October 15, 2021 • 57 mins
Jerome Jurenovich spent 40 years as a broadcaster for CNN Headline Sports, Fox Sports Radio, and the past 15 years working on the Atlanta Braves and Hawks TV broadcasts. Ben and Jerome catch up on the old days at FSR, the difference between TV and radio, and tell several humdinger stories about the broadcasting business. Everything from Rams owner Stan Kroenke to Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, minutes a week
was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants of
the old republic, a sole fashion of fairness. He treats
crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich
pill poppers in the penthouse, the clearing House of Hot
takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with
(00:23):
Ben Maller starts right now in the air everywhere, back
at it on a Friday, a mead October, the middle
of October. Here we are back in the magic podcast machine,
the salt mine of podcasting, and it is our Friday show.
We do this because four hours a night have been
(00:46):
deemed not enough according to the management of the company
that I work for, Fox Sports Radio. And so we
we say, you know what, Let's do this eight days
a week. We do the radio show five days. Let's
do the podcast. We can curse, we can scream, we
can shout on this podcast. And so a spinoff of
the Overnight Show. We thank you for finding the podcast.
(01:07):
Tell a friend, Tell a friend. We need to grow
the podcast audience. And as I like to say, if
everyone listening, if you listening right now, tell a co
worker or a relative and they listen, we have instantly
doubled our market share in the podcast world. But enough
(01:27):
of that. This weekend. Very excited here on a Friday
to catch up with a friend of mine by request. Now,
I've known this guy for many years, but I didn't
work with them, and we've had several listeners who have said, Hey,
you've gotta you gotta get this guy, and I want
to hear what he's up to. H I'm talking about
(01:47):
Jerome or seeing that headline sports, that's that's the legend.
Jerome Daranovitch, who has worked for the Atlanta Braves and
the the Atlanta Hawks as well over the last fifteen years.
She just retired. It doesn't seem like you should have retired.
He's a young young guy in my eyes. But he
(02:09):
has retired now and he worked in Denver and he's
been all over the place. But you hear him talk.
He is Western Pennsylvania through and through and he worked
at Fox Sports Radio briefly. And so we are excited
to go and the way Back Machine, a beloved broadcaster
and a person that went out a few times, had
(02:30):
some drinks with good times, good memories back in the day.
And Jerome, why don't we start. You were at Fox
Sports Radio, part of the Alumni Association. Are your dudes
paid up? You know I have not paid up to
do this, but don't tell anybody. I think I just
left the cat out of the bag. But maybe our
good friend Art Martinez will cover for me the next
time the dudes are do Yeah, yeah, Well, Already is
(02:51):
an active member of the Alumni Association that I see
already once here Now for those that you know behind
the scenes inside radio, Jerome the great Art Martine Nuez,
a rock on the board, one of the great engineers.
And really I've had a lot of board ops and
engineers over these but Art Martinez in all time greade
and you better not mess with the raiders or Already
(03:12):
is gonna bring it down there a legend and I come,
but I invite Art to my I do a Christmas
party like a holiday sweater party thing every year, and
Already shows up. I didn't do it last year because
of that whole COVID thing, but Already shows up, and
he's always the first person there, and Jerome he's the
last person to leave. Every year I've had this, Art
(03:32):
Martinez stays until the very I gotta kick him out
of my house. There's no shock or surprised by coming
first and staying till the end. Let's just hope that
he doesn't go trick or treating as Jon Gruden. I
know he's a big great I think he's gonna have
to put that. Yes, hopefully he didn't send any emails
(03:53):
to John Gruden that might come back and get him here.
And now, you weren't at Fox Sports Radio all that long,
but you're you're an East Coast guy living in Los Angeles,
Rome at the time. That's a that's an eye opening experience.
I don't you've traveled around. You're a worldly man, you're
a globe trekker and all that from your years in
(04:13):
the media. But living in the belly of the beast
in l a good, bad, ugly I still miss it
to this day. I moved out of there in two
thousand and four, and my wife is tired of hearing this.
I still talk about moving back to California. I the
(04:35):
first three months were difficult transition for me. It took
about three weeks just to get settled into that three
hour time difference. I kept waking waking up at four am.
He was driving me crazy. But once I learned my
way around and just got a little foothold into Los Angeles,
I absolutely loved it, especially on college football Saturdays, nine
(04:58):
am kick off and you're not You're going to bed
five games later before you go to it was I
just loved Lost. I loved the weather, I love the energy.
Hated the traffic, but Atlanta has the second horse traffics
in America behind l A, so I was used to
being in terrible traffic. I loved everything about it. Now
that was a long long time ago, since I left
a long time ago, so I'm sure things have changed dramatically.
(05:22):
I know the fires are just horrible out there, but
I just I loved Ela. I just loved every minute
of it. I had lived previously in New York City,
and I'm hold enough to grow up on Johnny Carson
when he would have celebrity guests, and if they were
New Yorkers, they would complain about l A. If they
were West Coast people, they would complain about New York.
The whole l A New York rivalry. Never understood what
(05:43):
they were talking about. Because I was a kid, having
lived in both, I am sold on Los Angeles and
a heart people, a chamber of commerce. Now you're right,
l A has changed a lot room they've the city
has gone down. Now. One thing that has not changed, though,
And I actually have some good news for you. And
I know I haven't talked to you in a while,
but the same exact equipment that you used back in
(06:05):
the day at Fox Sports Radio at the premier networks
has not either been fixed or upgraded. It is like
a time capsule saved posterity sake. And I've been working
from home a lot to Rome, but I actually went
in this week. I was at the the Dodger Games
the other night and so I went in there and
it is unreal. Nothing has been touched you this, I'm
(06:29):
not exaggeratingbody with the same exact setup. So you could
if you decide to unretired Jerome and come back to
Fox Sports Radio and you know, take the family out
the Cali, pack up the dogs in the station wagon,
the wife, the whole thing. You would then be able
to be very comfortable in our old old building because
it's still exactly the same. You'll be happy that so
(06:49):
that coffee staying on the rug left there by John
Ireland in two thousand and three remains, is what you're telling. Yes,
that is an There's a Tony Bruno. I think one
time he he put some bubblegum down on the floor there,
and that's still still there under the table of Pat O'Brien,
who hasn't worked there in years. P o b he
actually taped for some reason, Pat taped the dollar bill
(07:12):
to the table in there, and that remnants of that
dollar bill are still taped to the to the main
studio table. So it is there's a lot of history
in that building to room at Legends like yourself worked there,
and they don't they don't want to change anything. Anyway.
We mentioned already Eric Peterson are great producer friend, he
also worked. I mean, so there's legends in that building.
(07:34):
Jerome legends, legends, some of us not so much, but
you know, Pat O'Brien, Tony Bruno, and the guys absolutely,
My buddy Chris Rose, no question. So I was talking
to another member of the Fox Sports Radio Alumni Association
who I occasionally talked to, Tom Looney, and I said, Tom,
what's Jerome dorenovis? You know he's I don't have Jeroman
(07:56):
and he's got any Jerome stories. He said, Now I
thought he was pulling chain here. He says, you gotta
you gotta ask him about the flowers, is what Looney said.
So do you know, I mean, are you there was
a flowers This is a cord of loony. I he said,
he was not pulling my chain here, Jerome. He said,
there's a legendary Jerome Drenovich flowers story from your days
(08:18):
at Fox Sports Radio. Is this true? Or is Looney?
I don't I don't know. I don't know if flowers
doing Now I'm old Ben. Yeah, so I don't get
flowers story. I don't know what flowers. Yeah. He he
had claimed there was an incident somebody was ordering flowers
and you were asking questions about it, and then, uh,
you don't. You don't recall it. So so that might
(08:39):
have been a Looney That might have been a Looney
story that just got on the podcast. That was an
incorrect story. Either that or he remembers it and you
don't remember it was such and it was an unmemorable
experience for you. Well, you know what, if Looney says
it happened, I'm going with Looney's side of the story.
So even if it makes me look terrific. I'm going
(09:01):
with Looney, but he's not loved LOONI, but he's Looney. He's,
I mean, the guy his names says, how can you?
He's the funny thing about Looney now he's he's like
a hard news guy. He does news now at k ABC,
one of the news talk stations in l A. And
it's great and I hear him sometimes and it's it's
tremendous because you know, you think like you're the news guy,
(09:22):
you gotta be all serious and all that him. But
he's his name is Looney. Now you'd be when your
name is Looney, you can't be the serious news guy,
right crazy he is Loonie, m j T legends, legend. Yeah, absolutely,
part of part of that time. So now when you left,
didn't you go to Denver before you went to Atlanta?
(09:43):
Am I right on that? Or am I imagining that
in my head? No? You are correct. I left Fox
Sports Radio in Los Angeles and went to Denver to
launch the Altitude Sports Network. Stand Cockey decided he as
legendary as you people in l A know, as the
owner of not just the Rams, but of about nineteen
(10:04):
thousand different sports teams, including the Denver Nuggets in Colorado Avalanche,
and he owned the Pepsi Center at the time and
decided that he wanted to UM owned the rights to
the broadcasts of his two teams there, so he started
his own Cave regional network and I was hired over
there to be the main host as they launched that.
(10:27):
And let me tell you then, boy, I first of
all love stand I'd work for stand Mar. He was
great After Nuggets gains. The bar inside the then Pepsi Center,
I don't know what it's called now, UM called the
Blue Sky Girl. He'd come down and me and three
or four got we'd be sitting at the bar having
drains after the game and just talking to him like
a casual fan. What a great owner. You would never
(10:49):
realize he's one of the wealthiest men in the world.
He was just he was just a great guy. It
still is. I'm sure he was great to work for UM. Now,
the people that ran Altitude, I can tell you stories
all my goodness. UM. When they flew me up there
for the interview, we were in the same building as
the Hallmark Channel, so they walked me through the Hallmark
Channel and kind of a link in a NOD We're
(11:10):
leading me to believe that that was their production set
up when it wasn't. So when we launched Altitude, thankfully
that was the year that the NHL had a lock out,
because we would not have been prepared to be able
to broadcast Nuggets and Avalanche games at the same time.
We were so understaffed and under equipped. I was hosting
the Nuggets pregame, post game and halftime without an analyst
(11:34):
and without a desk, and with no highlights. I will
stand out there and just talk for thirty minutes all
by myself. And we had literally had one video tape deck.
So in television to edit, you have to have one
deck to play the tape and then edit on the
other one. We only had one only to record. So
they would send us the highlights from the Nuggets game
(11:55):
from the truck and we would use that in the
postgame show, but we wouldn't have any highlights from many
other games and I'm just out there talking for thirty minutes.
So thank god I came from those four years in
radio because it was just unbelievable. We had we had
a couple of people there that were in management positions
that had no business even working in television, little management.
It was a complete nightmare. It was fun, made some
(12:17):
good fact friendships over those two years. The teams were
great to deal with, the first class. Uh, The Avalanche
and the Nuggets were both first class to deal with.
The players were great, the organizations were great. Kike Vanderway
was running the Nuggets at the time, Pierre Laqua was
running the Apps. They were It was fantastic to deal with.
They were both good teams. It was Carmelo's second and
third season, so they were playoff teams those two years.
(12:40):
And the Apps were still had Rob Blake and Joe Sakic.
They still had a good handful of guys from the
Stanley Cup run. So they were exciting teams. But it
was just a not a good position to be in
if you wanted to work in sports TV at the time.
And then so after two years, my first contract was
(13:00):
I got out of Dodge as fast as you could
and took the job. I just retired from a couple
of weeks ago. Yeah, So if you had known at
the time that it's like looking at a hotel you
want to stay out online, they show you all the
nice rooms and then your your rooms are in the
back on the on the other side of the tracks.
That's uh, that's essentially so, I wanna give me a
(13:21):
stand cronkey store. So I've seen standing at these ram
games if a few times I've been to Sofi Stadium,
I saw him at the college see him. Actually more
like everyone's kind of segregated at the Sofi Stadium in Inglewood.
The media's kind of separated from the rich people and
all that stuff. But but stand, isn't he the I
think I read he's the largest landowner outside of the
(13:43):
United States government, that he owns more land than anyone
else in the United States, which is amazing to me.
That you like parts of Texas, New Mexico all over
the place, he's uh, he's got you know, that would
not surprise me because I know and and I under standard.
Although Ted Turner's health is not what it used to be,
but he is also one of these massive landowners. They
(14:06):
brought up massive amounts of land in Montana and New
Mexico and out west. You know, most of it's an
inhabited but uh, you know it's look, as my late
Ultle used to say, God ain't building anymore land he's
gonna want to get on that land eventually. And you know,
I mean, what else you gonna do when you got
that many We were talking billions. When you got that
(14:28):
kind of money, I mean, you know, what are you
gonna do? So I mean, yeah, well, you know, staying
well to give you my one stand story that I
really like the most. Okay, so I get there. Um,
Andre Miller is the point guard. They got Carmelo Marcus
Camby is our center. Um, we had a nice little
(14:49):
team there, you know, playoff team. Kenyan Martin was our
power forward and he used to drive me nuts because
you know, we basically got five arrow bread's out there
on the court and Andre Miller's walking the ball up
the court you want to It was like he was
allergic to a fast break. And I'm sitting there going,
(15:09):
what are you doing? So We're in the bar one
day after a game, and they had one day one
more often then they lost, and then I'm sitting I
go stand. You know, he's got his entourage with him.
We're sitting there and I go, stand, you gotta get
rid of Andre Miller And he goes thrown. He's a
good basketball player, very good. I said stand. I'm not
saying he's not a good basketball player. He is a
good basketball player, no question about it. I said, he's
(15:31):
a great half court point guard. I said, but you
got Gazelle's out there and this guy's walking the ball
up the court. Can you imagine if Magic Johnson walked
the ball up the court, we'd never have showtime. He's
got you gotta push it. You don't got Kevin mckill
and a bunch of cloggers out there. You've got guys
that can run when we on, When we run, we
(15:53):
run teams out of the gym, especially here at home
with this altitude. I said, but he doesn't want to
push it. He doesn't want to push it. And then
next thing you know, they George carl in there and
then they just start running the ball. And I'm sitting
there going singing. Come on, man, you don't have to
be there in realize Andre Miller is not your point.
But he was. He was very open to having those
kind of discussions and just sit there and have a
bever with you and talk basketball. He loves sports, There's
(16:15):
no question. Man loves sports. Yeah that's cool, that's pretty
pretty neat. And the the altitude droome. Now you having
lived all over the country, Pennsylvania, guy in New York, Atlanta,
l A. It is it legit? Though? In Denver? Is
it is? It? Is it an? Is it reality? No? No,
it's there's no question that, Bob. Is you? So I
(16:36):
am there, I'm there. I get there on a Monday
that Thursday, air Force is hosting Navy on Thursday college
football Thursday night. Came and a couple of guys we
we didn't even launched it. We're not launching until the
next Monday. So a couple of guys go, hey, you know,
I said, heybody, can we get to this Air Force
Navy game? I'd love to go down to the Academy
and see it. And guys are going, yeah, no problems.
(16:57):
So they called. We go down and we get tickets.
And if you've ever been to the Air Force Academy,
beautiful facility. By the way, when you walk in, you
basically walk in on field level. When the fields a
little sunk. You're walking on field level and you gotta
walk up to your seat. And we're walking, you know,
we had a couple of a couple of cold ones
in the parking lot, but nothing out of control and
(17:19):
I'm I'm walking and I'm like, oh my goodness. I
know it's been a couple of months because of the
move where I haven't worked out or anything, but I'm
I'm like gasping for breath and these people are looking
at me like what is wrong with you? And when
we finally got to our seat, because we are about
three quarters of the way up the stadium, up right
by the press box, I'm like, guys, I don't know
what's going on here, and they're like laughing at me.
(17:40):
It was the altitude. It was the altitude, no question.
If if you're not used to it, I don't know
how these teams fly in, run up and down that
court like that, and then fly back. And there's no
question you would see it effect teams, especially like late
in the third quarter or the fourth. A lot of
teams like to come in, like on a Tuesday night
to play a Thursday game, just to get an extra
(18:01):
day in there. But you come in especially, you come
in a lot of these teams arrived one in the morning,
you know, and they get into their hotel room to
three in the morning. They have a rough night, no question. Yeah, yeah,
well you would think the teams in Denver would take you.
You said, Andre Miller walking the ball up the court.
But that's yeah. And so then you go to Atlanta
(18:22):
and you're happy not to Jerome. You know this podcast
and the radio show. Now I do these Friday conversations,
you know, with random people like yourself, important people like yourself.
And I've had several people in Georgia, but not just Georgia,
like all over the South because of the reach of
the channel you were on there, like you gotta get
Jerome on you. You claim you know Jerome durnomous. People
(18:45):
are doubting that I know you. And so you have.
You have a bunch of fans there from your days
with the Braves and the Hawks, and which just ended.
When was your last day on television? I know you
worked this season for the Braves, right when when did
that end? My last day was the day they clinched
the East. It was the third and final game of
the Phillies series, in that final homestand and it was
(19:09):
fifteen years here with the Braves and the Hawks. And
you know, Ben, I'll tell you a funny story. So
I come from Denver, where the Abs are good, where
the Nuggets are good. And I had lived in Atlanta
previous years, so we're seeing in fourteen and a half years.
So I go from CNN in Atlanta to l A
with you guys, and I'm in Denver and then come
back here as I'm as I'm moving back here, I'm
(19:30):
going through a divorce. My wife ex wife stays in Denver.
So I'm going through a divorce and it's very amicable.
She's great, we're still good friends. It just didn't work out.
One of those things. God bless hers. So but legally,
you gotta go to court, you do this stuff, right.
So she's still in Denver. She goes just go you know,
we're not contesting anything. It's just a matter of legality, formality.
So I go to the courtroom, you know, and there's
(19:52):
all these couples in they're going through all this divorce court,
you know, and there he said, she said, they're crying,
they're fighting whatever. And then the judge calls me up
there and asked where the wife is and I explained.
He goes, okay, and he goes, why I've got questions
for And I go all right, and he goes, my
first question is what do you do for a living
and I tell him and he goes, and what brought
you here to Atlanta? I said, well, I said, they're
(20:12):
starting the pregame and post game for the Atlanta Hawks,
the Atlanta Thrashers, and the the Atlanta Braves. And he goes,
what were you doing before? I said that same thing,
but for the Denver Nuggets in the Colorado Avalanche. And
he goes, the Nuggets in the Avalanche or playoff teams?
Aren't they? I said, yeah, they're very good. And he
goes and the Hawks and Braves are last place teams,
aren't they? Yes they are. He goes, what are you doing? Laugh?
(20:37):
I said, it doesn't matter how good are bad the
teams are, it's how big the paycheck is. He goes, okay,
not just busting my jobs in front of a court
roof full of people that are all everybody. I guess
that they made everybody laugh because they were all hollow
after they were crying and arguing. All that that is.
It reminds me I had a conversation, you know, Ralph Lawler,
the voice of the Clippers, where he just retired a
(20:59):
few years ago, and and I remember we were having
a conversation and the Clippers were just morbid for most
of Ralph's time. They only became good the last like
ten years or so. But he was there and they
were the worst of the worst, and and he said
pretty much the same things. And I was like, you
get paid, it's a good job, and whether the team
wins or not, it's it's it's an interesting dynamic. Now
(21:24):
you can answer this question, Jerome, though, having had mostly TV,
I think of you as a TV guy. But you
worked at Fox Sports, right, I think you did work
in radio early on in your career. So what is
the harder media platform if you're walking in to do
television or to do radio. Wow, that's a good question. Ben.
(21:45):
I will say this because I had worked in television
my whole life. Every job I had in TV, you know,
I kind of started behind the scenes, and I knew
I wanted to be in front of the camera. So
you know, when I wasn't actually working, maybe on my
dinner hour, coming in on a day off, I would
I would work toward the eventual position of a reporter
(22:05):
on camera person. So I got practice time on my own.
So I built my way towards that. Radio. I was
kind of just thrown into this mix. After working in
television for well over twenty years, I go out to
Fox Sports Radio. I had never done radio before. What
a I opening, and just it blew me away. I'll
(22:27):
be honest with that. Those I mean, I was doing
the updates for a while, but when they put me
on and made me do the Baseball show and the
NFL Show on Saturday and Sunday, I didn't know what
I was doing. And then, you know, after four years
of I learned what you're supposed to do. And then actually,
when I moved back here a couple of years ago,
CBS Radio started a a all sports talk station, and
(22:48):
I allowed with Jamie Dukes, who was on NFL Network,
long time NFL player. We had a show. We had
a blast, But I knew what I was doing when
I got on radio here in Atlanta. I didn't have
a clue what I was doing in l A. And
there is a big, big difference. Now. I would not
be able to do the show I did in Denver
or the show I did here with the Hawks and Braves.
(23:08):
These pre and postgame shows, they're basically radio on TV.
I mean, you're just talking, You're spewing facts, you're spewing knowledge.
You're you know, it's just your knowledge of the individual
players on the team that you cover how the team
is sparing. And it's basically sports talk radio on TV
as opposed to doing a three minute you know, Channel two,
you know at six o'clock that's all written out. You know.
(23:32):
I didn't use the prompter for fifteen years here because
everything was off the cuff, and that was basically what
I learned in radio. Radio was more challenging for me,
There's no question. It seems like it would be easier,
but it was. No I'll tell you. It was more
challenging for me because I didn't have a clue what
I was doing. Man. I leaned on guys like you
and watching you and j T two break and and
(23:53):
just marveling at how John Ireland could talk for twenty
five minutes NonStop and entertain you and uh, listening to
Bruno and Siciliano in the morning. That was good stuff.
That was That was an eye opening experience, wealth and
knowledge coming out of these guys. For me, yeah, it
is much. It's much of an and like I have
the complete opposite career drum I did television for I
(24:14):
think it was nine months at NBC. They flew me
back every month to do stuff at the NBC Sports Network,
which I think has gone away. I think or it
is going away. I don't even want I haven't kept
tracked there. So I just had a little taste of it,
and I thought like because I was just a correspondent,
they brought in to give some hot takes, so I
was only on for a segment here, like a segment there.
(24:36):
And so for me, I was like, this is great
because the radio show I do four hours a night
on the overnight and it's a much different, much different animal.
And the thing though, I will give you credit, I
mean when you're doing television, I mean there's so many
producers and directors and people around. As you know, in radio,
there's not a lot of people around. It's it's pretty
much you know, you and a couple of people and
(24:58):
you got to figure it out. In television, I feel
like it's they direct you more on what they're looking for.
You know. Radio radio, you definitely have more control of
the show. It's the Ben Mallor show. It is your show,
and you know when you want to go to callers
or you want to stay on a specific topic. You
can stay on that topic for ten fifteen minutes if
you want. And in television, you know, we've got to
(25:21):
move off of the fact that the bullpen stinks after
a minute or two, or the bullpens do be great.
You know, I've gotta switch over to whatever is coming
up next. And they want to get their video in
and their graphics in, and yeah, they're moving you along.
And there's sometimes uh, sometimes they're not listening to you
and you want to move law it. There are a
lot of moving parts in television. There is no there
(25:42):
there is. There's a big difference between the two and
you know, and they both have their pluses and minuses,
which is why they worked so well. Hand in hand.
You can get much more for what you're specifically looking
for over here in radio and as opposed to getting
a whole mishmash of a little bit of everything on TV. Yeah,
so there's I'm sure there's someone steam Droome. Maybe only
one person that wants to be the next Jerome Jerenovitch,
(26:04):
wants to follow in your footsteps and be the next
you know, down the line host of the Braves and
the Hawks pre and postgame and halftime and all that stuff.
So what is the cheat code? Now that you're retired,
you can share this information, Jerome, you can give this out,
like what is the secret to doing good television? You know,
the secret to doing good television is, first of all,
(26:27):
you have to be informed, man, I mean you have
to pay attention. I can't tell you how many people
have come up with me the last fifteen years because
our our set, which is now bally Sport was Fox
Sports South is outside the stadium, and um, you would
not believe how many people, Hey, my son's in college,
my daughter's in college, or hey I want to be
(26:47):
on TV. And it's like, look, not only do you
got to you know, pay your dues. It's rare when
you're just thrown onto a situation where're gonna work for
an NBA or an NHL or Major League baseball team
without any type of experience. You have to know and
love the sport, all right. You know, we had a girl,
not gonna give her a name, and we had a girl,
you know, a couple of years ago and we all
(27:08):
now it's out. You'd like to say that Hank Aaron
is the true home run. That's that's how that's our
way of seeing Barry Bonds cheated. And that's our way
of saying, Hank, we love you and we know you
did it the right way. And this girl, actually she
heard it so many times she actually thought Hank is
the was the leader, all time leader. At home runs
were like, uh no, and you're working for the brains
(27:29):
to come on, you know. I mean, so you have
to know, you have to know the strategies of the sport,
and you have to really work. I mean, there there's
no substitute for hard work. Um. You see, every time
you turn on a college football game, you're gonna see
another different, pretty blonde girl on the sidelines. But if
they don't have personality along with intelligence, you're not going
(27:49):
to see him more than two or three times. You
have to be able to convey what you know, either
in a cocite in a concise way or an entertaining way,
and hopefully in both. And that's why you're so successful
what you do, because you could you can take a
position on a subject, you can inform your viewer and
you can get them to either change their mind or
(28:11):
at least see your point of view why they're right
or why they're wrong. And you can't do that if
you don't know what you're talking about. Well, yeah, that's
a great advice. And also we see that a lot
with you mentioned the sideline reporter, but also like former
players a lot of times, you know, and you worked
with a lot of guys, and so I'm sure we're good.
So we're not, but but some of those guys come in.
In my experience, I didn't work with as many ex
(28:31):
athletes as you did. But over the years at Fox
Sports Radio, we've had guys come in and some of
the guys would come in and just think because they
played in the NFL, they just turn on the mic
and they can just talk, and it's it's not how
that works, right, I mean, you gotta, you gotta. I
worked with sixteen different Braves as analysts on the pre
and postgame show, everybody from John Smoltz and and Jeff Francoeur,
(28:55):
who are both tremendous at what they do. I'll tell
you a funny story. Uh been my first or second
year here when I came back to Atlanta, I'm doing
Braves and we were still doing the pregame show on
the field right in front of the dugout and small
it was small to his last year with the Braves. Well,
he blows out his shoulder and uh, he's not gonna
(29:17):
pitch for the rest of the season. But you know,
as a lot of the guys do, they they still
dressed in uniform and he's hanging out in the dugout.
On Sundays he would come out and host co host
the show with me and either Ron gann or Brian
Jordan's and he would do it in full uniform. It
was I mean, we're in a sport coat and there's
(29:37):
Smolty hat home whites. It was hilarious. And one time
it was pouring rain, so they turned the camera round
and Ron gant By, we get into the dugout and uh,
to get all three of us in the shot, Smolty
had to do kind of like the one cheek sneak
on the edge of the bench and the waters running
off the dugout and his left leg and left spike
(29:58):
are just getting soaking wet. And I looked over at
him and I said, you know, you may be a
future Hall of Famer, but in broadcasting you're the rookie,
so you have to get wet. We're staying dry, laughing
but I knew the very first day that he hosted
with US. I said, this man is going to have
a career in sports broadcasting and he is going to
(30:19):
go down as one of the all time great analysts
because John just, first of all, he can talk all right.
He's got a great sense of humor, and he's got
a great way to explain what you're seeing or what
you're about to see and make it so you understand.
You don't have to be a baseball connoisseur or a
baseball expert to understand what Smoltz is telling you. He
(30:41):
is really really good, which is why he's the main
analyst and Fox Now and you know on MLB Network,
he's really really really good. But on the other side,
and I won't keep you their names, there were two guys.
One was so he was so nervous it was like
broadcast news. He's sweating bullets left and right, you could
barely talk. And another guy was so nervous, he so quiet,
I wanted to sit there and go speak. Uh, you know,
(31:04):
And they're both great guys. They were very, very good players,
but once the red light went on, they were they
were horrible flops with any any blooper that. Yeah, I
have so many mistakes that I've made or just horrific
moments in radio over there is a good thing. We're
on radio, I'm in the middle of the night, but
you're on TV. Any was there any blooper that you
(31:25):
remember that you look back, You're like, I can't believe
that happened and that was unbelievably embarrassing or hilarious or
any of that. Well, we've we've had our moments. There's
no question. I will tell you that my most embarrassing
moment in my entire career is because nobody had ever
heard of her at the time. And when they when
(31:46):
they started CNN International, this was during the CNN days,
they would make us rundown. So we're doing our job.
I'm doing headline sports along there twice an hour, you know,
once an hour or whatever. So you know, it's the weekend.
There's nine million events going on, and we had to
report on all of them. So, I mean, you're getting
just blasted. You got all the baseball games going on
(32:06):
because it's all college football's happening. There's uh, you know,
the other sports, the NBA and the NHR crank. You
just got a million gazillion things. And at CNN, you know,
you didn't just cover the SEC or just the Big
ten or just your local school. You have to keep
an eye and all this stuff, so you're over inundated
with information. And then they're making us literally run down
(32:26):
a different flight of stairs into a different studio and
do like a two minute update on what's going on
in world sports. Like I knew what the hell was
going on in the bundesh Liga or in Formula one racing.
I did have time for them, so I ran down
there and there was some ski event going on I
don't know, and somebody just ripped, literally ripping and read.
One of these news producers go, while I'm on the air,
(32:48):
shows this piece of paper in me because an American
had won a downy old race in some Olympic preliminary thing.
And I looked at that. I've never heard this person.
I go a street instead of peekaboo. I looked at
the way she spelled that made what is this person?
I didn't know? I called the picaboy for the rest
(33:09):
of my life. You're going, hey, how's Picasso doing on
the slope. I think it's one of those embarrassing moments
that at two or three years ago. We are hosting
a postgame show Brian Jordan, and you could finance on
YouTube somewhere. I'm sure it lives. A matter of fact,
they just showed it on the air on mL Beating
Network the other day. Right in the middle of this
postgame show, this uh drunk jumps up on the on
the rail behind us. He's just waving a Braves jersey.
(33:32):
And one of our over zealous security guards, big heavy, round,
kind of fat Obert looking guy comes running behind us,
but he's not supposed to be on this on this
set area, and he runs behind us to shove the
guy off, and he trips over one of the electrical
cables back there, and there's a full face scorpion and
you see him go down and his two feet come
(33:55):
up in between Brian and I almost set our head
and I'm just like, hey, we're having an issue here,
let's get you downstairs. The Brian snicker and when they
came back and everybody shows that over and over because
the poor guy gets up, looks right in the camera,
walks away like nothing happened. It was so embarrassing for
him and Brian and I kept their composure. And then
during the during the manager's press conference, they're showing us
(34:17):
that on replay and he's standing there watching it. When
we came back, we were laughing so hard and couldn't talk.
We just couldn't talk. I think, I mean, I think
I've seen that. I'm sure. Yeah, it's one of those things.
It's just it's gonna live in infamy, and to this
day it's one of my biggest regrets because I should
have just I should have just thought and said, hey,
to quote that America Cinema classic Tommy Boy. That's gonna
(34:38):
leave a mark. But should I do it? Now? Whatever?
That's great, that's great. Now you know there's those bloopers
are all over. What are you gonna do? No, it's
good listen. That's make people laugh when I when I
look at in the NBA at JaVale McGee, who's bounced
around right, there's the video clip up that Shack did
(35:01):
on Shock and a Fool when JaVale Riggie was running
the wrong way, when everyone else in the court was
running running one direction and he was running the other.
I laugh every time I see that. It's the funniest
thing that I know in basketball, I think that there's
one guy out of ten guys on the court that's
running the wrong way. Uh, it's right. But you brought
up the headline sports CNN Headline News. Now, when I
(35:23):
met you, this was a big deal. Drum. I didn't
know what you look like. I had no idea, but
I knew the name, and I knew the name for
those young punks. Explain how big a reach you you
had at CNN Headline News. That was a very popular,
(35:43):
very popular outlet back in the days before social media,
right when people needed scores and but and whatnot. Yeah,
you know here, first of all, let me tell you,
let me explain why, and then I got a really
interesting story for you. Well, this was before cell phones,
This was before you had all this internet access. Uh,
(36:06):
this was before you had the crawl on the bottom
of your TV screen. As a matter of fact, CNN
Headline News was the first channel that had the crawl.
They had it exclusively for two years. And that was
a nightmare for us because when we first started at
these idiots and news had no idea about sports. So
on college football Saturday, they were literally putting every college
football score on there. So they were putting like an
(36:28):
AI scores on there, so you'd be waiting for the
Michigan Ohio state update you wouldn't see for five hours
because they're so in like Pomona's like, come on, just
take the main thing. So uh So, here's the deal.
If you were a sports fan, or more importantly, a
sports better, the only way you were going to get
updates on your teams if you weren't watching them on TV,
(36:49):
if they were out of market teams, you had to
wait until either CNN Sports Tonight or Sports Center at
eleven o'clock. So when at seven o'clock local time and
your team started, the only way to get an up
there until eleven was to watch CNN Headline Sports at
twenty after and fifty after the hour, because every thirty
minutes we updated the scores, so unbeknownst to us at
(37:11):
the time, everybody watched. Now, I always say I was
wildly popular with teenage and twenty year old boys and gamblers,
but I everywhere I would tell no, we weren't on camera.
You've just heard your own you're red about CNN Headlines spots,
and you know there's a story to that under itself,
but you know. I was at the airport one day
(37:33):
and I gave the guy the credit card. You looked
at my credit card, he goes, you're going to Atlanta. Saidyeah, goes,
You're not that CNN guy, are you. And that's when
I started to realize, Wow, this is kind of cool.
But it never dawned on me until the great Mario
Lemieu had a for years had a charity golf tournament
because he does such great work with children's cancer research
at the Children's Pittsburgh Hospital. And I, through a friend
(37:55):
after actually Andy Evan's light, got me involved with it.
I went up and I was the at the first tea.
I was announcing all the players, and I mean he
had everybody there. There's Gretty from you, there's Jordan and Barkley,
uh Elway and Marino, you name it, nothing but Hall
of Famers and all stars. And I'm standing there and
at the first team I'm giving every player this big introduction,
(38:18):
you know, and I look over the yeah, but the
you know, m v P, the Big Band and the
Big Red Machine, greatest catch up all time, Johnny Bench.
Everyone was clapping. Johnny Bench is putting his ball on
his tea and he looks up. He goes, that's what
you look like, and I'm like, yeah, you know. And
then next thing I know, him and Nick Monacani are
coming over and talking to me. And then after everyone's done,
(38:40):
all these guys are coming over talking to me. And
I'm sitting here thinking, oh my god, I am an
awe of every athlete in this room. And these guys
are all coming up because they all know who each
other are and what they look like. Nobody knew what
I looked like, and and that was like, that was
just It's one thing for the guy at Macy's or
a Delta Airlines to ask who you are. It's a
whole another thing when you got guys like Mark May
(39:03):
hanging out when you having a beer, and and and
John Elway, and when I when I went to Denver
because I got to know Elway on that thing. When
I went to Denver my very first Nuggets game. I'm
doing sidelines after the pregame show. It's the home opener.
They killed the house lights. They put a spotlight on
John Elway. He's up there, you know, in in one
of those baby Bloom Nuggets uniform. You know, he's waving
(39:24):
and you know, he's got at Denver and they're going crazy,
you know. And then when they do the anthem, next thing,
you know that the lights come up, always coming across
the court, and I'm standing in the corner where the
sideline guys are. I'm just standing up there and he's
coming with that big grin, you know, He's got this
big smile on his face, and I'm thinking to myself,
I'm looking at literally turning my head left and right,
looking over my shoulder. Who's he looking at. He comes
(39:46):
right over and gives me this big handshake and says,
welcome to Denver. And he look, I didn't know him
that well for him to do that for me. Everybody
in that arena saw me and said, I don't know
who that guy is doing sidelines, but if Elway likes them,
I like him. And he that was a huge boost
for me to start my career in Denver those two years.
To be accepted by ol Way that way, and that
(40:08):
made just you know, I did that for fourteen and
a half years, and that led the three jobs got
me the job at Fox Sports RA Radio, helped get
me the job in Denver, and then it got me
the h the job here doing the radio station at
sports Stock Radio here in Atlanta as well. I mean,
people knew the made and it was it was pretty amazing.
(40:29):
It was. It was a lot of fun, but you know,
it was on Q tone. Unlike you guys in Fox
Sports Radio, you want to go a little longer in
a segment. You go a little longer, you know, and
then you hit your commercial break. But at CNN, at
exactly you had exactly one minute forty two seconds to
a minute forty nine to wrap up your show, and
at one forty nine it cut you off. And you
did not want to hear at your room, you know,
(40:51):
and then go to youth. That would sound terrible. And
I didn't want to go too long. That was like
that was the Cardinal City. So I kept going short,
and finally I figured I got to get to it
one forty two, and I was hitting it about one
thirty five, so I just went drone you and I
just dragged it out to like eight seconds too. I
(41:12):
get to a minute forty five and when I when
it aired, I came out to the newsroom and everybody
was laughing, and I thought, if this got a reaction
out of all these jamokes and it was men and
women in there is the news room, there's one of
sports department. I said, I'm just gonna keep doing that,
and I kept doing it. My boss called me in
the next day and he goes, what are you doing
And I said, I'm just trying to add a little
(41:34):
spice and he goes, don't stop, and um, you know,
I stayed with it. And oh, I mean, I mean
the guys I worked with were great guys, very good guys.
But their names were Tom West, and Ron Hyde and
and Mark McKay and and there was just I mean,
I had a funky sounding name and I just between
that and the delivery, it's stuck. And it paid off
(41:55):
for him in my career. Yeah, and you had not
just the athletes. You have people at the White House.
I mean they were are leaders of countries that were
I mean everyone was white Airports. I remember CNN headline
news that I'd been traveling in in the hotel, hotels, anywhere,
airport lounges. I mean, everyone was watching everybody, every you know,
(42:18):
it was I don't know why the the geniuses that
took over that that we're screwed it up because it
was basically minute newscasts in a row, you know, every
thirty minutes would be a brand new newscast. So if
you missed your you know, if you missed NBC News
at seven or ABC at seven thirty, at nine o'clock,
you just started over. I supposed that these hour longer
talk shows you know on Fox right or CNN, it's MSNBC,
(42:40):
it's it was a It was a niche format, but
it was highly successful. And I don't know why they
ever broke away from that, but to your point, so
many people watched it was unbelievable. I'll never forget. One
day I picked up you know, I'm just reading through
my Sports Illustrated, and there's an article on Sparky. He
was courting of his career, Sparky Anderson, and they were
asking I'm the reporter asked him in the article, and
(43:02):
they said, well, Sparky, what do you do at your
age when you know, when you're on the road, I mean,
you've seen it all, You've been everywhere. What do you do?
He goes, I just go back to my hotel room
and I could see ann headline news on all evening long,
and I watched every one of those sportscasts every thirty minutes.
So I'm like, oh my god, Parkie Anderson sticking around
just to hear you know, that's great. Yeah. So when
(43:24):
you at CNN like you because you're on it's weird.
As you said, you're on television, but you're not like that,
nobody sees you. So do you have to get dressed
up like TV people have to get dressed up? Or
can you just go in there and just kind of
lounge around because at CNN that they requires like a
dress code at CNN or that, well, they didn't have
a dress code back then, but eventually when they started
(43:46):
the international stuff, they were making the headline sports anchors
double dips, so we had to go in and suit
and tie them. But on the weekends, when you know,
when we weren't doing anything on camera, when it was
just the headline sports, we which go in and a
polo shirt and in jeans that you weren't allowed to
wear shorts, even though most guys wanted to, but we
just you know, it was crazy. We had a good
(44:08):
crew back then at the old CNN days because we
had Dan Patrick and Gary Miller were our weekend guys,
and uh, we had Fred Hickman and the legendary Nick
Charles were on Monday through Friday. Guys, we we just
you know, hand a storm and Dan Hicks came and
they were like our number three team. We had a
lot of talented individuals, you Bob Lorenz and Uh, it
(44:29):
was I was never gonna get on camera there because
those people ahead of the event, Clini, they were all
so talented. And I was like, you know, that was
the bottom of the totem pool and uh, and that's
what led to the radio gig, and then the radio
gig led to getting a chance back on camera and uh,
you were asking about Denver. You know, in hindsight, UM,
(44:51):
I met good people. I gained a tremendous amount of
experience doing those pre and postgame shows. Um, it was
a very difficult situation for me, but it was a
great transitional I mean, if I had to do it
all over again, I would have yes, and maybe UH
tried to manipulate my bosses into trying to do things
the right way, but that was a no win situation.
(45:13):
But it led to a position in Atlanta. So um,
the people that there were two people that were above
me there that were complete morons and what I'm still
there and that's a shame because the people that still
worked there that I know still complained about them fifteen
sixteen years later. But you know, things are what they are.
I mean, we've all had bad bosses in our life.
We've all had great bosses in our life. And and
(45:36):
then you know, it was it is what it is.
I mean, CNN was a great run. Uh, Denver was fun.
I'm glad I got to experience the city of Denver
the Rocky Mountains for two years. You know that that
was pretty cool. UM. One great part of that ben
one of my favorite baseball players of all times, Goose Gossip.
So Mark P. Knudson, who had who played American leaguball
(45:59):
mostly for the Brew was at the time UM organized
a charity hardball game at the Triple A Stadium in
Colorado Springs. So you know, he was on our show
every once in a while. So you know, Mark asked
me and maybe four or five members of the media
and Denver if he wanted to come down and playing
since you're what, you know, I'm thinking it's gonna be softball.
(46:20):
It's hardball. And there is a bevy of former Major
leaguers and major league umpires that live in that area
because they all love to hunt. So I go down there,
and first of all, he got all the All Star
uniforms that were left over from the All Star Game
in Houston the year before. So we're wearing major league,
you know, uniforms. It was pretty cool. And we're sitting
(46:43):
there with all of these players, and I knew Goose
was coming, so I brought I got a Yankees Gossipe jersey,
so I brought him down to sign it, and he
was genuinely touched. We're sitting there just bs and over
his time with the Pirates. He said he never wanted
to leave Pittsburgh. He said that the day that he
saw Mind agreed to the Yankees, him and his wife
sat in his in his pickup truck in the parking
(47:05):
a lot of three River Stadium and cried, that's so much.
He loved living in Western Pa and playing for the Pirates,
but they couldn't turn the money down. They had to
go to New York. And so we're sitting there, we're
talking and next thing you know, we're taking v P
and I go to take VP and Gossage goes. I
got this good steps in there and I'm like, oh
my god, I get the hit off goose gossage. So
(47:26):
because where do you want it? So I put, like,
you know, belt high fastball. So he throws one in there.
I don't even see it, and I'm like, come on, man,
every one of these guys could still throw an any
as as well as they could when they were in
their hated They just couldn't throw a morning any. So
he loves one in there and I turned on it
and I actually ripped it, but it was filed. So
(47:47):
he looked at me. He gives me like a little nod,
like god, I wasn't bad, right. He dusted me high
and inside, right underneath the chin. To me, it was
the greatest sporting the moment of my life. I got
through the lat The next pitch bind you throw so
fast I don't even know. I think it was back
(48:07):
in his glove by the time I was done swinging
the bat. He threw it so damn hard. But that
was just one. I mean to get to clay. But
all those guys, there were a lot of major leaders
out there. That was a lot of fun. Well, when
you when you talk, you are Western Pennsylvania. Did you
ever and I don't know what you did before CNN.
I know you started in Pennsylvania. Did you ever consider
going back and did you ever have the opportunity to
(48:29):
work in Pittsburgh like with the Pirates or the Penguins, Steve?
I never did. And you know, for year, all those
years at CNN, every time a job opening in Pittsburgh,
you know, appeared, I applied, And I mean I was begging.
I begged to get back there for ten to twelve years.
(48:51):
I just could not catch your breaking because I wasn't
on camera on a regular basis at CNN. I just
didn't have a resume real good enough for TV at
the time. And by the time and opening occurred after
I had been back here for a while in Atlanta,
it just wasn't gonna work out. The money wasn't what
(49:12):
it was going to be, and it just it would
have been it would have been almost like a demotion
for me for less pay and a different position. And
you know, I even thought about it at the time,
but I was just beginning to date my now second wife,
and she was settled in here, her kids were in
school here, and I'm like, I can't take less money
(49:33):
to go to Pittsburgh, and my my parents had already
moved out. They had relocated. My brother lives in Texas,
and they relocated to San Antonio with him. And I'm like, look,
I got a handful of relatives and a really good,
hardcore group of friends there, but my parents aren't there anymore.
So it's not really you know, it'll always be home.
But it wasn't home because they weren't there. And I
(49:55):
just thought, I'm not gonna ask this woman to relocate
for me. She settled unsettled, so it would have been
it would have been a labor of love for me.
You know. I wouldn't have cared what the income was
because it would have been steelers pirates payments in penn
State pit you know. But never, never, never really came.
I did start in Western Pa and Erie, Pennsylvania. I
grew up in a small town fair all about halfway
(50:17):
right on the Ohio Pennsylvania line. My my great aunt
lived on State Line Road, a single lane blacktop road.
She was on Pennsylvania. You walked across the street or
neighboring r in Ohio and uh, my uncle's would get
drunk at Christmas time at my parents house, and you'd
started arguing Steelers Browns because it was crazy. It was
just crazy. Um, so I'm living in Erie. Let me
(50:39):
tell you one quick story about Aree, which is awesome.
Nine two, I finally get on camera in Eurie p Ad.
It started the year before behind the scenes, um, weekend sports.
Erie was just getting cable TV at the time. Ere
He was kind of behind the times, still probably is.
And I go in there on the weekends. You know,
(51:01):
most weekends sportscasts are like three and a half minutes long, right,
maybe four Not where I was, they are we are
news department was so understaffed. They're like, Jerome, how much
can you feel? I said, give me eight minutes. I
was recording everything. I mean, I'm showing highlights from the
Islanders Rangers. I'm showing what he didn't matter if it
was on table that day. I was cutting down thirty
seconds of each game. And you know, so people loved it.
(51:25):
It was like a mini sports center. And after about
three and a half weeks, Meadville, PA, this tiny little
western Pennsylvania town where the great uh Sharon Sharon Stone,
the actresses from It's maybe fifteen thousand people. But they
had a heck of a sports banquet for their high school.
They would bring in Pirates and Indians and Steelers and Browns.
(51:46):
It was a big, big deal. So Jim Leland just
gets hired to be the Pirates manager, and the Monday
through Friday guy goes, Hey, go down there and try
to get an interview with Leland. I'll keep in mind, Ben,
this is before the internet. The only way we knew
who Jim Leland, so here's the third base coach for
the White Sox, was to look at that little black
and white photo in the team media guide we had.
And we didn't even have the American League, so I
(52:07):
had no idea what he looked like. So I go
down there and the guy at the front door, they're
handing out a baseball to everybody to get autographed. Star
Joel was there, Andre Thornton, people like that, and it
was mostly for the kids, you know, but they're giving
a baseball to everybody, and the guy pulls me aside.
He was, Hey, I love watching you. I know you're
the new guy in town, but you're the only guy
(52:28):
showing NBA highlights. I love the NBA. I'm gonna do
you a favor. Go in the kitchen. You're gonna be surprised,
trust me. And I'm thinking, what he was, just go
in the kitchen. So I go in the kitchen. Meanwhile,
everybody's out there. You know, I got a quick interview
with star Joel and Leland and it wasn't there. So
I go in the kitchen and you know, next thing
I know, the back door opens up. It's sort of
(52:50):
like a scene out of good Fellas. These three big
gumbas come in and right behind him Joe DiMaggio. Whoa.
I'm like, oh my lord. They had a guest speaker,
but nobody knew who it was. It's Joe Demaggio. So
I tell him my cameraman, flick your late on. I go,
Mr DiMaggio, Can I get a couple of questions? I
was so nervous. Then I called him Mr DiMaggio and
(53:12):
every question So I asked them five questions and about
three questions in one of the you know those big
guys security guys, all right, wrap it up. So I
asked him one more care you know something. I don't
know what it was, and then he goes, okay, last one,
and I nodded to him I said sure, and about
three or four questions in rumor, you know, kind of
spilled out. So all of a sudden, these little kids
(53:35):
start flooding through those doors that the waiters come in
and out of, and they're at the bottom of the
camera shot where you would see like your score crawl.
Now all you see are pens and baseballs from these
little hands shooting up into the bottom of the screen,
and Joe just starts grabbing him and he's signing him
as he's answering my final two questions, which I thought
(53:56):
was really cool, And after the fifth question, I thanked
him for his time, told him what an honor it
was was, And after my cameraman, you know, clicked off
on the recording, I said, Mr Demasha, and he turned around.
I said, look, I know this is completely unprofessional, but
we're not in a ballpark and you're Joe Tomasa. Would
(54:16):
you sign my ball too? He goes absolutely, and the
autographed my ball, and I said, I know I'm not
really supposed to do this, but my goodness, Ben, it
was I got that ball in too safe right now.
I probably only asked for maybe three autographs of my
entire career. Josha that's an all time, that's an all
That's a wonderful story. All right, we gotta wrap this up.
And you're we're retired now, Drew. I can't believe you're
(54:39):
you're retired? You know. Yeah, it's amazing to me. So
are you gonna Are you gonna do the traditional retirement
thing and get like a Winnebago and travel around the country? Like,
have you thought about what's next for you? You know? Uh?
People keep pestering me to do a podcast, but I'm like,
why would I do a podcast when everybody listens to
Ben mallor no one will listen to me? So I
(55:01):
want to take a break. I am gonna fill in
this Monday on one of the local stations. One of
my buddies is off doing something, so they asked me
to just do morning Drive on Monday. I said, all right,
I'll do it because the Braves in the playoffs and
Hawks are getting going. But I don't want to do
a whole lot. I want to kick back. Um, we're
doing three weeks in Europe next year, and if my
wife really likes it in a year, once the final
(55:24):
Kick gets out of high school, we may actually move
to Europe. For a summer anywhere from four to six months.
We're gonna tour all six parts out in Utah. The
National Parks were big into that. I gotta hit back
to wine Kenny. We got a lot of traveling. We're
gonna do a lot of traveling. We're just gonna take
the rest of this year and kind of kick back
and then we're we got like six trips already planned
(55:45):
for next year. So it's gonna be most you know, hey, look,
as you know, when you work in sports broadcasting out
of Charac it's radio and TV. You're working nights and weekends.
And you know I did that for forty years. So
you know, every time the guys in the neighbor got
together play poker, or they wanted to go to a ballgame,
or you know the one you know, two or three
couples wanted to go just go get dinner or go
(56:05):
to a concert. At the last minute, I always had
to say no. And uh, I'm just gonna try to
make up for lost time. That's what I'm gonna do.
Kick I'm gonna complain about my Steelers on Sunday. I'm
gonna can't I can't wait for Crosby to get back
out on the ice, and I'm gonna watch the Braves
have a nice run here in the playoffs, and hopefully
Trey Young will be very entertaining in the winter, because
(56:26):
I think the Hawks are gonna be good again. So
I'm just gonna be a fan. Man, Now you're gonna
be a fan. Nice. Well, Hey, if you end up
at in California, I'm sure you've been to Sequoia. That's
my one of my favorite spots from the giant forest
which almost burned up a couple of months ago. I
think it was a couple of months ago, maybe a
month ago. I saw that they put the giant foil
(56:46):
around the bottom of the that that is an amazing plaisodia.
You end up there, yeah, give me, give me a
buzz in the we'll get already together. We'll get the
old game together. We'll have Yeah, Elie is gonna be
one of our ops. We were supposed to be out
there for the L. S u u c l A game.
My uh my stepson loves L. S u. Four of
(57:07):
his first cousins all went to L. S Ue is
uncle and uncle living Betton Rouge. So they have become
our adopted SEC team, but work, and that was his
first week of college. He goes locally here to one
of the colleges, and he just couldn't. He couldn't take
off the first two days of college to fly out
to l A. Sou l A is definitely, uh, definitely
(57:29):
on the list. So when I do, I'll give your
heads up because I would love to see all you
guys a goat, no question about that. Awesome. Thank you, Jerome.
I appreciate it. Man, thanks for doing this. You're the man.
Ben
If you thought four hours a day, minutes a week
was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants of
the old republic, a sole fashion of fairness. He treats
crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich
pill poppers in the penthouse, the clearing House of Hot
takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with
(00:23):
Ben Maller starts right now in the air everywhere, back
at it on a Friday, a mead October, the middle
of October. Here we are back in the magic podcast machine,
the salt mine of podcasting, and it is our Friday show.
We do this because four hours a night have been
(00:46):
deemed not enough according to the management of the company
that I work for, Fox Sports Radio. And so we
we say, you know what, Let's do this eight days
a week. We do the radio show five days. Let's
do the podcast. We can curse, we can scream, we
can shout on this podcast. And so a spinoff of
the Overnight Show. We thank you for finding the podcast.
(01:07):
Tell a friend, Tell a friend. We need to grow
the podcast audience. And as I like to say, if
everyone listening, if you listening right now, tell a co
worker or a relative and they listen, we have instantly
doubled our market share in the podcast world. But enough
(01:27):
of that. This weekend. Very excited here on a Friday
to catch up with a friend of mine by request. Now,
I've known this guy for many years, but I didn't
work with them, and we've had several listeners who have said, Hey,
you've gotta you gotta get this guy, and I want
to hear what he's up to. H I'm talking about
(01:47):
Jerome or seeing that headline sports, that's that's the legend.
Jerome Daranovitch, who has worked for the Atlanta Braves and
the the Atlanta Hawks as well over the last fifteen years.
She just retired. It doesn't seem like you should have retired.
He's a young young guy in my eyes. But he
(02:09):
has retired now and he worked in Denver and he's
been all over the place. But you hear him talk.
He is Western Pennsylvania through and through and he worked
at Fox Sports Radio briefly. And so we are excited
to go and the way Back Machine, a beloved broadcaster
and a person that went out a few times, had
(02:30):
some drinks with good times, good memories back in the day.
And Jerome, why don't we start. You were at Fox
Sports Radio, part of the Alumni Association. Are your dudes
paid up? You know I have not paid up to
do this, but don't tell anybody. I think I just
left the cat out of the bag. But maybe our
good friend Art Martinez will cover for me the next
time the dudes are do Yeah, yeah, Well, Already is
(02:51):
an active member of the Alumni Association that I see
already once here Now for those that you know behind
the scenes inside radio, Jerome the great Art Martine Nuez,
a rock on the board, one of the great engineers.
And really I've had a lot of board ops and
engineers over these but Art Martinez in all time greade
and you better not mess with the raiders or Already
(03:12):
is gonna bring it down there a legend and I come,
but I invite Art to my I do a Christmas
party like a holiday sweater party thing every year, and
Already shows up. I didn't do it last year because
of that whole COVID thing, but Already shows up, and
he's always the first person there, and Jerome he's the
last person to leave. Every year I've had this, Art
(03:32):
Martinez stays until the very I gotta kick him out
of my house. There's no shock or surprised by coming
first and staying till the end. Let's just hope that
he doesn't go trick or treating as Jon Gruden. I
know he's a big great I think he's gonna have
to put that. Yes, hopefully he didn't send any emails
(03:53):
to John Gruden that might come back and get him here.
And now, you weren't at Fox Sports Radio all that long,
but you're you're an East Coast guy living in Los Angeles,
Rome at the time. That's a that's an eye opening experience.
I don't you've traveled around. You're a worldly man, you're
a globe trekker and all that from your years in
(04:13):
the media. But living in the belly of the beast
in l a good, bad, ugly I still miss it
to this day. I moved out of there in two
thousand and four, and my wife is tired of hearing this.
I still talk about moving back to California. I the
(04:35):
first three months were difficult transition for me. It took
about three weeks just to get settled into that three
hour time difference. I kept waking waking up at four am.
He was driving me crazy. But once I learned my
way around and just got a little foothold into Los Angeles,
I absolutely loved it, especially on college football Saturdays, nine
(04:58):
am kick off and you're not You're going to bed
five games later before you go to it was I
just loved Lost. I loved the weather, I love the energy.
Hated the traffic, but Atlanta has the second horse traffics
in America behind l A, so I was used to
being in terrible traffic. I loved everything about it. Now
that was a long long time ago, since I left
a long time ago, so I'm sure things have changed dramatically.
(05:22):
I know the fires are just horrible out there, but
I just I loved Ela. I just loved every minute
of it. I had lived previously in New York City,
and I'm hold enough to grow up on Johnny Carson
when he would have celebrity guests, and if they were
New Yorkers, they would complain about l A. If they
were West Coast people, they would complain about New York.
The whole l A New York rivalry. Never understood what
(05:43):
they were talking about. Because I was a kid, having
lived in both, I am sold on Los Angeles and
a heart people, a chamber of commerce. Now you're right,
l A has changed a lot room they've the city
has gone down. Now. One thing that has not changed, though,
And I actually have some good news for you. And
I know I haven't talked to you in a while,
but the same exact equipment that you used back in
(06:05):
the day at Fox Sports Radio at the premier networks
has not either been fixed or upgraded. It is like
a time capsule saved posterity sake. And I've been working
from home a lot to Rome, but I actually went
in this week. I was at the the Dodger Games
the other night and so I went in there and
it is unreal. Nothing has been touched you this, I'm
(06:29):
not exaggeratingbody with the same exact setup. So you could
if you decide to unretired Jerome and come back to
Fox Sports Radio and you know, take the family out
the Cali, pack up the dogs in the station wagon,
the wife, the whole thing. You would then be able
to be very comfortable in our old old building because
it's still exactly the same. You'll be happy that so
(06:49):
that coffee staying on the rug left there by John
Ireland in two thousand and three remains, is what you're telling. Yes,
that is an There's a Tony Bruno. I think one
time he he put some bubblegum down on the floor there,
and that's still still there under the table of Pat O'Brien,
who hasn't worked there in years. P o b he
actually taped for some reason, Pat taped the dollar bill
(07:12):
to the table in there, and that remnants of that
dollar bill are still taped to the to the main
studio table. So it is there's a lot of history
in that building to room at Legends like yourself worked there,
and they don't they don't want to change anything. Anyway.
We mentioned already Eric Peterson are great producer friend, he
also worked. I mean, so there's legends in that building.
(07:34):
Jerome legends, legends, some of us not so much, but
you know, Pat O'Brien, Tony Bruno, and the guys absolutely,
My buddy Chris Rose, no question. So I was talking
to another member of the Fox Sports Radio Alumni Association
who I occasionally talked to, Tom Looney, and I said, Tom,
what's Jerome dorenovis? You know he's I don't have Jeroman
(07:56):
and he's got any Jerome stories. He said, Now I
thought he was pulling chain here. He says, you gotta
you gotta ask him about the flowers, is what Looney said.
So do you know, I mean, are you there was
a flowers This is a cord of loony. I he said,
he was not pulling my chain here, Jerome. He said,
there's a legendary Jerome Drenovich flowers story from your days
(08:18):
at Fox Sports Radio. Is this true? Or is Looney?
I don't I don't know. I don't know if flowers
doing Now I'm old Ben. Yeah, so I don't get
flowers story. I don't know what flowers. Yeah. He he
had claimed there was an incident somebody was ordering flowers
and you were asking questions about it, and then, uh,
you don't. You don't recall it. So so that might
(08:39):
have been a Looney That might have been a Looney
story that just got on the podcast. That was an
incorrect story. Either that or he remembers it and you
don't remember it was such and it was an unmemorable
experience for you. Well, you know what, if Looney says
it happened, I'm going with Looney's side of the story.
So even if it makes me look terrific. I'm going
(09:01):
with Looney, but he's not loved LOONI, but he's Looney. He's,
I mean, the guy his names says, how can you?
He's the funny thing about Looney now he's he's like
a hard news guy. He does news now at k ABC,
one of the news talk stations in l A. And
it's great and I hear him sometimes and it's it's
tremendous because you know, you think like you're the news guy,
(09:22):
you gotta be all serious and all that him. But
he's his name is Looney. Now you'd be when your
name is Looney, you can't be the serious news guy,
right crazy he is Loonie, m j T legends, legend. Yeah, absolutely,
part of part of that time. So now when you left,
didn't you go to Denver before you went to Atlanta?
(09:43):
Am I right on that? Or am I imagining that
in my head? No? You are correct. I left Fox
Sports Radio in Los Angeles and went to Denver to
launch the Altitude Sports Network. Stand Cockey decided he as
legendary as you people in l A know, as the
owner of not just the Rams, but of about nineteen
(10:04):
thousand different sports teams, including the Denver Nuggets in Colorado Avalanche,
and he owned the Pepsi Center at the time and
decided that he wanted to UM owned the rights to
the broadcasts of his two teams there, so he started
his own Cave regional network and I was hired over
there to be the main host as they launched that.
(10:27):
And let me tell you then, boy, I first of
all love stand I'd work for stand Mar. He was
great After Nuggets gains. The bar inside the then Pepsi Center,
I don't know what it's called now, UM called the
Blue Sky Girl. He'd come down and me and three
or four got we'd be sitting at the bar having
drains after the game and just talking to him like
a casual fan. What a great owner. You would never
(10:49):
realize he's one of the wealthiest men in the world.
He was just he was just a great guy. It
still is. I'm sure he was great to work for UM. Now,
the people that ran Altitude, I can tell you stories
all my goodness. UM. When they flew me up there
for the interview, we were in the same building as
the Hallmark Channel, so they walked me through the Hallmark
Channel and kind of a link in a NOD We're
(11:10):
leading me to believe that that was their production set
up when it wasn't. So when we launched Altitude, thankfully
that was the year that the NHL had a lock out,
because we would not have been prepared to be able
to broadcast Nuggets and Avalanche games at the same time.
We were so understaffed and under equipped. I was hosting
the Nuggets pregame, post game and halftime without an analyst
(11:34):
and without a desk, and with no highlights. I will
stand out there and just talk for thirty minutes all
by myself. And we had literally had one video tape deck.
So in television to edit, you have to have one
deck to play the tape and then edit on the
other one. We only had one only to record. So
they would send us the highlights from the Nuggets game
(11:55):
from the truck and we would use that in the
postgame show, but we wouldn't have any highlights from many
other games and I'm just out there talking for thirty minutes.
So thank god I came from those four years in
radio because it was just unbelievable. We had we had
a couple of people there that were in management positions
that had no business even working in television, little management.
It was a complete nightmare. It was fun, made some
(12:17):
good fact friendships over those two years. The teams were
great to deal with, the first class. Uh, The Avalanche
and the Nuggets were both first class to deal with.
The players were great, the organizations were great. Kike Vanderway
was running the Nuggets at the time, Pierre Laqua was
running the Apps. They were It was fantastic to deal with.
They were both good teams. It was Carmelo's second and
third season, so they were playoff teams those two years.
(12:40):
And the Apps were still had Rob Blake and Joe Sakic.
They still had a good handful of guys from the
Stanley Cup run. So they were exciting teams. But it
was just a not a good position to be in
if you wanted to work in sports TV at the time.
And then so after two years, my first contract was
(13:00):
I got out of Dodge as fast as you could
and took the job. I just retired from a couple
of weeks ago. Yeah, So if you had known at
the time that it's like looking at a hotel you
want to stay out online, they show you all the
nice rooms and then your your rooms are in the
back on the on the other side of the tracks.
That's uh, that's essentially so, I wanna give me a
(13:21):
stand cronkey store. So I've seen standing at these ram
games if a few times I've been to Sofi Stadium,
I saw him at the college see him. Actually more
like everyone's kind of segregated at the Sofi Stadium in Inglewood.
The media's kind of separated from the rich people and
all that stuff. But but stand, isn't he the I
think I read he's the largest landowner outside of the
(13:43):
United States government, that he owns more land than anyone
else in the United States, which is amazing to me.
That you like parts of Texas, New Mexico all over
the place, he's uh, he's got you know, that would
not surprise me because I know and and I under standard.
Although Ted Turner's health is not what it used to be,
but he is also one of these massive landowners. They
(14:06):
brought up massive amounts of land in Montana and New
Mexico and out west. You know, most of it's an
inhabited but uh, you know it's look, as my late
Ultle used to say, God ain't building anymore land he's
gonna want to get on that land eventually. And you know,
I mean, what else you gonna do when you got
that many We were talking billions. When you got that
(14:28):
kind of money, I mean, you know, what are you
gonna do? So I mean, yeah, well, you know, staying
well to give you my one stand story that I
really like the most. Okay, so I get there. Um,
Andre Miller is the point guard. They got Carmelo Marcus
Camby is our center. Um, we had a nice little
(14:49):
team there, you know, playoff team. Kenyan Martin was our
power forward and he used to drive me nuts because
you know, we basically got five arrow bread's out there
on the court and Andre Miller's walking the ball up
the court you want to It was like he was
allergic to a fast break. And I'm sitting there going,
(15:09):
what are you doing? So We're in the bar one
day after a game, and they had one day one
more often then they lost, and then I'm sitting I
go stand. You know, he's got his entourage with him.
We're sitting there and I go, stand, you gotta get
rid of Andre Miller And he goes thrown. He's a
good basketball player, very good. I said stand. I'm not
saying he's not a good basketball player. He is a
good basketball player, no question about it. I said, he's
(15:31):
a great half court point guard. I said, but you
got Gazelle's out there and this guy's walking the ball
up the court. Can you imagine if Magic Johnson walked
the ball up the court, we'd never have showtime. He's
got you gotta push it. You don't got Kevin mckill
and a bunch of cloggers out there. You've got guys
that can run when we on, When we run, we
(15:53):
run teams out of the gym, especially here at home
with this altitude. I said, but he doesn't want to
push it. He doesn't want to push it. And then
next thing you know, they George carl in there and
then they just start running the ball. And I'm sitting
there going singing. Come on, man, you don't have to
be there in realize Andre Miller is not your point.
But he was. He was very open to having those
kind of discussions and just sit there and have a
bever with you and talk basketball. He loves sports, There's
(16:15):
no question. Man loves sports. Yeah that's cool, that's pretty
pretty neat. And the the altitude droome. Now you having
lived all over the country, Pennsylvania, guy in New York, Atlanta,
l A. It is it legit? Though? In Denver? Is
it is? It? Is it an? Is it reality? No? No,
it's there's no question that, Bob. Is you? So I
(16:36):
am there, I'm there. I get there on a Monday
that Thursday, air Force is hosting Navy on Thursday college
football Thursday night. Came and a couple of guys we
we didn't even launched it. We're not launching until the
next Monday. So a couple of guys go, hey, you know,
I said, heybody, can we get to this Air Force
Navy game? I'd love to go down to the Academy
and see it. And guys are going, yeah, no problems.
(16:57):
So they called. We go down and we get tickets.
And if you've ever been to the Air Force Academy,
beautiful facility. By the way, when you walk in, you
basically walk in on field level. When the fields a
little sunk. You're walking on field level and you gotta
walk up to your seat. And we're walking, you know,
we had a couple of a couple of cold ones
in the parking lot, but nothing out of control and
(17:19):
I'm I'm walking and I'm like, oh my goodness. I
know it's been a couple of months because of the
move where I haven't worked out or anything, but I'm
I'm like gasping for breath and these people are looking
at me like what is wrong with you? And when
we finally got to our seat, because we are about
three quarters of the way up the stadium, up right
by the press box, I'm like, guys, I don't know
what's going on here, and they're like laughing at me.
(17:40):
It was the altitude. It was the altitude, no question.
If if you're not used to it, I don't know
how these teams fly in, run up and down that
court like that, and then fly back. And there's no
question you would see it effect teams, especially like late
in the third quarter or the fourth. A lot of
teams like to come in, like on a Tuesday night
to play a Thursday game, just to get an extra
(18:01):
day in there. But you come in especially, you come
in a lot of these teams arrived one in the morning,
you know, and they get into their hotel room to
three in the morning. They have a rough night, no question. Yeah, yeah,
well you would think the teams in Denver would take you.
You said, Andre Miller walking the ball up the court.
But that's yeah. And so then you go to Atlanta
(18:22):
and you're happy not to Jerome. You know this podcast
and the radio show. Now I do these Friday conversations,
you know, with random people like yourself, important people like yourself.
And I've had several people in Georgia, but not just Georgia,
like all over the South because of the reach of
the channel you were on there, like you gotta get
Jerome on you. You claim you know Jerome durnomous. People
(18:45):
are doubting that I know you. And so you have.
You have a bunch of fans there from your days
with the Braves and the Hawks, and which just ended.
When was your last day on television? I know you
worked this season for the Braves, right when when did
that end? My last day was the day they clinched
the East. It was the third and final game of
the Phillies series, in that final homestand and it was
(19:09):
fifteen years here with the Braves and the Hawks. And
you know, Ben, I'll tell you a funny story. So
I come from Denver, where the Abs are good, where
the Nuggets are good. And I had lived in Atlanta
previous years, so we're seeing in fourteen and a half years.
So I go from CNN in Atlanta to l A
with you guys, and I'm in Denver and then come
back here as I'm as I'm moving back here, I'm
(19:30):
going through a divorce. My wife ex wife stays in Denver.
So I'm going through a divorce and it's very amicable.
She's great, we're still good friends. It just didn't work out.
One of those things. God bless hers. So but legally,
you gotta go to court, you do this stuff, right.
So she's still in Denver. She goes just go you know,
we're not contesting anything. It's just a matter of legality, formality.
So I go to the courtroom, you know, and there's
(19:52):
all these couples in they're going through all this divorce court,
you know, and there he said, she said, they're crying,
they're fighting whatever. And then the judge calls me up
there and asked where the wife is and I explained.
He goes, okay, and he goes, why I've got questions
for And I go all right, and he goes, my
first question is what do you do for a living
and I tell him and he goes, and what brought
you here to Atlanta? I said, well, I said, they're
(20:12):
starting the pregame and post game for the Atlanta Hawks,
the Atlanta Thrashers, and the the Atlanta Braves. And he goes,
what were you doing before? I said that same thing,
but for the Denver Nuggets in the Colorado Avalanche. And
he goes, the Nuggets in the Avalanche or playoff teams?
Aren't they? I said, yeah, they're very good. And he
goes and the Hawks and Braves are last place teams,
aren't they? Yes they are. He goes, what are you doing? Laugh?
(20:37):
I said, it doesn't matter how good are bad the
teams are, it's how big the paycheck is. He goes, okay,
not just busting my jobs in front of a court
roof full of people that are all everybody. I guess
that they made everybody laugh because they were all hollow
after they were crying and arguing. All that that is.
It reminds me I had a conversation, you know, Ralph Lawler,
the voice of the Clippers, where he just retired a
(20:59):
few years ago, and and I remember we were having
a conversation and the Clippers were just morbid for most
of Ralph's time. They only became good the last like
ten years or so. But he was there and they
were the worst of the worst, and and he said
pretty much the same things. And I was like, you
get paid, it's a good job, and whether the team
wins or not, it's it's it's an interesting dynamic. Now
(21:24):
you can answer this question, Jerome, though, having had mostly TV,
I think of you as a TV guy. But you
worked at Fox Sports, right, I think you did work
in radio early on in your career. So what is
the harder media platform if you're walking in to do
television or to do radio. Wow, that's a good question. Ben.
(21:45):
I will say this because I had worked in television
my whole life. Every job I had in TV, you know,
I kind of started behind the scenes, and I knew
I wanted to be in front of the camera. So
you know, when I wasn't actually working, maybe on my
dinner hour, coming in on a day off, I would
I would work toward the eventual position of a reporter
(22:05):
on camera person. So I got practice time on my own.
So I built my way towards that. Radio. I was
kind of just thrown into this mix. After working in
television for well over twenty years, I go out to
Fox Sports Radio. I had never done radio before. What
a I opening, and just it blew me away. I'll
(22:27):
be honest with that. Those I mean, I was doing
the updates for a while, but when they put me
on and made me do the Baseball show and the
NFL Show on Saturday and Sunday, I didn't know what
I was doing. And then, you know, after four years
of I learned what you're supposed to do. And then actually,
when I moved back here a couple of years ago,
CBS Radio started a a all sports talk station, and
(22:48):
I allowed with Jamie Dukes, who was on NFL Network,
long time NFL player. We had a show. We had
a blast, But I knew what I was doing when
I got on radio here in Atlanta. I didn't have
a clue what I was doing in l A. And
there is a big, big difference. Now. I would not
be able to do the show I did in Denver
or the show I did here with the Hawks and Braves.
(23:08):
These pre and postgame shows, they're basically radio on TV.
I mean, you're just talking, You're spewing facts, you're spewing knowledge.
You're you know, it's just your knowledge of the individual
players on the team that you cover how the team
is sparing. And it's basically sports talk radio on TV
as opposed to doing a three minute you know, Channel two,
you know at six o'clock that's all written out. You know.
(23:32):
I didn't use the prompter for fifteen years here because
everything was off the cuff, and that was basically what
I learned in radio. Radio was more challenging for me,
There's no question. It seems like it would be easier,
but it was. No I'll tell you. It was more
challenging for me because I didn't have a clue what
I was doing. Man. I leaned on guys like you
and watching you and j T two break and and
(23:53):
just marveling at how John Ireland could talk for twenty
five minutes NonStop and entertain you and uh, listening to
Bruno and Siciliano in the morning. That was good stuff.
That was That was an eye opening experience, wealth and
knowledge coming out of these guys. For me, yeah, it
is much. It's much of an and like I have
the complete opposite career drum I did television for I
(24:14):
think it was nine months at NBC. They flew me
back every month to do stuff at the NBC Sports Network,
which I think has gone away. I think or it
is going away. I don't even want I haven't kept
tracked there. So I just had a little taste of it,
and I thought like because I was just a correspondent,
they brought in to give some hot takes, so I
was only on for a segment here, like a segment there.
(24:36):
And so for me, I was like, this is great
because the radio show I do four hours a night
on the overnight and it's a much different, much different animal.
And the thing though, I will give you credit, I
mean when you're doing television, I mean there's so many
producers and directors and people around. As you know, in radio,
there's not a lot of people around. It's it's pretty
much you know, you and a couple of people and
(24:58):
you got to figure it out. In television, I feel
like it's they direct you more on what they're looking for.
You know. Radio radio, you definitely have more control of
the show. It's the Ben Mallor show. It is your show,
and you know when you want to go to callers
or you want to stay on a specific topic. You
can stay on that topic for ten fifteen minutes if
you want. And in television, you know, we've got to
(25:21):
move off of the fact that the bullpen stinks after
a minute or two, or the bullpens do be great.
You know, I've gotta switch over to whatever is coming
up next. And they want to get their video in
and their graphics in, and yeah, they're moving you along.
And there's sometimes uh, sometimes they're not listening to you
and you want to move law it. There are a
lot of moving parts in television. There is no there
(25:42):
there is. There's a big difference between the two and
you know, and they both have their pluses and minuses,
which is why they worked so well. Hand in hand.
You can get much more for what you're specifically looking
for over here in radio and as opposed to getting
a whole mishmash of a little bit of everything on TV. Yeah,
so there's I'm sure there's someone steam Droome. Maybe only
one person that wants to be the next Jerome Jerenovitch,
(26:04):
wants to follow in your footsteps and be the next
you know, down the line host of the Braves and
the Hawks pre and postgame and halftime and all that stuff.
So what is the cheat code? Now that you're retired,
you can share this information, Jerome, you can give this out,
like what is the secret to doing good television? You know,
the secret to doing good television is, first of all,
(26:27):
you have to be informed, man, I mean you have
to pay attention. I can't tell you how many people
have come up with me the last fifteen years because
our our set, which is now bally Sport was Fox
Sports South is outside the stadium, and um, you would
not believe how many people, Hey, my son's in college,
my daughter's in college, or hey I want to be
(26:47):
on TV. And it's like, look, not only do you
got to you know, pay your dues. It's rare when
you're just thrown onto a situation where're gonna work for
an NBA or an NHL or Major League baseball team
without any type of experience. You have to know and
love the sport, all right. You know, we had a girl,
not gonna give her a name, and we had a girl,
you know, a couple of years ago and we all
(27:08):
now it's out. You'd like to say that Hank Aaron
is the true home run. That's that's how that's our
way of seeing Barry Bonds cheated. And that's our way
of saying, Hank, we love you and we know you
did it the right way. And this girl, actually she
heard it so many times she actually thought Hank is
the was the leader, all time leader. At home runs
were like, uh no, and you're working for the brains
(27:29):
to come on, you know. I mean, so you have
to know, you have to know the strategies of the sport,
and you have to really work. I mean, there there's
no substitute for hard work. Um. You see, every time
you turn on a college football game, you're gonna see
another different, pretty blonde girl on the sidelines. But if
they don't have personality along with intelligence, you're not going
(27:49):
to see him more than two or three times. You
have to be able to convey what you know, either
in a cocite in a concise way or an entertaining way,
and hopefully in both. And that's why you're so successful
what you do, because you could you can take a
position on a subject, you can inform your viewer and
you can get them to either change their mind or
(28:11):
at least see your point of view why they're right
or why they're wrong. And you can't do that if
you don't know what you're talking about. Well, yeah, that's
a great advice. And also we see that a lot
with you mentioned the sideline reporter, but also like former
players a lot of times, you know, and you worked
with a lot of guys, and so I'm sure we're good.
So we're not, but but some of those guys come in.
In my experience, I didn't work with as many ex
(28:31):
athletes as you did. But over the years at Fox
Sports Radio, we've had guys come in and some of
the guys would come in and just think because they
played in the NFL, they just turn on the mic
and they can just talk, and it's it's not how
that works, right, I mean, you gotta, you gotta. I
worked with sixteen different Braves as analysts on the pre
and postgame show, everybody from John Smoltz and and Jeff Francoeur,
(28:55):
who are both tremendous at what they do. I'll tell
you a funny story. Uh been my first or second
year here when I came back to Atlanta, I'm doing
Braves and we were still doing the pregame show on
the field right in front of the dugout and small
it was small to his last year with the Braves. Well,
he blows out his shoulder and uh, he's not gonna
(29:17):
pitch for the rest of the season. But you know,
as a lot of the guys do, they they still
dressed in uniform and he's hanging out in the dugout.
On Sundays he would come out and host co host
the show with me and either Ron gann or Brian
Jordan's and he would do it in full uniform. It
was I mean, we're in a sport coat and there's
(29:37):
Smolty hat home whites. It was hilarious. And one time
it was pouring rain, so they turned the camera round
and Ron gant By, we get into the dugout and uh,
to get all three of us in the shot, Smolty
had to do kind of like the one cheek sneak
on the edge of the bench and the waters running
off the dugout and his left leg and left spike
(29:58):
are just getting soaking wet. And I looked over at
him and I said, you know, you may be a
future Hall of Famer, but in broadcasting you're the rookie,
so you have to get wet. We're staying dry, laughing
but I knew the very first day that he hosted
with US. I said, this man is going to have
a career in sports broadcasting and he is going to
(30:19):
go down as one of the all time great analysts
because John just, first of all, he can talk all right.
He's got a great sense of humor, and he's got
a great way to explain what you're seeing or what
you're about to see and make it so you understand.
You don't have to be a baseball connoisseur or a
baseball expert to understand what Smoltz is telling you. He
(30:41):
is really really good, which is why he's the main
analyst and Fox Now and you know on MLB Network,
he's really really really good. But on the other side,
and I won't keep you their names, there were two guys.
One was so he was so nervous it was like
broadcast news. He's sweating bullets left and right, you could
barely talk. And another guy was so nervous, he so quiet,
I wanted to sit there and go speak. Uh, you know,
(31:04):
And they're both great guys. They were very, very good players,
but once the red light went on, they were they
were horrible flops with any any blooper that. Yeah, I
have so many mistakes that I've made or just horrific
moments in radio over there is a good thing. We're
on radio, I'm in the middle of the night, but
you're on TV. Any was there any blooper that you
(31:25):
remember that you look back, You're like, I can't believe
that happened and that was unbelievably embarrassing or hilarious or
any of that. Well, we've we've had our moments. There's
no question. I will tell you that my most embarrassing
moment in my entire career is because nobody had ever
heard of her at the time. And when they when
(31:46):
they started CNN International, this was during the CNN days,
they would make us rundown. So we're doing our job.
I'm doing headline sports along there twice an hour, you know,
once an hour or whatever. So you know, it's the weekend.
There's nine million events going on, and we had to
report on all of them. So, I mean, you're getting
just blasted. You got all the baseball games going on
(32:06):
because it's all college football's happening. There's uh, you know,
the other sports, the NBA and the NHR crank. You
just got a million gazillion things. And at CNN, you know,
you didn't just cover the SEC or just the Big
ten or just your local school. You have to keep
an eye and all this stuff, so you're over inundated
with information. And then they're making us literally run down
(32:26):
a different flight of stairs into a different studio and
do like a two minute update on what's going on
in world sports. Like I knew what the hell was
going on in the bundesh Liga or in Formula one racing.
I did have time for them, so I ran down
there and there was some ski event going on I
don't know, and somebody just ripped, literally ripping and read.
One of these news producers go, while I'm on the air,
(32:48):
shows this piece of paper in me because an American
had won a downy old race in some Olympic preliminary thing.
And I looked at that. I've never heard this person.
I go a street instead of peekaboo. I looked at
the way she spelled that made what is this person?
I didn't know? I called the picaboy for the rest
(33:09):
of my life. You're going, hey, how's Picasso doing on
the slope. I think it's one of those embarrassing moments
that at two or three years ago. We are hosting
a postgame show Brian Jordan, and you could finance on
YouTube somewhere. I'm sure it lives. A matter of fact,
they just showed it on the air on mL Beating
Network the other day. Right in the middle of this
postgame show, this uh drunk jumps up on the on
the rail behind us. He's just waving a Braves jersey.
(33:32):
And one of our over zealous security guards, big heavy, round,
kind of fat Obert looking guy comes running behind us,
but he's not supposed to be on this on this
set area, and he runs behind us to shove the
guy off, and he trips over one of the electrical
cables back there, and there's a full face scorpion and
you see him go down and his two feet come
(33:55):
up in between Brian and I almost set our head
and I'm just like, hey, we're having an issue here,
let's get you downstairs. The Brian snicker and when they
came back and everybody shows that over and over because
the poor guy gets up, looks right in the camera,
walks away like nothing happened. It was so embarrassing for
him and Brian and I kept their composure. And then
during the during the manager's press conference, they're showing us
(34:17):
that on replay and he's standing there watching it. When
we came back, we were laughing so hard and couldn't talk.
We just couldn't talk. I think, I mean, I think
I've seen that. I'm sure. Yeah, it's one of those things.
It's just it's gonna live in infamy, and to this
day it's one of my biggest regrets because I should
have just I should have just thought and said, hey,
to quote that America Cinema classic Tommy Boy. That's gonna
(34:38):
leave a mark. But should I do it? Now? Whatever?
That's great, that's great. Now you know there's those bloopers
are all over. What are you gonna do? No, it's
good listen. That's make people laugh when I when I
look at in the NBA at JaVale McGee, who's bounced
around right, there's the video clip up that Shack did
(35:01):
on Shock and a Fool when JaVale Riggie was running
the wrong way, when everyone else in the court was
running running one direction and he was running the other.
I laugh every time I see that. It's the funniest
thing that I know in basketball, I think that there's
one guy out of ten guys on the court that's
running the wrong way. Uh, it's right. But you brought
up the headline sports CNN Headline News. Now, when I
(35:23):
met you, this was a big deal. Drum. I didn't
know what you look like. I had no idea, but
I knew the name, and I knew the name for
those young punks. Explain how big a reach you you
had at CNN Headline News. That was a very popular,
(35:43):
very popular outlet back in the days before social media,
right when people needed scores and but and whatnot. Yeah,
you know here, first of all, let me tell you,
let me explain why, and then I got a really
interesting story for you. Well, this was before cell phones,
This was before you had all this internet access. Uh,
(36:06):
this was before you had the crawl on the bottom
of your TV screen. As a matter of fact, CNN
Headline News was the first channel that had the crawl.
They had it exclusively for two years. And that was
a nightmare for us because when we first started at
these idiots and news had no idea about sports. So
on college football Saturday, they were literally putting every college
football score on there. So they were putting like an
(36:28):
AI scores on there, so you'd be waiting for the
Michigan Ohio state update you wouldn't see for five hours
because they're so in like Pomona's like, come on, just
take the main thing. So uh So, here's the deal.
If you were a sports fan, or more importantly, a
sports better, the only way you were going to get
updates on your teams if you weren't watching them on TV,
(36:49):
if they were out of market teams, you had to
wait until either CNN Sports Tonight or Sports Center at
eleven o'clock. So when at seven o'clock local time and
your team started, the only way to get an up
there until eleven was to watch CNN Headline Sports at
twenty after and fifty after the hour, because every thirty
minutes we updated the scores, so unbeknownst to us at
(37:11):
the time, everybody watched. Now, I always say I was
wildly popular with teenage and twenty year old boys and gamblers,
but I everywhere I would tell no, we weren't on camera.
You've just heard your own you're red about CNN Headlines spots,
and you know there's a story to that under itself,
but you know. I was at the airport one day
(37:33):
and I gave the guy the credit card. You looked
at my credit card, he goes, you're going to Atlanta. Saidyeah, goes,
You're not that CNN guy, are you. And that's when
I started to realize, Wow, this is kind of cool.
But it never dawned on me until the great Mario
Lemieu had a for years had a charity golf tournament
because he does such great work with children's cancer research
at the Children's Pittsburgh Hospital. And I, through a friend
(37:55):
after actually Andy Evan's light, got me involved with it.
I went up and I was the at the first tea.
I was announcing all the players, and I mean he
had everybody there. There's Gretty from you, there's Jordan and Barkley,
uh Elway and Marino, you name it, nothing but Hall
of Famers and all stars. And I'm standing there and
at the first team I'm giving every player this big introduction,
(38:18):
you know, and I look over the yeah, but the
you know, m v P, the Big Band and the
Big Red Machine, greatest catch up all time, Johnny Bench.
Everyone was clapping. Johnny Bench is putting his ball on
his tea and he looks up. He goes, that's what
you look like, and I'm like, yeah, you know. And
then next thing I know, him and Nick Monacani are
coming over and talking to me. And then after everyone's done,
(38:40):
all these guys are coming over talking to me. And
I'm sitting here thinking, oh my god, I am an
awe of every athlete in this room. And these guys
are all coming up because they all know who each
other are and what they look like. Nobody knew what
I looked like, and and that was like, that was
just It's one thing for the guy at Macy's or
a Delta Airlines to ask who you are. It's a
whole another thing when you got guys like Mark May
(39:03):
hanging out when you having a beer, and and and
John Elway, and when I when I went to Denver
because I got to know Elway on that thing. When
I went to Denver my very first Nuggets game. I'm
doing sidelines after the pregame show. It's the home opener.
They killed the house lights. They put a spotlight on
John Elway. He's up there, you know, in in one
of those baby Bloom Nuggets uniform. You know, he's waving
(39:24):
and you know, he's got at Denver and they're going crazy,
you know. And then when they do the anthem, next thing,
you know that the lights come up, always coming across
the court, and I'm standing in the corner where the
sideline guys are. I'm just standing up there and he's
coming with that big grin, you know, He's got this
big smile on his face, and I'm thinking to myself,
I'm looking at literally turning my head left and right,
looking over my shoulder. Who's he looking at. He comes
(39:46):
right over and gives me this big handshake and says,
welcome to Denver. And he look, I didn't know him
that well for him to do that for me. Everybody
in that arena saw me and said, I don't know
who that guy is doing sidelines, but if Elway likes them,
I like him. And he that was a huge boost
for me to start my career in Denver those two years.
To be accepted by ol Way that way, and that
(40:08):
made just you know, I did that for fourteen and
a half years, and that led the three jobs got
me the job at Fox Sports RA Radio, helped get
me the job in Denver, and then it got me
the h the job here doing the radio station at
sports Stock Radio here in Atlanta as well. I mean,
people knew the made and it was it was pretty amazing.
(40:29):
It was. It was a lot of fun, but you know,
it was on Q tone. Unlike you guys in Fox
Sports Radio, you want to go a little longer in
a segment. You go a little longer, you know, and
then you hit your commercial break. But at CNN, at
exactly you had exactly one minute forty two seconds to
a minute forty nine to wrap up your show, and
at one forty nine it cut you off. And you
did not want to hear at your room, you know,
(40:51):
and then go to youth. That would sound terrible. And
I didn't want to go too long. That was like
that was the Cardinal City. So I kept going short,
and finally I figured I got to get to it
one forty two, and I was hitting it about one
thirty five, so I just went drone you and I
just dragged it out to like eight seconds too. I
(41:12):
get to a minute forty five and when I when
it aired, I came out to the newsroom and everybody
was laughing, and I thought, if this got a reaction
out of all these jamokes and it was men and
women in there is the news room, there's one of
sports department. I said, I'm just gonna keep doing that,
and I kept doing it. My boss called me in
the next day and he goes, what are you doing
And I said, I'm just trying to add a little
(41:34):
spice and he goes, don't stop, and um, you know,
I stayed with it. And oh, I mean, I mean
the guys I worked with were great guys, very good guys.
But their names were Tom West, and Ron Hyde and
and Mark McKay and and there was just I mean,
I had a funky sounding name and I just between
that and the delivery, it's stuck. And it paid off
(41:55):
for him in my career. Yeah, and you had not
just the athletes. You have people at the White House.
I mean they were are leaders of countries that were
I mean everyone was white Airports. I remember CNN headline
news that I'd been traveling in in the hotel, hotels, anywhere,
airport lounges. I mean, everyone was watching everybody, every you know,
(42:18):
it was I don't know why the the geniuses that
took over that that we're screwed it up because it
was basically minute newscasts in a row, you know, every
thirty minutes would be a brand new newscast. So if
you missed your you know, if you missed NBC News
at seven or ABC at seven thirty, at nine o'clock,
you just started over. I supposed that these hour longer
talk shows you know on Fox right or CNN, it's MSNBC,
(42:40):
it's it was a It was a niche format, but
it was highly successful. And I don't know why they
ever broke away from that, but to your point, so
many people watched it was unbelievable. I'll never forget. One
day I picked up you know, I'm just reading through
my Sports Illustrated, and there's an article on Sparky. He
was courting of his career, Sparky Anderson, and they were
asking I'm the reporter asked him in the article, and
(43:02):
they said, well, Sparky, what do you do at your
age when you know, when you're on the road, I mean,
you've seen it all, You've been everywhere. What do you do?
He goes, I just go back to my hotel room
and I could see ann headline news on all evening long,
and I watched every one of those sportscasts every thirty minutes.
So I'm like, oh my god, Parkie Anderson sticking around
just to hear you know, that's great. Yeah. So when
(43:24):
you at CNN like you because you're on it's weird.
As you said, you're on television, but you're not like that,
nobody sees you. So do you have to get dressed
up like TV people have to get dressed up? Or
can you just go in there and just kind of
lounge around because at CNN that they requires like a
dress code at CNN or that, well, they didn't have
a dress code back then, but eventually when they started
(43:46):
the international stuff, they were making the headline sports anchors
double dips, so we had to go in and suit
and tie them. But on the weekends, when you know,
when we weren't doing anything on camera, when it was
just the headline sports, we which go in and a
polo shirt and in jeans that you weren't allowed to
wear shorts, even though most guys wanted to, but we
just you know, it was crazy. We had a good
(44:08):
crew back then at the old CNN days because we
had Dan Patrick and Gary Miller were our weekend guys,
and uh, we had Fred Hickman and the legendary Nick
Charles were on Monday through Friday. Guys, we we just
you know, hand a storm and Dan Hicks came and
they were like our number three team. We had a
lot of talented individuals, you Bob Lorenz and Uh, it
(44:29):
was I was never gonna get on camera there because
those people ahead of the event, Clini, they were all
so talented. And I was like, you know, that was
the bottom of the totem pool and uh, and that's
what led to the radio gig, and then the radio
gig led to getting a chance back on camera and uh,
you were asking about Denver. You know, in hindsight, UM,
(44:51):
I met good people. I gained a tremendous amount of
experience doing those pre and postgame shows. Um, it was
a very difficult situation for me, but it was a
great transitional I mean, if I had to do it
all over again, I would have yes, and maybe UH
tried to manipulate my bosses into trying to do things
the right way, but that was a no win situation.
(45:13):
But it led to a position in Atlanta. So um,
the people that there were two people that were above
me there that were complete morons and what I'm still
there and that's a shame because the people that still
worked there that I know still complained about them fifteen
sixteen years later. But you know, things are what they are.
I mean, we've all had bad bosses in our life.
We've all had great bosses in our life. And and
(45:36):
then you know, it was it is what it is.
I mean, CNN was a great run. Uh, Denver was fun.
I'm glad I got to experience the city of Denver
the Rocky Mountains for two years. You know that that
was pretty cool. UM. One great part of that ben
one of my favorite baseball players of all times, Goose Gossip.
So Mark P. Knudson, who had who played American leaguball
(45:59):
mostly for the Brew was at the time UM organized
a charity hardball game at the Triple A Stadium in
Colorado Springs. So you know, he was on our show
every once in a while. So you know, Mark asked
me and maybe four or five members of the media
and Denver if he wanted to come down and playing
since you're what, you know, I'm thinking it's gonna be softball.
(46:20):
It's hardball. And there is a bevy of former Major
leaguers and major league umpires that live in that area
because they all love to hunt. So I go down there,
and first of all, he got all the All Star
uniforms that were left over from the All Star Game
in Houston the year before. So we're wearing major league,
you know, uniforms. It was pretty cool. And we're sitting
(46:43):
there with all of these players, and I knew Goose
was coming, so I brought I got a Yankees Gossipe jersey,
so I brought him down to sign it, and he
was genuinely touched. We're sitting there just bs and over
his time with the Pirates. He said he never wanted
to leave Pittsburgh. He said that the day that he
saw Mind agreed to the Yankees, him and his wife
sat in his in his pickup truck in the parking
(47:05):
a lot of three River Stadium and cried, that's so much.
He loved living in Western Pa and playing for the Pirates,
but they couldn't turn the money down. They had to
go to New York. And so we're sitting there, we're
talking and next thing you know, we're taking v P
and I go to take VP and Gossage goes. I
got this good steps in there and I'm like, oh
my god, I get the hit off goose gossage. So
(47:26):
because where do you want it? So I put, like,
you know, belt high fastball. So he throws one in there.
I don't even see it, and I'm like, come on, man,
every one of these guys could still throw an any
as as well as they could when they were in
their hated They just couldn't throw a morning any. So
he loves one in there and I turned on it
and I actually ripped it, but it was filed. So
(47:47):
he looked at me. He gives me like a little nod,
like god, I wasn't bad, right. He dusted me high
and inside, right underneath the chin. To me, it was
the greatest sporting the moment of my life. I got
through the lat The next pitch bind you throw so
fast I don't even know. I think it was back
(48:07):
in his glove by the time I was done swinging
the bat. He threw it so damn hard. But that
was just one. I mean to get to clay. But
all those guys, there were a lot of major leaders
out there. That was a lot of fun. Well, when
you when you talk, you are Western Pennsylvania. Did you
ever and I don't know what you did before CNN.
I know you started in Pennsylvania. Did you ever consider
going back and did you ever have the opportunity to
(48:29):
work in Pittsburgh like with the Pirates or the Penguins, Steve?
I never did. And you know, for year, all those
years at CNN, every time a job opening in Pittsburgh,
you know, appeared, I applied, And I mean I was begging.
I begged to get back there for ten to twelve years.
(48:51):
I just could not catch your breaking because I wasn't
on camera on a regular basis at CNN. I just
didn't have a resume real good enough for TV at
the time. And by the time and opening occurred after
I had been back here for a while in Atlanta,
it just wasn't gonna work out. The money wasn't what
(49:12):
it was going to be, and it just it would
have been it would have been almost like a demotion
for me for less pay and a different position. And
you know, I even thought about it at the time,
but I was just beginning to date my now second wife,
and she was settled in here, her kids were in
school here, and I'm like, I can't take less money
(49:33):
to go to Pittsburgh, and my my parents had already
moved out. They had relocated. My brother lives in Texas,
and they relocated to San Antonio with him. And I'm like, look,
I got a handful of relatives and a really good,
hardcore group of friends there, but my parents aren't there anymore.
So it's not really you know, it'll always be home.
But it wasn't home because they weren't there. And I
(49:55):
just thought, I'm not gonna ask this woman to relocate
for me. She settled unsettled, so it would have been
it would have been a labor of love for me.
You know. I wouldn't have cared what the income was
because it would have been steelers pirates payments in penn
State pit you know. But never, never, never really came.
I did start in Western Pa and Erie, Pennsylvania. I
grew up in a small town fair all about halfway
(50:17):
right on the Ohio Pennsylvania line. My my great aunt
lived on State Line Road, a single lane blacktop road.
She was on Pennsylvania. You walked across the street or
neighboring r in Ohio and uh, my uncle's would get
drunk at Christmas time at my parents house, and you'd
started arguing Steelers Browns because it was crazy. It was
just crazy. Um, so I'm living in Erie. Let me
(50:39):
tell you one quick story about Aree, which is awesome.
Nine two, I finally get on camera in Eurie p Ad.
It started the year before behind the scenes, um, weekend sports.
Erie was just getting cable TV at the time. Ere
He was kind of behind the times, still probably is.
And I go in there on the weekends. You know,
(51:01):
most weekends sportscasts are like three and a half minutes long, right,
maybe four Not where I was, they are we are
news department was so understaffed. They're like, Jerome, how much
can you feel? I said, give me eight minutes. I
was recording everything. I mean, I'm showing highlights from the
Islanders Rangers. I'm showing what he didn't matter if it
was on table that day. I was cutting down thirty
seconds of each game. And you know, so people loved it.
(51:25):
It was like a mini sports center. And after about
three and a half weeks, Meadville, PA, this tiny little
western Pennsylvania town where the great uh Sharon Sharon Stone,
the actresses from It's maybe fifteen thousand people. But they
had a heck of a sports banquet for their high school.
They would bring in Pirates and Indians and Steelers and Browns.
(51:46):
It was a big, big deal. So Jim Leland just
gets hired to be the Pirates manager, and the Monday
through Friday guy goes, Hey, go down there and try
to get an interview with Leland. I'll keep in mind, Ben,
this is before the internet. The only way we knew
who Jim Leland, so here's the third base coach for
the White Sox, was to look at that little black
and white photo in the team media guide we had.
And we didn't even have the American League, so I
(52:07):
had no idea what he looked like. So I go
down there and the guy at the front door, they're
handing out a baseball to everybody to get autographed. Star
Joel was there, Andre Thornton, people like that, and it
was mostly for the kids, you know, but they're giving
a baseball to everybody, and the guy pulls me aside.
He was, Hey, I love watching you. I know you're
the new guy in town, but you're the only guy
(52:28):
showing NBA highlights. I love the NBA. I'm gonna do
you a favor. Go in the kitchen. You're gonna be surprised,
trust me. And I'm thinking, what he was, just go
in the kitchen. So I go in the kitchen. Meanwhile,
everybody's out there. You know, I got a quick interview
with star Joel and Leland and it wasn't there. So
I go in the kitchen and you know, next thing
I know, the back door opens up. It's sort of
(52:50):
like a scene out of good Fellas. These three big
gumbas come in and right behind him Joe DiMaggio. Whoa.
I'm like, oh my lord. They had a guest speaker,
but nobody knew who it was. It's Joe Demaggio. So
I tell him my cameraman, flick your late on. I go,
Mr DiMaggio, Can I get a couple of questions? I
was so nervous. Then I called him Mr DiMaggio and
(53:12):
every question So I asked them five questions and about
three questions in one of the you know those big
guys security guys, all right, wrap it up. So I
asked him one more care you know something. I don't
know what it was, and then he goes, okay, last one,
and I nodded to him I said sure, and about
three or four questions in rumor, you know, kind of
spilled out. So all of a sudden, these little kids
(53:35):
start flooding through those doors that the waiters come in
and out of, and they're at the bottom of the
camera shot where you would see like your score crawl.
Now all you see are pens and baseballs from these
little hands shooting up into the bottom of the screen,
and Joe just starts grabbing him and he's signing him
as he's answering my final two questions, which I thought
(53:56):
was really cool, And after the fifth question, I thanked
him for his time, told him what an honor it
was was, And after my cameraman, you know, clicked off
on the recording, I said, Mr Demasha, and he turned around.
I said, look, I know this is completely unprofessional, but
we're not in a ballpark and you're Joe Tomasa. Would
(54:16):
you sign my ball too? He goes absolutely, and the
autographed my ball, and I said, I know I'm not
really supposed to do this, but my goodness, Ben, it
was I got that ball in too safe right now.
I probably only asked for maybe three autographs of my
entire career. Josha that's an all time, that's an all
That's a wonderful story. All right, we gotta wrap this up.
And you're we're retired now, Drew. I can't believe you're
(54:39):
you're retired? You know. Yeah, it's amazing to me. So
are you gonna Are you gonna do the traditional retirement
thing and get like a Winnebago and travel around the country? Like,
have you thought about what's next for you? You know? Uh?
People keep pestering me to do a podcast, but I'm like,
why would I do a podcast when everybody listens to
Ben mallor no one will listen to me? So I
(55:01):
want to take a break. I am gonna fill in
this Monday on one of the local stations. One of
my buddies is off doing something, so they asked me
to just do morning Drive on Monday. I said, all right,
I'll do it because the Braves in the playoffs and
Hawks are getting going. But I don't want to do
a whole lot. I want to kick back. Um, we're
doing three weeks in Europe next year, and if my
wife really likes it in a year, once the final
(55:24):
Kick gets out of high school, we may actually move
to Europe. For a summer anywhere from four to six months.
We're gonna tour all six parts out in Utah. The
National Parks were big into that. I gotta hit back
to wine Kenny. We got a lot of traveling. We're
gonna do a lot of traveling. We're just gonna take
the rest of this year and kind of kick back
and then we're we got like six trips already planned
(55:45):
for next year. So it's gonna be most you know, hey, look,
as you know, when you work in sports broadcasting out
of Charac it's radio and TV. You're working nights and weekends.
And you know I did that for forty years. So
you know, every time the guys in the neighbor got
together play poker, or they wanted to go to a ballgame,
or you know the one you know, two or three
couples wanted to go just go get dinner or go
(56:05):
to a concert. At the last minute, I always had
to say no. And uh, I'm just gonna try to
make up for lost time. That's what I'm gonna do.
Kick I'm gonna complain about my Steelers on Sunday. I'm
gonna can't I can't wait for Crosby to get back
out on the ice, and I'm gonna watch the Braves
have a nice run here in the playoffs, and hopefully
Trey Young will be very entertaining in the winter, because
(56:26):
I think the Hawks are gonna be good again. So
I'm just gonna be a fan. Man, Now you're gonna
be a fan. Nice. Well, Hey, if you end up
at in California, I'm sure you've been to Sequoia. That's
my one of my favorite spots from the giant forest
which almost burned up a couple of months ago. I
think it was a couple of months ago, maybe a
month ago. I saw that they put the giant foil
(56:46):
around the bottom of the that that is an amazing plaisodia.
You end up there, yeah, give me, give me a
buzz in the we'll get already together. We'll get the
old game together. We'll have Yeah, Elie is gonna be
one of our ops. We were supposed to be out
there for the L. S u u c l A game.
My uh my stepson loves L. S u. Four of
(57:07):
his first cousins all went to L. S Ue is
uncle and uncle living Betton Rouge. So they have become
our adopted SEC team, but work, and that was his
first week of college. He goes locally here to one
of the colleges, and he just couldn't. He couldn't take
off the first two days of college to fly out
to l A. Sou l A is definitely, uh, definitely
(57:29):
on the list. So when I do, I'll give your
heads up because I would love to see all you
guys a goat, no question about that. Awesome. Thank you, Jerome.
I appreciate it. Man, thanks for doing this. You're the man.
Ben
Host
Ben Maller
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