My first year in baseball, there were only one or two reporters. My second year, I got to the Triple-A playoffs, there were four or five. When I came up in 1984, I never saw so many people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A lot of people don't realize that I started my career in sports and was a sports reporter long before I was on television. I used to be an NBA reporter and an NHL reporter.
I think people of my generation became journalists - you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers - because we wanted to report the big stories.
I knew I wasn't a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn't want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it.
I always saw the best reporters as ones you hardly ever saw other than when they were back in the newsroom, writing their stories.
I did the 1972 Sapporo Games, and I was also the Reds announcer and was folded into the NBC coverage for the 1972 World Series. I also did the 1979 World Series for ABC.
I was showing early symptoms of becoming a professional baseball man. I was lying to the press.
Believe it or not, I worked four summers in college as a sports writer covering baseball for a parks and rec department in Bayonne, N.J.
Nobody, but nobody stays a public-address announcer for more than a couple of years. Truly. Public-address announcing is not a career. Public-address announcers only work 81 days a year, so you don't make a living.
I had 12 years under my belt of baseball at the amateur level before I got to the big leagues.
And I realized that there was no sports reporter, so I started covering sporting events.