t unusual. What was out of the ordinary was a mounted policeman who came onto the field in an attempt to separate the players. I guess the confusion and pile of bodies tossed about didn’t sit well with the horse, which got spooked, reared upon his heels, and came straight down on the thigh of an opposing player. I guarantee you it is the only time in baseball that a player had to hit the DL because of being spiked by a horse.
Baseball fights typically amount to nothing more than a lot of pushing and shoving and myriad dangling participles and split infinitives. I witnessed a couple of doozies, including one that featured more haymakers than all 52 Rocky movies combined. The irony is that this particular melee took place in front of several thousand-grade school kids attending an education day game. They ate it up like Pixy Stix, shouting “fight, fight, fight” in unison. I wonder what they said when their parents asked them how they enjoyed the game that afternoon?
Life in the minor leagues also allows one to rub shoulders with some pretty famous people. My absolute favorite story involved the inimitable Tommy Lasorda. Tommy was in town to watch our Single-A club for a series. We were a Dodgers affiliate at the time and had a doubleheader one night. I was in the manager’s office that afternoon when Tommy asked if I knew of a nearby chicken joint. He wanted to get a bunch of chicken and sides for the players to eat between games of the twin bill. I knew of a place not far from the ballpark. I had tried unsuccessfully to get them in as a sponsor the prior year.
Lasorda jumped on the phone, called the restaurant, asked to speak with the manager on duty, and proceeded to introduce himself and explain the nature of his call. Listening to his end of the conversation, it was clear – and understandable – that the chicken guy on the other end of the line was not buying a second of it. Would you? Why would the former skipper of the Dodgers be calling a chicken joint in San Bernardino?
The chicken guy asked for the main number of the stadium, which I wrote down for Tommy, and called back to the main switchboard to verify that everything checked out. They transferred a call to the manager’s office a few minutes later. Lasorda hurriedly picked up the phone, exchanged a few pleasantries, and rattled off what he wanted to order for the players. As you might imagine, it was a copious amount of chicken.
Then, as only Tommy Lasorda could do, he TOLD the chicken guy that THEY would donate the chicken to the team. In his words, the PR he would provide the restaurant was worth considerably more than the cost of the chicken. Evidently, that sold the chicken guy.
A while later, Tommy grabbed our clubhouse manager, Whiz, and they headed to the restaurant to pick up the order. Whiz said every customer stopped chewing when they saw Lasorda walk through the doors. He went around and said hello to the 10 or 12 diners, signed a few autographs, and then jumped behind the counter and helped bag the order for the team. You can’t make this up!
As the second game of the doubleheader got underway, Tommy walked into my radio booth with a plate full of chicken. He sat next to me, slapped on the extra headset, and took a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. Lasorda had scribbled the names of the employees on the clock when he and Whiz went to pick up the order. I led Lasorda into the story on the air, listening in awe as he seamlessly recounted his trip in detail while rattling off the names of the employees as if he’d known them for years. I probably missed calling an entire half-inning, but nothing on the field could have been as entertaining as what was going on the radio. I was not about to interrupt the silver-tipped tongue of the great raconteur.
The postscript to that anecdote is that Lasorda’s little PR plug worked wonders. I was able to bring the chicken guy on board as a sponsor the following season, and I doubt it would have been possible without the help from one of baseball’s greatest ambassadors.
Life in the minor leagues. I wouldn’t trade a second of it.
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