September 11, 2026 • 37 mins
On this edition of The Fifth Hour, Ben shares his memories of September 11th, including a visit to the World Trade Center just weeks before the attacks and, years later, the world’s most unfortunate hotel stay in Boston. What are the odds? Apparently much better than you’d like.
But the star of the show is the great Ross Porter. The legendary Dodgers broadcaster, friend, and mentor joins Ben for baseball, broadcasting, and never-before-told stories from an amazing career—including the MLB broadcasting record Ross owns that will almost certainly never be broken.
It’s a must-listen for Dodgers fans, broadcasting nerds and anyone curious about Ben’s early years, back before he became the overnight gasbag on Fox Sports Radio.
Ross Porter, baseball stories, Maller archaeology—and absolutely no resort fee. Enjoy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the air everywhere the fifth hour with me ben
maller and a happy friday to you a very important
day in the history of america uh very important day
to remember and we're certainly new to that we're gonna
have some fun though as well on this fifth hour
(00:21):
podcast And I'll start with this. So it is September
11th as the podcast drops here early on a Friday.
And like everyone, I've got my own memories connected to
that day. If you were around then and as time
goes on, this is the 25th anniversary, I believe now
of 9-11. And so over the years, if you're younger,
(00:44):
you might have been so little you don't remember. And
this these things happen. I was actually at the World
Trade Center about two weeks before 9-11. I was there
in late August with my brothers on vacation to see— we
were there to visit my younger brother, who lives in
Wisconsin now. We were living in California. We flew out
(01:06):
to New York to visit with my older brother, who
lived in the city and still lives in the city.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And I wanted to go to the World Trade Center,
and we went to the Statue of Liberty.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
We did all the tourist things, but one of the
things to do was to go to the observation deck
at the World Trade Center. So I had never been.
We went down to the World Trade Center. We went
into the lobby of the tower that had the observation deck.
And we ended up getting there kind of late in
the day. They were closing in about half an hour
(01:40):
and it was expensive. And even the security guard down
there in the lobby was like, listen, don't waste your money.
They're kicking everybody out right at five o'clock.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Or whatever it was. And so.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
We didn't go up.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Two weeks later, September 11th happened, and that was that.
But that morning, I was doing sports updates.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yes, I did sports updates from the Fox lot on
Pico in West L.A., working at Fox Sports Radio while
desperately trying to get a hold of my brother and
his pregnant wife at the time, that girl who was
still in the oven. is now out of college and
living her life in South Carolina.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
And so my mom was freaking out.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
She couldn't get a hold of them, and she was
watching the news, and that was a debacle.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
The news was terrible. Cell service wasn't working. Nobody knew
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
And we happened, as we said, we were at the
Fox lot, and we had access to the raw Fox
news feeds that on the satellite at the time. And
so we were seeing things that never made it onto
television and things you really didn't want to see images
that have stuck with me all these years later. And listen,
(03:05):
eventually some of that stuff got out, but my God.
And then a long time after nine 11, uh, W-E-E-I
brought me to Boston to audition for the morning show,
and they put me up in this crappy hotel near Harvard.
And it was kind of a rundown place that at
one point had been okay, but not very good.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
When I got to the radio station.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Jerry Callahan, who was one of the hosts, and I've
had Jerry on this podcast before, but Jerry, he's become
a political pundit now. Jerry asked me, just bringing small talk,
he's asking me where I was staying and where the
station put me up, and I told him the name
of the hotel, and I was like, whatever. And Jerry,
he got upset, and he says, you know, that's where
some of the 9-11 hijacking terrorists stayed the night before
(03:55):
the attacks. No, I thought originally, I thought, well, Jerry's
probably just making that up. That's probably not true. And
I did some research. We didn't have AI back then.
We had Google and other search engines. So I started
doing my research, and I discovered that not only was
this the same hotel, it was the same floor. My
(04:16):
room was on the same floor. And that shook me up. Like,
I didn't know what room they were in, but I
was in... Anyway, getting into the elevator after finding that out, realizing...
What had happened in the hotel was, you know, it
was a crap hole.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
I think they had.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Renovated it since 9-11. They probably hadn't renovated it since
the 90s. By the way, they have since renovated and
changed the name of the hotel. Last time I was
in Boston, I looked it up. So that was where
these guys were the night, their final night alive when
they decided to go out and kill a bunch of
people and, you know, destroy society for years. They went
(04:54):
out to Logan Airport. And put evil in the world.
But enough about that. Upward and onward. And I am
very excited to welcome back to this podcast somebody I
consider a friend.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, an actual friend.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
How cool is that? Ben, you have friends?
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Professional friend. Work friend.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Right?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Work friend.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
And a gentleman who was a mentor to me, a
major influence in my broadcasting career, the man, the myth,
the legend, Ross Porter. Now, Ross, if you don't know
his story, he started calling professional baseball at the age
of 14 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, small town, later worked at
NBC television alongside legendary broadcasters of that era, Tom Brokaw,
(05:48):
Tom Snyder, covered the NFL on network TV in the
early 1970s, broadcast the Rose Bowl, major golf tournaments, college basketball.
And then after being personally handpicked for the job by
the man himself, Ross spent 28 years alongside the great
(06:12):
Vin Scully on Dodger broadcast. And more importantly to me,
not to Ross, but more importantly to me, he was gracious.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Enough to be kind and let a young.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Gas bag named Ben Maller co-host Dodger Talk. And that
was way back in the late 1990s. He's 87 years young.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Ross is about to turn 88.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
And he still sounds to me like he could walk
into that Dodger Stadium press box. and call nine innings
while playing baseball trivia. The great Ross Porter is back
with us. Well, Ross, welcome. It's great to talk to you.
How have you been, Ross? How have you been? What
have you been up to?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Ben, thank you very much for having me on. It's
such a pleasure to be with you, and I really
want to congratulate you on, gosh, 25 years. That's amazing
what you've done. I think that you were probably the
first sports blogger, weren't you, of all time?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
I was one of the first. I was in early.
But I want to thank you too, Ross, because I've
had you on before.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But you put me and you had hosted Dodger Talk
by yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
For years and years and years.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And then some corporate weasel said, hey, you got to
put Mallor on.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And you were very kind to me. You didn't have
to be that way.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
And I do appreciate it. I, of course, grew up
watching you on TV and all that and listening to
you call dodger games and then they they were like
hey you gotta put mallor on there but you couldn't
have been older and i i really do appreciate that
and i have so many fond memories of just watching
how you work the work ethic of of ross porter
(07:51):
and i think that's something that you know people 28
years with the dodgers who amazing all the other stuff
which we'll get to ross but the amount of work
you put in in the days where it wasn't easy.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I remember you going over to the.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Sports ticker to try to get the news. It was
not easy to get information as it is today with
the internet when you were doing most of your run
with the Dodgers and all that.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So I really do appreciate it. You showed me, hey, you.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Got to work hard. You were at the very top
of the broadcasting game doing Dodger games on the radio
and TV and all that with Vin. And yet, you
still were busting it. You were not cutting any corners.
And I appreciate you showing me how to work hard.
And I've tried to continue that as I've done my
run at.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Fox Sports Radio over the years.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
But have you.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Always had that?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Is that an Oklahoma thing, Ross, that work ethic?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, I started out, Ben, I think I was eight
years old when I decided I wanted to be a
sports announcer. And I got on the air because I
was on a small station in my hometown. I was
on at the age of 14 years old, which was unbelievable.
Can you imagine a 14-year-old getting on in Los Angeles
(09:04):
right now? No chance. Yeah. So it was interesting. I
lived across the street from the local sportscaster. And he
knew my interest. And at that time, of all things, Shawnee, Oklahoma,
my hometown, was the Class D farm club of the
Brooklyn Dodgers in the Class D Sooner State League. And
(09:28):
so he would say to me on occasion, hey, do
you want to go out to the ballpark with me tonight?
I said, sure. So we'd go out. And one night
in the middle of a commercial, he said to me,
how would you like to do some play-by-play? oh my
gosh 14 years old so i probably did a half
an inning and and it wasn't but a few months
later we were turning into doing high school football for
(09:51):
johnny and the station manager called me one thursday night
and said are you going to the game tomorrow i
said yeah he said well learn all you can because
the sports director just quit and next friday night you
got it all to yourself So two weeks before my
15th birthday, I did my first full play-by-play of a
(10:14):
high school football game. That got it started. And, you know,
I went on to the University of Oklahoma. I spent
some time on the student station. Then I got a
real good break when I got out of school. I
was employed by the radio and television stations in Oklahoma City.
at the number one station, which was WKY Radio and TV.
(10:37):
I did news for 40 hours a week for quite
a while, maybe six or eight months. They knew I'd
like to do sports, and eventually it got around to
where they let me do sports, and then I got
on television there to do sports on 10 o'clock news.
And I did that, I think, for, gosh, six years.
Got a chance to come to L.A. and sit on
(10:59):
an audition tape They approved it. They asked me to
come to L.A. They flew me out here and said,
we would like you to do the weekend sports. So
I did the weekend sports on Channel 4 for a
couple of years. And then my good friend, Rayford Johnson,
was there the night that Bobby Kennedy got shot. He
(11:21):
took the gun away from Sirhan Sirhan. And after that,
Rayford never came back to Channel 4. And I moved
up from the weekend to the 11 o'clock Monday through
Friday show with Tom Brokaw. And we were together about
four years. And then about a year into that, they said,
we'll put you on the six o'clock two with Tom Steiner.
(11:43):
So I had a good run there for 10 years.
And then, as I say, went to the Dodgers for 28. Yeah.
So it's been a long, long run.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Well, you've been great. And how was that first broadcast
as a young lad, what, 14 years old, Ross? Was
it good or was it just, hey, I'm on the air?
And do you recall, like, were you happy.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
With the way it went?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I think so. My guess is I probably said, it's
the third inning. The score is 4-2.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And there's also a famous Jim Thorpe connection, right? Am
I correct on that?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah. When I was about 12 years old, one night
my dad took me to a high school football game
in Israel. And we were walking up the steps to
our seats. And there was a guy sitting on the
end of the aisle with blankets wrapped all around him.
And Dad recognized him, and he stopped. He said, hey, Jim,
(12:42):
how are you? He said, Jim, I want you to
meet my son, Ross Jr. Ross is a Jim Thorpe. Wow.
And I shook his hand. And my dad wound up
being a pallbearer at his funeral, and he tried to
get the Jim Thorpe Museum in Shawnee. But the governor
of Oklahoma at the last minute vetoed a bill to
(13:04):
give him the money to do it. And so Thorpe's
wife at the time took him to Pennsylvania where they
had the museum and everything. But that was my encounter.
And then many, many years later, Ben, if you'll remember,
they decided to give Thorpe his medals back, which they
hadn't done in 1912 because they said he'd turned pro.
(13:27):
And so the governor of Oklahoma wrote me a letter
or called me and said, would you represent the state
the day they give Thorpe's family the medals back downtown?
And so I went down and did that. Nice.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
You also, we'll get back to the Dodgers, but you
called the UNLV games, I remember, and that was back
in the glory days of Jerry Tarkanian and the running.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
I mean, those teams, I go to Vegas. Actually, I
was just in Vegas. I did an event with listeners, Ross,
and I drove. There's a road named after Jerry Tarkanian. Yeah,
Vegas and it brought back the maze like I was
a kid growing up. I grew up in Orange County
and in Irvine. And I remember when UNLV came to
the the arena there. on Campus Arena, it was like
(14:17):
the Beatles. They were like– to a little kid like me,
it was like NBA guys. It was wild. What was
it like being around the legend Jerry Tarkin? And you called–
you owned a big game for a number of years, basketball,
I think football too, right?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
You did both, I think.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, I did a little football too later. I was
with him, I think, from– Gosh, I must have been
with them 15 years. And they went to three final
fours in a five-year span. And they won in 1990
in Denver. They beat Duke 102-72 or something like that
(14:56):
in the finals. But that was an unbelievably good college
basketball team. You know, it had Larry Johnson, Stacey Augman,
Greg Anthony, Anderson Hunt, David Butler. And they just blew
everybody away. And I'll tell you an interesting story about that, too, Ben.
They won that year in Denver. And the next year,
I think they were undefeated. And they went to Indianapolis.
(15:21):
And who were they going to play in the first
round but Denver? I mean, but Duke. And so we
went out the morning of the game to a high school,
and he had what they call a shoot-around, where you
take about 30 or 40 minutes to shoot free throws
and shoot layups, nothing very heavy. And I remember going
(15:41):
out with him on the bus, and he did this,
and then he blew the whistle after about 40 minutes,
and he called him into the midcourt area, and he
said to him, okay, you guys are going to lose tonight.
And everybody said, what? What? Come on. No, he said,
you don't respect Duke enough. You beat them badly last year.
(16:04):
You think you're going to make it easy. So just
go get on the bus.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
And Duke beat them that night by three points.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
What do you think Jerry Tarkanian would think about today, Ross?
With NIL, everything's out in the open. Players are getting
paid to play college sports. A lot of money. Guys
are making millions of dollars now to play college football now.
And some basketball players. And Jerry Tarkin was always fighting
the NCAA back in those days and all that. So
(16:33):
what do you think he would have thought? What do
you think of the times we're in now with the
NIL and all that?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Oh, I don't know how he would be able to
go exist right now the way it was going. And,
of course, I just think it's ridiculous, Ben, that some
of these players get six, seven, eight. Some guy in
Florida this year is getting his ninth year as a
college football player. I think it's ridiculous. And I also
(16:59):
think that, what do they call it, the portal?
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, transfer portal.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
They jump all over the world. And I don't understand
how that happens. A guy can go to three or
four colleges before he gets out.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, they get money.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
They keep changing schools.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
But you were– and I'm obviously younger than you, but
we were taught you've got to kind of be loyal
and stay and finish the job, right? I think today
it's just you go and get the money. And also,
I should point out the fun fact here, and I
love fun facts, Ross, that you are believed– I think
you are still the only person to call NCAA men's
basketball championship and a World Series championship, right, with your
(17:39):
UNLV connection and obviously with the Dodgers those years. when
they won back in the 80s, right? So there's a
little fun factoid About you, Ross. Now, as far as the–
I want to go back to baseball. We're talking with
the great Ross Porter, the legend. He's got a book,
by the way, a couple of books out. Ross, how
can people find– we're just going to scratch the surface
here in this conversation because the life and times of
(18:01):
my friend Ross Porter, who has seen and done just.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
About every cool thing you can.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Do in sportscasting with the Dodgers and UNLV and all
the other stuff that we'll– we probably won't get to
a lot of it. that he's done with the news
back in the glory days of local news when everyone
was watching to see what was going on in the world.
You have a website, Ross, right? RossPorterSports.com is the website.
(18:27):
And what can people find on that website?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Well, I'll tell you, over the years, Ben, I kept
audio interviews. And it just built up and built up.
And five years ago, I had, I think it was
220 interviews that I had done over a 15-year period.
(18:53):
And we changed homes and we moved from a larger
home to a smaller home. And whether or not it
had a room. And so we agreed, let's just throw
those tapes out. So one night I went out and
threw the tapes in the garbage can. Ironically, the next morning,
a guy called me from Nevada somewhere, and he said, Hey, Ross,
(19:19):
I have a radio website, and I used to live
in L.A., and I'm a big Dodger fan. would you
agree to do an interview with me on my website?
I said, sure, where do you want to do it?
He said, what are you doing right now? I said, well,
I can do it. Well, he interviewed me for, I think,
an hour and five minutes. And when it was over,
(19:40):
I said to him, it's interesting you called me because
of the lack of space in our new home. I
threw those tapes out last night. Ben, he screamed at
me as if I'd assaulted his wife. And he said,
you go out to that garbage can and you pull
all those tapes out and you send them to me.
(20:00):
I want to start a website for you. And so
I did. And we began at that time. We wound
up with two websites. We have the Ross Porter Sports
Facebook website. We have the Ross Porter Sports Videos website.
or slash YouTube website. And in fact, there's a third
(20:24):
one because you mentioned it, rossportersports.com. And so finally, about
a year or so ago, I said, you know what?
I think I'd like to try to make a book
out of this because I've got so many of these interviews.
So I started in doing it then, and I decided
for the first book, I would do all Dodgers. And
(20:46):
I took out 40 interviews of Dodger players, executives, anybody
associated with the Dodgers. I put it into a book
called The Ross Porter Chronicles, Volume 1, Dodgers. And I
did that one. And when I got through with that,
I said, you know, I've got a lot more that
(21:07):
I can do. I did 24 of them is what
I did. Okay. And so then I said, I'm going
to start a second book. So I started the second book,
and this one I put together people that were not
only Dodgers. There were a few Dodger players, but there
were other people who were involved in all kinds of sports.
(21:30):
I got George Foreman. I got Tom Brokaw. I got
President George H.W. Bush one day. Johnny Bench wrote the
foreword for me. Peter O'Malley had written the foreword for
the first book. So I put together at this time
40 of those. And they came out, oh gosh, 10
(21:52):
days ago, I guess. And it's about, I don't know,
289 pages of interviews. And I didn't have to do
anything but just put the interviews back to back to back.
with a lead into them. And so that's what I
got out there now. And I'm very proud of that.
I think that the second book is probably even better
(22:13):
than the first book, but you know, you can get
it at Ross Porter sports.com. All right.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So everyone pick up the book there and enjoy that. Now,
one of the things for those that, you know, I
think most people listening, remember you, but for some of
the younger people, right. That don't maybe remember Ross calling
the Dodger games. You were known as, as someone very
into statistics. And you were really ahead of your time, Russ.
I know I've told you this before, but because today
(22:40):
you watch a baseball broadcast and it's like, They've just
come up, since you stopped calling the Dodger games, they've
come up with like 8,000 new statistics for baseball.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
It's wild.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I don't know how often you watch the games anymore,
but when you do watch a baseball game or else,
what do you think as a guy that was very
into statistics.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
When you see the war and all this other stuff,
which they've come up with over the years, how do
you feel about all that stuff?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Well, I just kind of chuckled at myself and said,
you know, I really was. I'm kind of like Ben
Marler being one of the first bloggers. I think I
was one of the first statisticians to do it. And
my figuring was this, Ben. When I went to the
Dodgers in 1977, which was, by the way, the first
(23:30):
year Lasorda was the manager, I realized that there was
no way that I could have any kind of a
storytelling opportunity career because I had not had that much
experience with the baseball players on a daily basis. And
of course, Ned was the master of everything. So I said, well,
(23:50):
the only thing I can do is different is do
statistics on these guys. And so what I did was
I put together what I call the blue book. And
I started listing pitcher versus hitter stats and so on.
Like how's Pete Rose done against Don Sutton? And I
(24:11):
would keep that in the book. And then when they
would hook up, I would use that on the air.
And that got me started. And as you remember, Ben,
I took a lot of heat for that because they
said it's just statistics and nothing else. But I think
when you look at it, I appreciate you bringing it up.
I think in the long run, it worked out as
(24:32):
to I wasn't as crazy as everybody thought.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, as you said, you were ahead of your time.
I can't watch a baseball. I watch a lot of
baseball games, Ross, and it's graphics on the TV. It's
the announcers saying the stats and all that. And you
were that guy before these things were easily available back
in the days before the Internet really took off. I
(24:55):
also wanted to mention we lost Fernando Valenzuela a couple
years ago.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
You were there for Fernando Mania.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I maintain, Ross, here's my hot take, that there is
no single player.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
In the history of the L.A.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Dodgers more important for the growth of the fan base
than Fernando Valenzuela.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
We're still seeing it all these years later.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
What was it like being around Fernando when he hit
it and he took off and he was Mr. Everything
when he came to the Dodgers in.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
The early 80s? Well, you raise a very good point,
and I want to give you a statistic on that
that was given to me by Jaime Jorin, who, of course,
is a Hall of Fame Spanish Network broadcaster for the Dodgers,
and he went 64 years before he retired a couple
years ago. Ben went 67, which, when you think about it, Ben,
(25:46):
is just amazing. Anybody, any of them can go that long,
but they did. Jaime one day said to me, you know,
Before Fernando came to the Dodgers, our listed audience among
Latin fans was like 6%. And when Fernando had his
(26:07):
terrific year and then the years to follow, we suddenly
bolted to where we had 46% of the Latin audience
was our audience. And I thought that told it all. And,
you know, you probably remember this, you know, Fernando knew
more English than he let on. Jaime was his interpreter,
(26:29):
but he was a very quick learner. And finally, after
a few years, you know, he just started doing it
in English. Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I do remember that he did know he did know
a lot of English, but he liked to have the
interpreter and all that and whatnot. But his impact just
Just crazy for sure. We're talking with the great Ross
Porter here. And, Ross, I want to also mention you
have one of, I'm going to say right now, I'm
going to declare on the record right now, and I
think you know this because you used to talk about
(26:58):
this back in the day.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
We talked about it together many times.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
You have what I believe in the current state of
baseball is an unbreakable record.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
It's an obscure record, but it's an unbreakable record because.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Baseball added now in the last handful of years, extra
inning games.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
They have a ghost runner, which I hate, but you.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Call the game in Montreal against the old Expos there
back in the late 80s, and you did the entire broadcast.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You have a record for the longest.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
a one-man broadcast of a game which went hours and
hours and hours. Can you walk us back through that?
Because I don't think this will ever happen again. You
can't have a 22-inning game. And certainly the odds of
having a 22-inning game and having one person call the game,
it's impossible. So to me, that's an unbreakable record that
you own, Ross. So congratulations on that.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Thank you, Ben. Let me explain that to you. The Dodgers,
this was August of 1989, and the Dodgers were about
to leave on a four-city road trip. They went to
San Francisco, then they went to Philadelphia, New York, and Montreal.
And Ben was with us on the first three cities.
(28:10):
Don Drysdale was with us all the way. And because
there were no telecasts going to be done in Montreal,
Then went home after the games, I think, in New York.
And Don and I went on to Montreal to do
three games on radio. And we did the first game.
We did the second game. And at the end of
(28:31):
the second game, Don got a call. And his wife, Annie,
was in labor with her second child. And so he said,
I got to go. I got to get to the
airport and go. So I'll see you tomorrow night at home.
So off he goes. Well, that leaves me with my wife, Lynn,
who was with me on the trip. And we go
(28:53):
into Olympic Stadium, and when we walk in the press box,
you've got the Spanish-speaking Dodger announcers to my right. We
have the French-speaking Montreal announcers to my left. We're in
the middle during the American-English broadcast. And so we start
the game, and it's nothing, nothing for seven minutes. pascal
(29:16):
perez uh against oral herschhauser and uh as we went
along lid wrote me a note said do you want
a coke and i said no i wouldn't have time
to get back from the restroom during the commercial so
the game the game goes on uh people later said
to me what would have happened if you got in
(29:37):
a short throat or you couldn't have continued i said,
then Lynn Porter would have made her major league debut
announcing that game in Montreal. Anyway, she's sitting in the
front row with me and she's reading a book on
the Lennon sisters. We knew one of the Lennon sisters, Kathy.
So she was really involved in this book. And it
(29:58):
went on, nothing, nothing, 12 innings, 14 innings, 16th inning,
Montreal got a man at third, Larry Walker won out,
fly ball to right, Mickey Hatcher catches it, Walker comes home,
they throw, too late, game over, Montreal wins, right? They're
jumping up and down celebrating. However, somebody on the Dodgers
(30:20):
dugout said, wait a minute, he left early. So they
throw the ball to third base. And Bob Davidson, the
umpire who didn't shy from publicity, if you remember, said, yeah,
he left early. He's out. No run. Game continues. They
went six more innings to the 22nd inning. No score.
(30:42):
Mike Sochi had started the game, but he got a
cramp in the eighth inning. He had to leave. So
Rick Dempsey came in to catch. Rick Dempsey comes to
the plate in the 22nd inning. He looks out on
the mound, and who's going to throw to him but
his former battery mate in Baltimore for 10 years, Dennis Martinez,
who at that time was something like 13-3. Dempsey hit
(31:05):
one home run all year. He hit a low-line drive
that just took off and went over the left field fence, upstairs,
home run. Dodgers lead 1-0. They get to the bottom
of the 22nd. Rex Utler gets a two-out single. He
had stolen about 40 bases this year. So they decided
he'd try to steal a second. And Dempsey threw him out.
(31:28):
And the game was over. Six hours, 14 minutes, 1-0 Dodgers.
And they looked it up and said, yep, that's the
record for one person doing a broadcast that long all
by himself. And gosh, man, look at that now. That's what,
37 years ago. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The thing that's most amazing to me is you remember
in the amount. Do you have a photographic memory, Russ?
You named all these players and these moments and a
game that was played in 1989.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
That is unbelievable that you remember all that.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
And I'll tell you something else. We then went to
the airport to fly back to L.A. And I didn't
have a sore throat. I never had a sore throat.
And so we fly back, and I think we stopped
in Kansas City for a refuel. And I had my
little radio with me, my little transistor. And on that flight,
(32:24):
they announced that Pete Rose had just been banned from baseball. Wow. Crazy.
That was the day. Yeah. That was the day. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
All right. So let's play. I'm going to play a
game here, Ross. Do you like it or do you not?
Speaker 1 (32:36):
There have been a lot of new rules in baseball
in the last handful of years or whatever from when
you were calling the games and when I was around
you and all that.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Let's see.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Do you like it? Do you not like it? The
one that annoys me, I don't know what you feel
about this, and it does relate to you because you're
going to have this record forever, the 22-inning game, but
the ghost runner rule, which was.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I hate that rule. I hate that. Okay. I hate that.
I think that's terrible.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
And, you know, the idea was to make baseball a
faster-moving game and get it over with. But I just
think there's a bonus. And I'm not real sure about
a pitcher, a relief pitcher, has to face three guys either.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, I know why they did it, because the pitching
changes were bad for the game, as far as the
product watching it. But I tend to agree. What about
the pitch clock, Ross? Baseball is a time sport now.
Your thoughts on the pitch clock?
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that has worked out better, Ben,
than I thought it would. You know, you'll see very
rarely the violation of that. But I think for the
most part, that's been okay. I don't know also about
the shift. What do you think about the shift?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I don't like the shift.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
To me, and you know this from all those years
being around baseball, there is a way to beat the shift.
If you bunt, you can do certain things. You should not...
have to have a rule that they have as far
as the ship because if you as a hitter you
should be able to adjust and that's the other thing
the players today i just will complain a little bit
(34:19):
why not uh what happened to choking up on the
bat and just putting the ball in play everyone's still
trying everyone's swinging from their heels ross and there's hardly
any there's like a handful of players in baseball that
kind of play the old school way and i know
things change things evolve but but to me, you should
be able to adjust a little bit. And, you know,
as you know, you.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
You were with Rick Monday a lot. He used to
talk about that.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
You got to choke up on the bat with two
strikes and that, that was the way the game was played,
but now they don't do that at all, which drives
me nuts.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Right. Well, you know what I do, Ben, if I
were a batter, I would month, month, the third base,
but you know, the difference is they don't want a single.
Too many of them are trying to hit the three-run homer,
like Earl Weaver wanted them to.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
What about the– we have replay now, Ross.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
We have the ABS challenge, which I also was– I
was like, replay, this is going to suck. It's actually–
it hasn't been that bad. It's pretty quick. I think
they should actually have more– give teams– I think they have–
each team has two options of that, the automated ball
strike thing.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Where are you at on the ABS system.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Ross Porter?
Speaker 3 (35:27):
I think it's okay. In fact, there was a big
story yesterday on the Internet about that, and it was interesting.
They put together all the numbers of not only the
teams and how they have fared when they've challenged, but
it also put together the catchers when they challenged, put
together the hitters when they challenged, and the one thing
(35:48):
that stuck out, the Dodgers were the ninth most successful
team of the 30th, when it came to challenging, the
Angels were 18th. But Cincinnati, it is. Cincinnati was number
one in all three categories, challenged by hitters, by pitchers,
(36:09):
and overall success. And they had it up, gosh, 87%
or something.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Terry Francona, the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, getting it
done there for sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Well, Ross, I thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
I love you. You've been very kind to me over
the years, and I'm so happy you're still working. How
does it feel? You're almost 88, right? You got a
birthday coming up here.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
I think? I'll be 88 in November.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Happy early birthday, if I don't talk to you before then.
And how's your health?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
You feeling good? You sound great.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
I'm feeling great.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
You sound like you did.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
When you were doing the Dodger game. You haven't changed
at all, Ross.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
You sound great. What's the secret to your success?
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Well, you know, I also was able to do season
of baseball, the home games for five years. And that was,
that was fun. But, uh, Yeah, no, it's still been
a labor of love. But, Ben, I'm really proud of
what you've done, and I congratulate you on your longevity
and being one of the successful stories when it comes
to talk radio.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Well, thank you, Ross.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I love you, man.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Be good, and hopefully we'll catch up.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I'm going to take you out to lunch.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
That's my goal, Ross. I'm going to take you out.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I don't know if you want to even eat lunch,
but I'm going to take you out to lunch one
of these days. But thank you, Ross.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Thanks a lot, Ben.
In the air everywhere the fifth hour with me ben
maller and a happy friday to you a very important
day in the history of america uh very important day
to remember and we're certainly new to that we're gonna
have some fun though as well on this fifth hour
(00:21):
podcast And I'll start with this. So it is September
11th as the podcast drops here early on a Friday.
And like everyone, I've got my own memories connected to
that day. If you were around then and as time
goes on, this is the 25th anniversary, I believe now
of 9-11. And so over the years, if you're younger,
(00:44):
you might have been so little you don't remember. And
this these things happen. I was actually at the World
Trade Center about two weeks before 9-11. I was there
in late August with my brothers on vacation to see— we
were there to visit my younger brother, who lives in
Wisconsin now. We were living in California. We flew out
(01:06):
to New York to visit with my older brother, who
lived in the city and still lives in the city.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
And I wanted to go to the World Trade Center,
and we went to the Statue of Liberty.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
We did all the tourist things, but one of the
things to do was to go to the observation deck
at the World Trade Center. So I had never been.
We went down to the World Trade Center. We went
into the lobby of the tower that had the observation deck.
And we ended up getting there kind of late in
the day. They were closing in about half an hour
(01:40):
and it was expensive. And even the security guard down
there in the lobby was like, listen, don't waste your money.
They're kicking everybody out right at five o'clock.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Or whatever it was. And so.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
We didn't go up.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Two weeks later, September 11th happened, and that was that.
But that morning, I was doing sports updates.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yes, I did sports updates from the Fox lot on
Pico in West L.A., working at Fox Sports Radio while
desperately trying to get a hold of my brother and
his pregnant wife at the time, that girl who was
still in the oven. is now out of college and
living her life in South Carolina.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
And so my mom was freaking out.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
She couldn't get a hold of them, and she was
watching the news, and that was a debacle.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
The news was terrible. Cell service wasn't working. Nobody knew
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
And we happened, as we said, we were at the
Fox lot, and we had access to the raw Fox
news feeds that on the satellite at the time. And
so we were seeing things that never made it onto
television and things you really didn't want to see images
that have stuck with me all these years later. And listen,
(03:05):
eventually some of that stuff got out, but my God.
And then a long time after nine 11, uh, W-E-E-I
brought me to Boston to audition for the morning show,
and they put me up in this crappy hotel near Harvard.
And it was kind of a rundown place that at
one point had been okay, but not very good.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
When I got to the radio station.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Jerry Callahan, who was one of the hosts, and I've
had Jerry on this podcast before, but Jerry, he's become
a political pundit now. Jerry asked me, just bringing small talk,
he's asking me where I was staying and where the
station put me up, and I told him the name
of the hotel, and I was like, whatever. And Jerry,
he got upset, and he says, you know, that's where
some of the 9-11 hijacking terrorists stayed the night before
(03:55):
the attacks. No, I thought originally, I thought, well, Jerry's
probably just making that up. That's probably not true. And
I did some research. We didn't have AI back then.
We had Google and other search engines. So I started
doing my research, and I discovered that not only was
this the same hotel, it was the same floor. My
(04:16):
room was on the same floor. And that shook me up. Like,
I didn't know what room they were in, but I
was in... Anyway, getting into the elevator after finding that out, realizing...
What had happened in the hotel was, you know, it
was a crap hole.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
I think they had.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Renovated it since 9-11. They probably hadn't renovated it since
the 90s. By the way, they have since renovated and
changed the name of the hotel. Last time I was
in Boston, I looked it up. So that was where
these guys were the night, their final night alive when
they decided to go out and kill a bunch of
people and, you know, destroy society for years. They went
(04:54):
out to Logan Airport. And put evil in the world.
But enough about that. Upward and onward. And I am
very excited to welcome back to this podcast somebody I
consider a friend.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, an actual friend.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
How cool is that? Ben, you have friends?
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Professional friend. Work friend.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Right?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Work friend.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
And a gentleman who was a mentor to me, a
major influence in my broadcasting career, the man, the myth,
the legend, Ross Porter. Now, Ross, if you don't know
his story, he started calling professional baseball at the age
of 14 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, small town, later worked at
NBC television alongside legendary broadcasters of that era, Tom Brokaw,
(05:48):
Tom Snyder, covered the NFL on network TV in the
early 1970s, broadcast the Rose Bowl, major golf tournaments, college basketball.
And then after being personally handpicked for the job by
the man himself, Ross spent 28 years alongside the great
(06:12):
Vin Scully on Dodger broadcast. And more importantly to me,
not to Ross, but more importantly to me, he was gracious.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Enough to be kind and let a young.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Gas bag named Ben Maller co-host Dodger Talk. And that
was way back in the late 1990s. He's 87 years young.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Ross is about to turn 88.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
And he still sounds to me like he could walk
into that Dodger Stadium press box. and call nine innings
while playing baseball trivia. The great Ross Porter is back
with us. Well, Ross, welcome. It's great to talk to you.
How have you been, Ross? How have you been? What
have you been up to?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Ben, thank you very much for having me on. It's
such a pleasure to be with you, and I really
want to congratulate you on, gosh, 25 years. That's amazing
what you've done. I think that you were probably the
first sports blogger, weren't you, of all time?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
I was one of the first. I was in early.
But I want to thank you too, Ross, because I've
had you on before.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But you put me and you had hosted Dodger Talk
by yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
For years and years and years.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
And then some corporate weasel said, hey, you got to
put Mallor on.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And you were very kind to me. You didn't have
to be that way.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
And I do appreciate it. I, of course, grew up
watching you on TV and all that and listening to
you call dodger games and then they they were like
hey you gotta put mallor on there but you couldn't
have been older and i i really do appreciate that
and i have so many fond memories of just watching
how you work the work ethic of of ross porter
(07:51):
and i think that's something that you know people 28
years with the dodgers who amazing all the other stuff
which we'll get to ross but the amount of work
you put in in the days where it wasn't easy.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I remember you going over to the.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Sports ticker to try to get the news. It was
not easy to get information as it is today with
the internet when you were doing most of your run
with the Dodgers and all that.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So I really do appreciate it. You showed me, hey, you.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Got to work hard. You were at the very top
of the broadcasting game doing Dodger games on the radio
and TV and all that with Vin. And yet, you
still were busting it. You were not cutting any corners.
And I appreciate you showing me how to work hard.
And I've tried to continue that as I've done my
run at.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Fox Sports Radio over the years.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
But have you.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Always had that?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Is that an Oklahoma thing, Ross, that work ethic?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, I started out, Ben, I think I was eight
years old when I decided I wanted to be a
sports announcer. And I got on the air because I
was on a small station in my hometown. I was
on at the age of 14 years old, which was unbelievable.
Can you imagine a 14-year-old getting on in Los Angeles
(09:04):
right now? No chance. Yeah. So it was interesting. I
lived across the street from the local sportscaster. And he
knew my interest. And at that time, of all things, Shawnee, Oklahoma,
my hometown, was the Class D farm club of the
Brooklyn Dodgers in the Class D Sooner State League. And
(09:28):
so he would say to me on occasion, hey, do
you want to go out to the ballpark with me tonight?
I said, sure. So we'd go out. And one night
in the middle of a commercial, he said to me,
how would you like to do some play-by-play? oh my
gosh 14 years old so i probably did a half
an inning and and it wasn't but a few months
later we were turning into doing high school football for
(09:51):
johnny and the station manager called me one thursday night
and said are you going to the game tomorrow i
said yeah he said well learn all you can because
the sports director just quit and next friday night you
got it all to yourself So two weeks before my
15th birthday, I did my first full play-by-play of a
(10:14):
high school football game. That got it started. And, you know,
I went on to the University of Oklahoma. I spent
some time on the student station. Then I got a
real good break when I got out of school. I
was employed by the radio and television stations in Oklahoma City.
at the number one station, which was WKY Radio and TV.
(10:37):
I did news for 40 hours a week for quite
a while, maybe six or eight months. They knew I'd
like to do sports, and eventually it got around to
where they let me do sports, and then I got
on television there to do sports on 10 o'clock news.
And I did that, I think, for, gosh, six years.
Got a chance to come to L.A. and sit on
(10:59):
an audition tape They approved it. They asked me to
come to L.A. They flew me out here and said,
we would like you to do the weekend sports. So
I did the weekend sports on Channel 4 for a
couple of years. And then my good friend, Rayford Johnson,
was there the night that Bobby Kennedy got shot. He
(11:21):
took the gun away from Sirhan Sirhan. And after that,
Rayford never came back to Channel 4. And I moved
up from the weekend to the 11 o'clock Monday through
Friday show with Tom Brokaw. And we were together about
four years. And then about a year into that, they said,
we'll put you on the six o'clock two with Tom Steiner.
(11:43):
So I had a good run there for 10 years.
And then, as I say, went to the Dodgers for 28. Yeah.
So it's been a long, long run.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Well, you've been great. And how was that first broadcast
as a young lad, what, 14 years old, Ross? Was
it good or was it just, hey, I'm on the air?
And do you recall, like, were you happy.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
With the way it went?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I think so. My guess is I probably said, it's
the third inning. The score is 4-2.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And there's also a famous Jim Thorpe connection, right? Am
I correct on that?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah. When I was about 12 years old, one night
my dad took me to a high school football game
in Israel. And we were walking up the steps to
our seats. And there was a guy sitting on the
end of the aisle with blankets wrapped all around him.
And Dad recognized him, and he stopped. He said, hey, Jim,
(12:42):
how are you? He said, Jim, I want you to
meet my son, Ross Jr. Ross is a Jim Thorpe. Wow.
And I shook his hand. And my dad wound up
being a pallbearer at his funeral, and he tried to
get the Jim Thorpe Museum in Shawnee. But the governor
of Oklahoma at the last minute vetoed a bill to
(13:04):
give him the money to do it. And so Thorpe's
wife at the time took him to Pennsylvania where they
had the museum and everything. But that was my encounter.
And then many, many years later, Ben, if you'll remember,
they decided to give Thorpe his medals back, which they
hadn't done in 1912 because they said he'd turned pro.
(13:27):
And so the governor of Oklahoma wrote me a letter
or called me and said, would you represent the state
the day they give Thorpe's family the medals back downtown?
And so I went down and did that. Nice.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
You also, we'll get back to the Dodgers, but you
called the UNLV games, I remember, and that was back
in the glory days of Jerry Tarkanian and the running.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
I mean, those teams, I go to Vegas. Actually, I
was just in Vegas. I did an event with listeners, Ross,
and I drove. There's a road named after Jerry Tarkanian. Yeah,
Vegas and it brought back the maze like I was
a kid growing up. I grew up in Orange County
and in Irvine. And I remember when UNLV came to
the the arena there. on Campus Arena, it was like
(14:17):
the Beatles. They were like– to a little kid like me,
it was like NBA guys. It was wild. What was
it like being around the legend Jerry Tarkin? And you called–
you owned a big game for a number of years, basketball,
I think football too, right?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
You did both, I think.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, I did a little football too later. I was
with him, I think, from– Gosh, I must have been
with them 15 years. And they went to three final
fours in a five-year span. And they won in 1990
in Denver. They beat Duke 102-72 or something like that
(14:56):
in the finals. But that was an unbelievably good college
basketball team. You know, it had Larry Johnson, Stacey Augman,
Greg Anthony, Anderson Hunt, David Butler. And they just blew
everybody away. And I'll tell you an interesting story about that, too, Ben.
They won that year in Denver. And the next year,
I think they were undefeated. And they went to Indianapolis.
(15:21):
And who were they going to play in the first
round but Denver? I mean, but Duke. And so we
went out the morning of the game to a high school,
and he had what they call a shoot-around, where you
take about 30 or 40 minutes to shoot free throws
and shoot layups, nothing very heavy. And I remember going
(15:41):
out with him on the bus, and he did this,
and then he blew the whistle after about 40 minutes,
and he called him into the midcourt area, and he
said to him, okay, you guys are going to lose tonight.
And everybody said, what? What? Come on. No, he said,
you don't respect Duke enough. You beat them badly last year.
(16:04):
You think you're going to make it easy. So just
go get on the bus.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
And Duke beat them that night by three points.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
What do you think Jerry Tarkanian would think about today, Ross?
With NIL, everything's out in the open. Players are getting
paid to play college sports. A lot of money. Guys
are making millions of dollars now to play college football now.
And some basketball players. And Jerry Tarkin was always fighting
the NCAA back in those days and all that. So
(16:33):
what do you think he would have thought? What do
you think of the times we're in now with the
NIL and all that?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Oh, I don't know how he would be able to
go exist right now the way it was going. And,
of course, I just think it's ridiculous, Ben, that some
of these players get six, seven, eight. Some guy in
Florida this year is getting his ninth year as a
college football player. I think it's ridiculous. And I also
(16:59):
think that, what do they call it, the portal?
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, transfer portal.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
They jump all over the world. And I don't understand
how that happens. A guy can go to three or
four colleges before he gets out.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, they get money.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
They keep changing schools.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
But you were– and I'm obviously younger than you, but
we were taught you've got to kind of be loyal
and stay and finish the job, right? I think today
it's just you go and get the money. And also,
I should point out the fun fact here, and I
love fun facts, Ross, that you are believed– I think
you are still the only person to call NCAA men's
basketball championship and a World Series championship, right, with your
(17:39):
UNLV connection and obviously with the Dodgers those years. when
they won back in the 80s, right? So there's a
little fun factoid About you, Ross. Now, as far as the–
I want to go back to baseball. We're talking with
the great Ross Porter, the legend. He's got a book,
by the way, a couple of books out. Ross, how
can people find– we're just going to scratch the surface
here in this conversation because the life and times of
(18:01):
my friend Ross Porter, who has seen and done just.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
About every cool thing you can.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Do in sportscasting with the Dodgers and UNLV and all
the other stuff that we'll– we probably won't get to
a lot of it. that he's done with the news
back in the glory days of local news when everyone
was watching to see what was going on in the world.
You have a website, Ross, right? RossPorterSports.com is the website.
(18:27):
And what can people find on that website?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Well, I'll tell you, over the years, Ben, I kept
audio interviews. And it just built up and built up.
And five years ago, I had, I think it was
220 interviews that I had done over a 15-year period.
(18:53):
And we changed homes and we moved from a larger
home to a smaller home. And whether or not it
had a room. And so we agreed, let's just throw
those tapes out. So one night I went out and
threw the tapes in the garbage can. Ironically, the next morning,
a guy called me from Nevada somewhere, and he said, Hey, Ross,
(19:19):
I have a radio website, and I used to live
in L.A., and I'm a big Dodger fan. would you
agree to do an interview with me on my website?
I said, sure, where do you want to do it?
He said, what are you doing right now? I said, well,
I can do it. Well, he interviewed me for, I think,
an hour and five minutes. And when it was over,
(19:40):
I said to him, it's interesting you called me because
of the lack of space in our new home. I
threw those tapes out last night. Ben, he screamed at
me as if I'd assaulted his wife. And he said,
you go out to that garbage can and you pull
all those tapes out and you send them to me.
(20:00):
I want to start a website for you. And so
I did. And we began at that time. We wound
up with two websites. We have the Ross Porter Sports
Facebook website. We have the Ross Porter Sports Videos website.
or slash YouTube website. And in fact, there's a third
(20:24):
one because you mentioned it, rossportersports.com. And so finally, about
a year or so ago, I said, you know what?
I think I'd like to try to make a book
out of this because I've got so many of these interviews.
So I started in doing it then, and I decided
for the first book, I would do all Dodgers. And
(20:46):
I took out 40 interviews of Dodger players, executives, anybody
associated with the Dodgers. I put it into a book
called The Ross Porter Chronicles, Volume 1, Dodgers. And I
did that one. And when I got through with that,
I said, you know, I've got a lot more that
(21:07):
I can do. I did 24 of them is what
I did. Okay. And so then I said, I'm going
to start a second book. So I started the second book,
and this one I put together people that were not
only Dodgers. There were a few Dodger players, but there
were other people who were involved in all kinds of sports.
(21:30):
I got George Foreman. I got Tom Brokaw. I got
President George H.W. Bush one day. Johnny Bench wrote the
foreword for me. Peter O'Malley had written the foreword for
the first book. So I put together at this time
40 of those. And they came out, oh gosh, 10
(21:52):
days ago, I guess. And it's about, I don't know,
289 pages of interviews. And I didn't have to do
anything but just put the interviews back to back to back.
with a lead into them. And so that's what I
got out there now. And I'm very proud of that.
I think that the second book is probably even better
(22:13):
than the first book, but you know, you can get
it at Ross Porter sports.com. All right.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So everyone pick up the book there and enjoy that. Now,
one of the things for those that, you know, I
think most people listening, remember you, but for some of
the younger people, right. That don't maybe remember Ross calling
the Dodger games. You were known as, as someone very
into statistics. And you were really ahead of your time, Russ.
I know I've told you this before, but because today
(22:40):
you watch a baseball broadcast and it's like, They've just
come up, since you stopped calling the Dodger games, they've
come up with like 8,000 new statistics for baseball.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
It's wild.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I don't know how often you watch the games anymore,
but when you do watch a baseball game or else,
what do you think as a guy that was very
into statistics.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
When you see the war and all this other stuff,
which they've come up with over the years, how do
you feel about all that stuff?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Well, I just kind of chuckled at myself and said,
you know, I really was. I'm kind of like Ben
Marler being one of the first bloggers. I think I
was one of the first statisticians to do it. And
my figuring was this, Ben. When I went to the
Dodgers in 1977, which was, by the way, the first
(23:30):
year Lasorda was the manager, I realized that there was
no way that I could have any kind of a
storytelling opportunity career because I had not had that much
experience with the baseball players on a daily basis. And
of course, Ned was the master of everything. So I said, well,
(23:50):
the only thing I can do is different is do
statistics on these guys. And so what I did was
I put together what I call the blue book. And
I started listing pitcher versus hitter stats and so on.
Like how's Pete Rose done against Don Sutton? And I
(24:11):
would keep that in the book. And then when they
would hook up, I would use that on the air.
And that got me started. And as you remember, Ben,
I took a lot of heat for that because they
said it's just statistics and nothing else. But I think
when you look at it, I appreciate you bringing it up.
I think in the long run, it worked out as
(24:32):
to I wasn't as crazy as everybody thought.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, as you said, you were ahead of your time.
I can't watch a baseball. I watch a lot of
baseball games, Ross, and it's graphics on the TV. It's
the announcers saying the stats and all that. And you
were that guy before these things were easily available back
in the days before the Internet really took off. I
(24:55):
also wanted to mention we lost Fernando Valenzuela a couple
years ago.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
You were there for Fernando Mania.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I maintain, Ross, here's my hot take, that there is
no single player.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
In the history of the L.A.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Dodgers more important for the growth of the fan base
than Fernando Valenzuela.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
We're still seeing it all these years later.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
What was it like being around Fernando when he hit
it and he took off and he was Mr. Everything
when he came to the Dodgers in.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
The early 80s? Well, you raise a very good point,
and I want to give you a statistic on that
that was given to me by Jaime Jorin, who, of course,
is a Hall of Fame Spanish Network broadcaster for the Dodgers,
and he went 64 years before he retired a couple
years ago. Ben went 67, which, when you think about it, Ben,
(25:46):
is just amazing. Anybody, any of them can go that long,
but they did. Jaime one day said to me, you know,
Before Fernando came to the Dodgers, our listed audience among
Latin fans was like 6%. And when Fernando had his
(26:07):
terrific year and then the years to follow, we suddenly
bolted to where we had 46% of the Latin audience
was our audience. And I thought that told it all. And,
you know, you probably remember this, you know, Fernando knew
more English than he let on. Jaime was his interpreter,
(26:29):
but he was a very quick learner. And finally, after
a few years, you know, he just started doing it
in English. Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I do remember that he did know he did know
a lot of English, but he liked to have the
interpreter and all that and whatnot. But his impact just
Just crazy for sure. We're talking with the great Ross
Porter here. And, Ross, I want to also mention you
have one of, I'm going to say right now, I'm
going to declare on the record right now, and I
think you know this because you used to talk about
(26:58):
this back in the day.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
We talked about it together many times.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
You have what I believe in the current state of
baseball is an unbreakable record.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
It's an obscure record, but it's an unbreakable record because.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Baseball added now in the last handful of years, extra
inning games.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
They have a ghost runner, which I hate, but you.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Call the game in Montreal against the old Expos there
back in the late 80s, and you did the entire broadcast.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You have a record for the longest.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
a one-man broadcast of a game which went hours and
hours and hours. Can you walk us back through that?
Because I don't think this will ever happen again. You
can't have a 22-inning game. And certainly the odds of
having a 22-inning game and having one person call the game,
it's impossible. So to me, that's an unbreakable record that
you own, Ross. So congratulations on that.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Thank you, Ben. Let me explain that to you. The Dodgers,
this was August of 1989, and the Dodgers were about
to leave on a four-city road trip. They went to
San Francisco, then they went to Philadelphia, New York, and Montreal.
And Ben was with us on the first three cities.
(28:10):
Don Drysdale was with us all the way. And because
there were no telecasts going to be done in Montreal,
Then went home after the games, I think, in New York.
And Don and I went on to Montreal to do
three games on radio. And we did the first game.
We did the second game. And at the end of
(28:31):
the second game, Don got a call. And his wife, Annie,
was in labor with her second child. And so he said,
I got to go. I got to get to the
airport and go. So I'll see you tomorrow night at home.
So off he goes. Well, that leaves me with my wife, Lynn,
who was with me on the trip. And we go
(28:53):
into Olympic Stadium, and when we walk in the press box,
you've got the Spanish-speaking Dodger announcers to my right. We
have the French-speaking Montreal announcers to my left. We're in
the middle during the American-English broadcast. And so we start
the game, and it's nothing, nothing for seven minutes. pascal
(29:16):
perez uh against oral herschhauser and uh as we went
along lid wrote me a note said do you want
a coke and i said no i wouldn't have time
to get back from the restroom during the commercial so
the game the game goes on uh people later said
to me what would have happened if you got in
(29:37):
a short throat or you couldn't have continued i said,
then Lynn Porter would have made her major league debut
announcing that game in Montreal. Anyway, she's sitting in the
front row with me and she's reading a book on
the Lennon sisters. We knew one of the Lennon sisters, Kathy.
So she was really involved in this book. And it
(29:58):
went on, nothing, nothing, 12 innings, 14 innings, 16th inning,
Montreal got a man at third, Larry Walker won out,
fly ball to right, Mickey Hatcher catches it, Walker comes home,
they throw, too late, game over, Montreal wins, right? They're
jumping up and down celebrating. However, somebody on the Dodgers
(30:20):
dugout said, wait a minute, he left early. So they
throw the ball to third base. And Bob Davidson, the
umpire who didn't shy from publicity, if you remember, said, yeah,
he left early. He's out. No run. Game continues. They
went six more innings to the 22nd inning. No score.
(30:42):
Mike Sochi had started the game, but he got a
cramp in the eighth inning. He had to leave. So
Rick Dempsey came in to catch. Rick Dempsey comes to
the plate in the 22nd inning. He looks out on
the mound, and who's going to throw to him but
his former battery mate in Baltimore for 10 years, Dennis Martinez,
who at that time was something like 13-3. Dempsey hit
(31:05):
one home run all year. He hit a low-line drive
that just took off and went over the left field fence, upstairs,
home run. Dodgers lead 1-0. They get to the bottom
of the 22nd. Rex Utler gets a two-out single. He
had stolen about 40 bases this year. So they decided
he'd try to steal a second. And Dempsey threw him out.
(31:28):
And the game was over. Six hours, 14 minutes, 1-0 Dodgers.
And they looked it up and said, yep, that's the
record for one person doing a broadcast that long all
by himself. And gosh, man, look at that now. That's what,
37 years ago. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The thing that's most amazing to me is you remember
in the amount. Do you have a photographic memory, Russ?
You named all these players and these moments and a
game that was played in 1989.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
That is unbelievable that you remember all that.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
And I'll tell you something else. We then went to
the airport to fly back to L.A. And I didn't
have a sore throat. I never had a sore throat.
And so we fly back, and I think we stopped
in Kansas City for a refuel. And I had my
little radio with me, my little transistor. And on that flight,
(32:24):
they announced that Pete Rose had just been banned from baseball. Wow. Crazy.
That was the day. Yeah. That was the day. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
All right. So let's play. I'm going to play a
game here, Ross. Do you like it or do you not?
Speaker 1 (32:36):
There have been a lot of new rules in baseball
in the last handful of years or whatever from when
you were calling the games and when I was around
you and all that.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Let's see.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Do you like it? Do you not like it? The
one that annoys me, I don't know what you feel
about this, and it does relate to you because you're
going to have this record forever, the 22-inning game, but
the ghost runner rule, which was.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I hate that rule. I hate that. Okay. I hate that.
I think that's terrible.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
And, you know, the idea was to make baseball a
faster-moving game and get it over with. But I just
think there's a bonus. And I'm not real sure about
a pitcher, a relief pitcher, has to face three guys either.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, I know why they did it, because the pitching
changes were bad for the game, as far as the
product watching it. But I tend to agree. What about
the pitch clock, Ross? Baseball is a time sport now.
Your thoughts on the pitch clock?
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that has worked out better, Ben,
than I thought it would. You know, you'll see very
rarely the violation of that. But I think for the
most part, that's been okay. I don't know also about
the shift. What do you think about the shift?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I don't like the shift.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
To me, and you know this from all those years
being around baseball, there is a way to beat the shift.
If you bunt, you can do certain things. You should not...
have to have a rule that they have as far
as the ship because if you as a hitter you
should be able to adjust and that's the other thing
the players today i just will complain a little bit
(34:19):
why not uh what happened to choking up on the
bat and just putting the ball in play everyone's still
trying everyone's swinging from their heels ross and there's hardly
any there's like a handful of players in baseball that
kind of play the old school way and i know
things change things evolve but but to me, you should
be able to adjust a little bit. And, you know,
as you know, you.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
You were with Rick Monday a lot. He used to
talk about that.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
You got to choke up on the bat with two
strikes and that, that was the way the game was played,
but now they don't do that at all, which drives
me nuts.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Right. Well, you know what I do, Ben, if I
were a batter, I would month, month, the third base,
but you know, the difference is they don't want a single.
Too many of them are trying to hit the three-run homer,
like Earl Weaver wanted them to.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
What about the– we have replay now, Ross.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
We have the ABS challenge, which I also was– I
was like, replay, this is going to suck. It's actually–
it hasn't been that bad. It's pretty quick. I think
they should actually have more– give teams– I think they have–
each team has two options of that, the automated ball
strike thing.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Where are you at on the ABS system.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Ross Porter?
Speaker 3 (35:27):
I think it's okay. In fact, there was a big
story yesterday on the Internet about that, and it was interesting.
They put together all the numbers of not only the
teams and how they have fared when they've challenged, but
it also put together the catchers when they challenged, put
together the hitters when they challenged, and the one thing
(35:48):
that stuck out, the Dodgers were the ninth most successful
team of the 30th, when it came to challenging, the
Angels were 18th. But Cincinnati, it is. Cincinnati was number
one in all three categories, challenged by hitters, by pitchers,
(36:09):
and overall success. And they had it up, gosh, 87%
or something.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Terry Francona, the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, getting it
done there for sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Well, Ross, I thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
I love you. You've been very kind to me over
the years, and I'm so happy you're still working. How
does it feel? You're almost 88, right? You got a
birthday coming up here.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
I think? I'll be 88 in November.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Happy early birthday, if I don't talk to you before then.
And how's your health?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
You feeling good? You sound great.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
I'm feeling great.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
You sound like you did.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
When you were doing the Dodger game. You haven't changed
at all, Ross.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
You sound great. What's the secret to your success?
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Well, you know, I also was able to do season
of baseball, the home games for five years. And that was,
that was fun. But, uh, Yeah, no, it's still been
a labor of love. But, Ben, I'm really proud of
what you've done, and I congratulate you on your longevity
and being one of the successful stories when it comes
to talk radio.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Well, thank you, Ross.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I love you, man.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Be good, and hopefully we'll catch up.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I'm going to take you out to lunch.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
That's my goal, Ross. I'm going to take you out.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I don't know if you want to even eat lunch,
but I'm going to take you out to lunch one
of these days. But thank you, Ross.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Thanks a lot, Ben.
Host
Ben Maller
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