February 14, 2024 • 56 mins
Can you imagine the thrill of being able to turn your passion into a career? Anthony Passarelli’s love for broadcasting began as a child attending San Francisco Giants games. Anthony shares his incredible journey with us. As an experienced radio announcer, the voice of the Santa Clara Broncos knows the ins and outs of calling games. But he also knows that doing television and radio are two very different beasts. He fills us in on the nuances and challenges of each medium, giving us a glimpse into what it takes to be successful in both. Anthony’s one of the good guys in the industry, always striving to deliver the best experience for his listeners. From nail-biting finishes to record-breaking performances, Anthony reflects on these moments with fondness and excitement.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
In the show. Hey Erica,how are you. I'm doing wonderful.
Welcome to the Spin Chicks. We'reglad to have you listen. I'm excited.
You know what's coming up your birthday? Oh yes, but a little
bit down the road March Madness.Madness sad about football season, but that's
(00:31):
always something to look forward to.I love March Madness. And we both
work from home now so we don'thave to have the boss protect or whatever
it is. When you know you'relike watching the games at work and you
hit the screen and like a bigspreadsheet of numbers comes up. No boss
of mine would ever believe that theywould walk up behind me and be,
you don't know a whole lot aboutnumbers? What's going on here? Oh?
(00:51):
I thought everybody's watching March Madness.It's just an excuse to be streaming
out everything. All the games.Very exciting. But I know, like
even back in the day, likewe worked together for a short time,
but we got to work a coupleof the NCAA, like the hosting rounds
back in Chicago. Yeah, wedon't want to date ourselves, but well,
what was your job? I thinkI was a runner and maybe sat
(01:17):
underneath the basket to watch the photographers. Nice. Nice. I don't remember
too much of the action and everythingbecause my job was to moderate the press
conference, and of course Duke wasthere, so all I was worried about
was saying the coach's name correctly,and that's all I could concentrate on.
And I didn't even look at thename card. I just sat there and
(01:38):
I was like Rzewski, Krzyzewski.And again, don't know who won or
lost. Don't remember. Oh Iremember. I totally remember who won that
one. Cal upset Duke, andthat team had Jason Kidd. God,
we're really dating ourselves, Jason KiddMurray, I think love it when the
(02:01):
players that you watched they're like nowcoaching or like weretired. Yeah exactly,
I'm like, but this was veryvery early in our careers. We were
interacted at the time, so veryearly. But I remember the president of
Cal running on the court after thegame because he was so excited they beat
(02:22):
Duke. It's hilarious, this littleman. And there are some things I
remember about that after post game too. It's a little kind of crazy on
the Cal side. So it isexciting though well, and I think that's
the only one we may have gotto work together, but I think we
both worked countless. NCAA post seasonevents always fun, March madness always brings
(02:44):
the drama, the whole thing.So looking forward to it again. But
our guest today has some basketball ties. Yes, Anthony Pasarelli is the voice
of the Broncos Santa Clara University Broncomen's basketball team. He has been for
gosh, I don't know long time, fifteen twenty years, so he's called
some he's called some great games,and he's certainly called some duds. So
(03:06):
well, from what you have saidand what I've read up, he was
just kind of born to be abroadcaster, So I'm glad he's kind of
living out that dream. It'll befun to talk to him a little bit
about some behind the scenes because boy, when you're like radio right there,
you see a lot. So lookingforward to talking to Anthony. Yeah.
I think he was born, youknow, just like we said, Eric
Hemery was born with a coach's playbookin his hand. He was born with
(03:31):
a mic in his hand because hereally loves doing play by play. So
all right, let's do it,all right, Anthony, Welcome to the
spin Chicks. How are you.I'm doing well, Thanks for having me,
nice to see Michelle, see youagain. And Eric, nice to
meet you. Absolutely having you.Yeah, well, let's just jump right
(03:54):
in. I mean, being aplay by play just in general, has
to be one of the toughest jobsout there, I think. So how
do you do it? Well,that's interesting. I it doesn't feel hard
to me. And I don't knowif it's because I've been doing it a
long time or it's something I alwayswanted to do. Like I was one
of the people or kids or whateverthat would sleep with a radio under my
(04:17):
pillow. And that's back when yourradio wasn't your phone. It was an
actual radio and you put it underyour pillow and there was a dial you
turn to get to different stations.And so when I was in an elementary
school and I was going to bedearly, I was the Giants were on.
I'm a San Francisco Giants fan withit was baseball or basketball or whatever.
I played those sports when I wasa kid. So I would listen
(04:39):
to those games at night and hearthe crowd and hear the announcer's excitement and
thought, I wish I were thereinstead of listening to it under my pillow.
So it was pretty early it wasthis is what I think I want
to do. How do I getto go to the games where they pay
me and I don't have to payto see the games? That was one
(05:00):
of the jobs that you could do. And so I all of a sudden
became hyper focused on radio play byplay announcers, TV play by play announcers,
the words they used, how theygot excited, and just it just
seemed like such a heaven like placefor somebody like me who loves sports.
So it never really seems hard,and unless it's a really bad game,
(05:26):
then it seems hard. So howdo you keep it like you're a basketball
announcer and there's a lot of actiongoing on? How do you know you
don't say, like trestling? Hepasses it to Foster, who passes it
to brown Ridge, who gets readyto shoot, and he rebounds. I
mean, how do you say,how do you keep your mouth moving that
fast? That wasn't even fast,But how do you keep it moving that
(05:49):
fast and your eyes moving that fast? And then you're looking down at your
statu sheet and keep it all straight? Are you a second behind the action.
Are you right in the action?When I first started, I tried
to be right on top of theaction, and that's when I made most
of my mistakes. By the way, that was very good play by play.
If you you might want to getlook into some maybe junior college where
(06:11):
nearby where you live. Those guysplay on the same teams with the Broncos.
But I give it a world thereyou go. It was good.
No, but it's I think youget used to. So I started doing
play by play for baseball, andthat's a lot slower in college. And
my buddy of mine sent the cassettetapes to me and said, this is
the first game you ever did,and it was dreadful. And I can't
(06:33):
when I want a good laugh orI think I've had a really good game.
I just put those cassettes in andlistened to that game because it was
a nightmare. And I try tobe on top of the like a split
second behind the action. And whatI've learned over the years is if you
can be a little bit further behindthe action if you're on radio, obviously
because your listener can't see it,but it allows you to call it a
(06:56):
little more descriptively, not too differentfrom what you were doing. That's a
that's a radio call, follow theball. I had a couple of mentors
when I was coming up and tryingto get jobs in radio, and they
both said, if it's basketball orbaseball or football, whatever it is,
soccer, the listener needs to knowwhere the ball is at all times.
So you would do that similar onradio. We're on TV, which was
(07:17):
really difficult for me for years.I would people would say, don't you
want to be on TV. Isaid, no, I think I've got
I think I look pretty good onradio. I think that's perfect for me.
But I think when you're talking aboutthe difference between TV and radio,
I feel like sometimes with TV,people have a tendency just to want to
turn the person down. When you'reon radio, you're really presenting the visual
(07:41):
because they don't have it. Sodo you prefer it? Sounds like you
prefer radio, clearly, but notjust I do prefer radio. Sorry to
interrupt Erica, I do prefer radio. And part of it is because then
it's like it's not just the ballgoes up into the air, the first
pitch is thrown out or they,you know, do the first kick of
the soccer game. It starts withyour pregame show, it starts with the
(08:01):
interviews you've done that week, andnow you're setting up a two hour story
where nobody knows the beginning, middle, and end of it until it happens.
So you can bring in the coacheson the pregame show and the information
you learned off the interview. Thenyou have, you know, the first
media timeout of a basketball game andeverything that's happened up until that point,
(08:22):
and you can craft the story frombeginning to end. And then it's like
a choose your own adventure. Duringthe course of the game, it goes
different directions, and that's the mostexciting part for me. But yeah,
very different TV and radio, andI was terrified. I think I worked
in radio for probably fifteen twenty yearsbefore I did my first TV game,
(08:43):
and I was terrified, What wasyour first TV game? My first TV
game was doing soccer for the SansEarthquakes and MLS and it was in twenty
fourteen, and it was with aveteran production crew and somebody my analyst,
had done soccer before, and theyreally didn't tell me much. I don't
(09:05):
know what that is they didn't really. I wasn't asking for help. I
thought, well, you should justact like you can do it. You
just got to do it. Andso we went to take the open and
I was making it up off thetop of my head, and my producer
was saying, hey, these arethe graphics were showing it. This is
the this is the b roll thehighlights for you have to talk about this
(09:26):
stuff. So it took about fourtakes and we finally got it right.
And I learned very quickly from aveteran and this guy used to work for
the LA Dodgers when Vince Skeully wason TV, and he's like, you're
doing it all wrong, and thisis how you need to do it next
time. And so you learned veryquickly because you would think TV and radio,
(09:48):
what's the difference. A broadcaster isa broadcaster? Yeah, well,
my my having a producer in yourear in IFB saying and roll you know,
roll tape, or we're going toshow this commer, or we're going
to show do this live read orhere's a close up of the coach.
Be ready to talk, I mean, and you can have the talkback button.
You could talk back to the truckand kind of set up what you
want the storylines to be. Butwhen you're doing radio, it's all you.
(10:13):
I mean, there might be somebodyback at the station playing the commercial,
but you're setting up the entire story. And it took me a while
to learn that. In TV it'sa bigger team telling the story, not
just you, and so it didtake a little while. Well, I
think what I would struggle with maybeis that do you ever have to like
be quiet, like not talk likeand TV like you've got the visuals.
(10:35):
I mean, people can take abreak, but like, do you feel
like in radio like you just alwayshave to be saying something during the broadcast
or is there a time when silenceis okay? Well? For TV,
definitely, And that took me awhile to learn as well. I had
a producer my first year of doingsoccer on TV tell me to let it
breathe, Anthony, you don't haveto talk the entire time. They can
(10:56):
see where the ball is, theycan see which player has it. You
should be adding to it. Andreally, for me, TV is setting
up the analyst, right because theanalyst, unall likelihood was a former player,
has been in the locker room orthe boot room or whatever, and
can add a lot more than justsaying what the play is and what's happening.
In statistics for radio, it alldepends on what If I'm quiet.
(11:18):
This is just my opinion. Everybodydoes it differently. If I'm quiet,
what is the listener here? Soif it's a big call, like you
know, like let's say it's ahome run, the crowd's going to be
yelling, so you can kind oflay out and not talk while there's you
know, crowd noise, or ifthere's officials talking near the scorer's table.
(11:41):
Sometimes I'll stop talking so that thelistener can hear what the officials are talking
about at the review at the reviewmonitor and so as you can already tell,
I love to hear the sound ofmy own voice, but there are
times when I stop talking to letthe listener hear what might be going on
inside the gym or or the baseballstadium. So what's one question that you
(12:05):
get from listeners that surprises you?Like something they've asked in the past that
you're like what The question I getmost often is how do you know all
that information? And sometimes like MLS, I mean you used to do this
create the notes package. Obviously thegame notes MLS does a game notes package
(12:28):
for the home team visiting team,and then the league sends something on an
overview of the match. And soI just have to say I didn't uncover
all this information. I don't sitin front of the laptop for hours and
hours and hours. I just gothrough and I try and find the things
from the notes that are provided.And if you do a team like I've
done Santa Clara for a long time, there's certain storylines I just know,
(12:52):
like I don't know, I knowwhen a player is likely coming up on
a thousand points for his career,or I don't know. Just some things
you just know because you follow theteam and you might watch film that day
or that type of thing. Butthat's the one I think. I think
there's a sense of Wow, thisperson really knows a lot about this team
because they research and are laboring overthe laptop. But the reality is is
(13:16):
that there's people giving us the informationthat drastically helps our broadcast. And that's
what I rely on quite a bit. I do do research on my own
try and uncover some things. Nowthat they make notes available to the fans,
because you can download those off thewebsite. So I look for things
that maybe the fan or the listenerwouldn't have gotten from that or couldn't get
(13:39):
from that, so I can addsomething extra on radio or television. It's
really I mean, when you thinkabout it, Erica, it's really kind
of interesting. We're going to somedaysoon we're going to get somebody that's been
a a color analyst for men's basketballat South Carolina for thirty something years,
Casey Manning, and it'll be interestingto talk to him about what it's like
(14:01):
to compliment a the play by playas opposed to So what's it like for
you to compliment what an analyst does? You said, many times it's a
former player and they give you someinformation. So what's it like for you
when you work with somebody You talkedabout working with the earthquake soccer? Yeah,
(14:22):
yeah, Well I've been super luckythat my analyst with the earthquakes on
two years for radio in nine yearson TV was Chris Dangerfield, who's a
good friend of mine now and heplayed in the seventies and he played in
Portland. He's from England. He'sgot great phrasing about things. An immense
amount of knowledge having played an MLS, and if I could set him up
(14:48):
to be the star and be theone who is providing a lot of the
entertainment, and I kind of playedit more of a down the line,
get straight down the line, thisis the play balls here. You know,
that was the third time in thisgame that you know whatever happened off
sides, or it takes a while, like when you're first starting out,
you do a lot of looking ateach other so that you're not talking while
(15:11):
the other one's talking, or can'tsee in the person's eyes that they're really
excited about something so I should backoff and let them finish. And then
by the time we were done,after our eleven years, we didn't even
have to look at each other.He knew my cadence. He knew when
it was time for him to talk. He knew when the replay came up
on the monitor it was his timeto shine. He knew when there was
(15:31):
a live ad read that was mine. I read the commercials. But it
does take a while, And thereare different kinds of analysts that I've worked
with. One type of analyst islike might be a big cheerleader, like
really excited. I don't remember theChicago Cubs Ron Santo, who was the
analyst for years on radio, soexcited. And sometimes he would talk over
(15:54):
Pat Hughes, who's from where Ilive right now. He's in the Barry
and my kids went to the samego to the same school he did.
But some are cheerleaders, some getreal excited, and others are ex's and
o's like they will be like formercoaches, especially, they can tell you
exactly why this team set up thistype of defense off of the main free
throw and all that sort of things. So I prefer a mix of those
(16:15):
two. But I can work witheither one, and there's different aspects that
are important for both of them.So how is play by play different from
let's say basketball to soccer to maybea volleyball? Yeah, and I've only
learned, just learned volleyball in thelast probably a handful of years. Always
(16:37):
interested in learning about a new sport. And when I started in baseball some
I did a year of minor leaguebaseball after college and got to ride buses
up there. You went to ChicoState, Yeah, I went to Chico
State. They had a great stateErica. Yeah, Okay, it's a
big party school. Okay, Well, but what I will say is if
(17:02):
you were into that sort of thing, there was plenty of it for you
to do. But as I pushup my glasses, I was the guy
who was at the radio station onSaturday morning at seven point thirty getting the
equipment to go out to a collegebaseball game that nobody would hear so I
could send it back to our littlestudent radio station that you had to plug
in a coaxial cable into the backof your tuner and then find the Yeah,
(17:27):
it was a big production. ButI those words coax cable because I
remember sometimes at Santa Clair wouldn't beworking, be like I don't know,
and I'd be like, I don'tknow. I have enough stress about this
game. I can't do that.You're gonna have to figure it out.
And you always knew it. Youwould just look at me and be like,
I don't know why this isn't working. Not the right girl to ask
(17:48):
that question, too, right,And so while I did enjoy my time
at Chico State, I would havebuddies call me from the bars and say,
hey, are you coming out ordo you have a game tomorrow?
And so I would sitting out therein the rain try to soldering equipment together
to get ready for a doubleheader.Again that nobody would listen to but baseball.
And then I went on to dominor league. Some of those baseball
(18:08):
games were four and a half hoursand there might be like a thirty five
minute rain delay, and the stationthat we were on in Monterey, they
didn't like you didn't throw it backto the station for their programming until the
game was ready to go on.You stayed on. And so back then,
(18:29):
so you know my age, theInternet was not really a big deal
back then, So I subscribed toevery baseball periodical, Baseball America, local
newspapers I would pick up on myway into the ballpark, and I would
read books. I have a bookabout the California League, minor league baseball,
and some of the promotions that theyused to do in the cal League,
(18:52):
including I think Ricky Henderson once raceda horse in the outfield. Absolutely,
and so I on the internet absolutelyabsolutely playing in the California League.
Yes he did. Yeah, Andso I would go to the library and
check out books on baseball and justjust and I would jot down notes in
(19:15):
a notebook and if it looked likewe were it was going to be raining,
or the score was twenty seven tosix in the fifth inning, I
would start going through the notebook.And so baseball has the plus is you
can tell stories a lot easier inbaseball because the action. There's a lot
of time in between action, eventhough baseball trying to change that. But
(19:38):
for basketball, it's happening, happening, happening, happening, and so I
enjoy that part of it. Ienjoy the baseball storytelling part of it,
and I came to enjoy the soccerpart, which is no commercials for forty
five minutes until you get to halftime. So you're on and you're talking,
and then you have to be realclear on Okay, if the ball's out
of play, now I can starttelling a story. But if the ball
(20:00):
is, you know, thirty yardsfrom goal and one team is attacking and
they're getting close to scoring, nota great time to start a story.
So that, yeah, well,he would tell a story regardless of what
was happening. One of my favorites. Yeah, so it's some of your
favorites for baseball. I think Imentioned Vince Scully. I mean, he's
(20:25):
just when I was had the theradio under the pillow, I could catch
KDEWN Las Vegas from California, SanJose, California in the Bay Area.
So I'd finished listening to the Giants, and then I would turn it over
the dial. I think from sixeighty am on the dial to seven twenty
am, so it wasn't far andI could hear the end of the Dodger
game. And I'm not a Dodgerfan, but I'm a huge Vin Scully
(20:48):
fan, and so i Vin Scullyis one of my favorites. There are
quite a few soccer play by playguys who I just am like, I
don't know how you do it,Like they are so good and so engaging.
Basketball. There's a guy in Sacramentonamed Gary Jerrell who has been doing
it for years for the Sacramento Kings, and I worked in Sacramento for a
(21:11):
couple of years, and he justhas such a smooth way of talking.
And it's kind of like a pastgeneration of broadcasters that really you can just
kind of feel their personality. AndI think that's harder to do for the
subsequent generations because we're so focused ondoing play by play and being a clear
(21:32):
play by play broadcaster that back thenthey had other jobs and they did play
by play, so it's not asmaybe well rounded from a life standpoint and
to bring that character. But thoseguys are fantastic. I feel like,
definitely it is an art form becauseI think not everybody can just kind of
especially in radio, because you're really, like you said, telling the story.
(21:53):
And then I think people form ofyou know, they get familiar and
they just associate a lot of memoriesand things with a voice like that.
So in some ways, I don'tknow, I mean, do you think
what do you think has been thebiggest change from like when you started till
now in your career? You mean, like, yeah, here, I
haven't had here since I was seventeen, I think, so it's been a
(22:15):
while. You knew that, youknew that that was a traumatic experience maybe
for another podcast, But what haschanged? So what has changed is the
technology has changed clearly. I meannow you can be a play by play
broadcaster just by going Facebook live orLinkedIn live or on Twitter or Twitch or
(22:41):
any of those places, and youcan still bury all the same equipment around
that you did when I was atSanta Clara, same stuff that you broadcast
off, or do you have newstuff. We might have some newer equipment.
Like most of its streaming now.So it used to be you had
to have a radio station to getyour broadcast dot out. Now you can
just uh, you can just streamit. And so we streamed the broadcast
(23:04):
the Santa Clair broadcast off our websiteand we don't have a radio station for
the first time in seventeen years sinceI've been doing it. And it's a
lot of it has to do withbudget, and so it does cost to
get on a radio station. Obviously, schools, the big schools, like
the Power Conference schools are all goingto have a radio network that goes into
(23:29):
the you know, town that thecollege is in, plus surrounding areas like
in Spokane, Gonzaga University still hastheir network. But here in the Bay
Area, I mean a lot ofschools are going to just streaming their broadcasts
and so that's something that's changed drasticallyas you used to have to sell ads
and make sure you had a stationand all that sort of thing, and
some schools still do that, butyou know, uh seven up, yeah,
(23:55):
yeah, yeah, we'll do we'lldo sponsors of the school, so
it's you know, they might besponsoring other things, and part of the
packages they get to have a thirtysecond or sixty second commercial or a live
announcer read. So we still dosome of those things, but the streaming
versus having to be on commercial radioand everything is subscription based now or just
(24:18):
about everything. So we do ourgames on ESPN Plus and so you have
to buy a subscription for that tobe able to watch those games. And
so many other places right, Socbssports dot com does games, Fox Sports
one, Fox Sports two, thedifferent ESPN properties, there's Peacock. There's
a lot of different places to getgames now. And it's not just you
(24:44):
know, Georgetown and Villanova are goingto be on the Big East Game of
the Week and now almost every gameis on. If I wanted to look
at our opponent for this Thursday,Santa Clair plays Pacific. The West Coast
Conference has a deal with ESPN Plusthat all of our games are on ESPN
Plus. So I can go watchall of Pacific's home games because they're on
(25:07):
ESPN Plus archived, and so it'sjust very different. There's a lot more
access to content and makes my jobeasier. But from the standpoint of where
broadcasters used to kind of have topay their dues to move up, you
don't really have to do that asmuch anymore, which can be good in
that you may find that person whois ready, or people ready right out
(25:30):
of the gate. They're nineteen andthey're so good that they can be on
right away. They don't have towait for ten years or five years.
But then you also get some folksthat maybe could use a little more seasoning,
and they're on right away. Sothey're kind of learning by fire,
trial by fire, and I thinkthat can backfire in some cases, but
I think it goes both ways.You talked about, you know, doing
(25:52):
minor league baseball and how how manyguys are getting their chops cut or whatever
the word is doing minor league anddoing minor league sports, and that's where
they get started. You know,they have an internship in college and they
do some minor league baseball and thenyou know, go from there and then
like John Nash, then you goin go into real estate instead of doing
(26:15):
broadcasting. But it was really good. I have quite a few friends when
I was starting out. We wereall starting out, like in the Western
League, or starting in college basketball, or I was in Sacramento for a
couple of years and just used totake my recorder, my laptop, and
my equipment to Sack State games,and I made friends with the sports information
(26:37):
director there, and I covered thegames for the station I was working for,
but I didn't have a play byplay job, and I wanted to
stay fresh, so I just tookmy stuff there and sat in the upper
level of the Hornet's Nest is whatthey call it, the Sack State Hornets,
and I would just record and doa game for two hours and nobody
heard it. I'd go back andI'd listen to a little bit of it,
and I usually fall asleep. Sothat was my That was my You
(27:03):
need to be a little more activeand energetic, but it's I think a
lot of it is you just wantto do it. There's something in you
that makes you want to do this. And it would be like that for
somebody who's really into cars or likeracing cars, or you know, whatever
your hobby might be. But itjust so happens we're lucky enough to get
(27:25):
paid for some of it. Well, have you ever been maybe out and
around town and someone has recognized youby your voice instead of just oh hey.
I know that it hasn't happened alot, but I was at San
Jose International Airport, and I thinkthe combination of looking at my ID and
(27:47):
hearing me talk the person behind theSouthwest counter goes because I was working as
a fill in sports anchor at astation in San Francisco and they said,
oh, Anthony passed you work forthat station. You do sports in the
afternoon, and I said, yeah, that's me, and they just kind
of look at you and they gooh, almost like so that's what you
(28:08):
look like. And I can't helpbut feel just that they're disappointed. But
maybe that's just me. But everynow and then, every now and then
someone will recognize the name because Ithink the name is more recognizable than the
boys. And it's only happened onceor twice with my kids who are now
(28:29):
out of college and high school agedwhere they're not sports fans in my family,
So my wife and kids are notsports fans at all, and so
there is you're shaking your head,Michelle, but there is a plus to
know. I remember when we worktogether, they would be like, do
we have to go to a game? I'd be like, are you using
your tickets for who? Not formy family? So yeah, so I
figured out with who to reach outwith reach out to for those tickets over
(28:55):
the years. But they're not sportsfans. So when they when I were
out in public together and somebody mightrecognize me and like I said, it
doesn't happen that often, they almostlook at me like, well, that's
right. So people hear what youdo. I think that scares them a
little bit. But it's a coupleof times the kids are like wow,
(29:15):
or you know what was funny?My daughter had in high school. There
was a kind of a kid inanother group who I don't know if she
was she kind of liked this kidor whatever, but the kid said something
like, hey, your dad doesgames for the stands the earthquakes, right,
And she had to think. Shetold me she had to think for
(29:36):
a second and be like, yeah, he does, absolutely, he sure
does. I guess I know.Which is fine. So the upside to
that is you come home from agame that might have been a blowout or
just you didn't have a good game, like maybe I wasn't feeling right or
didn't connect the commercials to the liveaction very well or just whatever, and
you come home and then and thequestion is how'd they do? And I'll
(29:57):
say they won or they and that'sit, and you just go on.
You go on about being a familyand enjoying your time and all that sort
of thing. Anthony tell us likeone of your most memorable calls or one
of your favorite calls, your bestcall. Oh gosh, I still don't
think I've had my best call.So I think that's probably said something about
(30:18):
me, and that I really think, like, oh, that could have
been better. I'm go back andlisten and go I should have done it
this way. I'm a classic secondguesser and always could have been better.
But we had an MLS game wherethe Earthquakes, which is the team I
grew up watching and then got itfortunate enough to be able to work for
(30:40):
them, we were doing a TVgame and it was the last game of
the season. They call it decisionDay and MLS because you really get the
decision on which teams are going toget into the playoffs or not. And
the Earthquakes hadn't been in the playoffsin I want to say, six or
seven years, and so the fanbase at home at our home stadium,
eighteen thousand or probably maybe not quiteeighteen maybe seventeen thousand fans, but a
(31:02):
great crowd, and the Earthquakes hadto win in order to get into the
playoffs, and they were behind onenothing, two to one. It got
later into the game, the shadowsin October start to you know, come
over the field, and then itwas probably the last play before they blew
the whistle and the Earthquake scored ona kind of a rebound, and I
(31:27):
kind of was just like, letit all out. And so when that
when when the team promotes, likethat time of year when it's time to
get excited about maybe getting the playoffs, and I'll see that video show up
on social media. I'm like,yeah, I think I may have gotten
that one right. And so thatwas a big one for me, especially
(31:47):
with such a big crowd, andit gets played every now and then and
I think like, hey, Iguess I can't do this. I guess
I am good at this. What'ssomething that you would say, you who
because you said your heart on yourself, but truly something that you rarely mess
up, but truly something you werelike, oh, I cannot believe I
just did that. Well, It'ssomething that I've tried to kind of stop
(32:13):
doing over the course of my careeris it's really easy for announcers, especially
those who work with a team everygame, to start getting on the officials.
And that was a bad call.I don't know what that guy's doing,
and I noticed myself doing that,and it really wasn't fair to the
officials. They've got a very hardjob and it's just easy to pile on.
(32:37):
And so that was something that Ineeded to stop doing. And then
I had one game where we wereat Santa Clara and we were playing a
team from out of town and itwas a TV game, so it was
our video was streamed and they hadour home radio call tied into the video.
(33:00):
And this looked so weird for thelistener, you well, especially especially
if it was the listener or theviewer of the opposing school that the school
promoted the link to the broadcast intheir game notes and in their social media.
And then this team has a coachthat is notorious for getting on officials
(33:22):
and kind of flying off the handlea little bit. And this team was
ahead by quite a bit in thefirst half, and the coach was getting
mad at every single call, andtheir team was up by twenty or thirty,
and so I made a comment thathe was acting a little foolish,
and that got back to you.No, it was not BYU. I'll
(33:45):
tell you after it, but anyway, you get real time feedback. The
coach came out after the game andwas smiling at me and asked if I
was Anthony, if I was theone broadcasting, and then started yelling at
me. And I was kind ofshocked at first. We had given this
(34:05):
coach a lot of praise early inthe game for being successful in his career,
and then I was just describing whatI was seeing when he was getting
mad at officials and his assistant coacheshad to hold him back. But I
was losing sight of the fact thatwe were promoting this broadcast to that fan
base. And so that was kindof a wake up call for me.
(34:28):
It's the only time in twenty someodd years of me doing this that I've
had a coach come out and saysomething to me. And I said,
well, you know, did youlisten to the game, And of course
he didn't listen to the game,but he was gazed. I didn't have
to I was getting texts from peopletelling me what a horrible job you guys
were doing, and I said,I said, well, if you'd like
(34:50):
to go back and listen to thegame, I'm happy to send you a
link, and I'd be happy totalk to you about why I talked about
the game the way I did,Why I described what you were doing the
way I did, And of coursehe had no interest in that. But
it was out on the floor withpeople like, you know, the facilities,
people cleaning up, and you know, fans milling around and parents of
(35:13):
kids, student athletes that were there, and it just kind of reminded me,
even though I don't feel like Iwas in the wrong for describing what
was happening the way I was justa reminder that, you know, better
to welcome the visiting audience to thebroadcast and do your best to try not
to make it about something that wasn'tbasketball related on you know, plays and
(35:36):
things like that, try and keepit positive. But yeah, that was
that was one I will remember forever. Wow, I was I was not
there when that happens. You werenot there? Nope, you were not
there. No, So what aboutlike, how often do you because I
know this is a pet peeve ofanybody that listens to the game on the
radio, any game, give thescore, score, to give the score?
(36:00):
And do you have a thing alittle posted that says give the score
or do you just for baseball?Yes? And I know some broadcasters use
like little hour glass, like alittle mini hour glass that when it's out
of sand, then you give thescore. I've heard of that before.
I've heard it. People broadcaster aresending timers to give the score. If
(36:22):
it's a long inning in baseball,you need some kind of reminder. So
I will do that and I willtry and do it every two to three
minutes max. Basketball is easier becausepeople are scoring all the time and there's
always an opportunity. Rather people playersare scoring all the time, and there's
always an opportunity to give the scoreafter the score changes. So in basketball
you have to be careful. Youdon't need to give the score. Every
(36:43):
time a free throw or a basketis made. You can say the lead
is up to four for which team, but you don't have to give the
score. And in soccer, alsoif you're on TV, you don't really
have to give the score at allbecause they can see the score usually there's
a score bug. But if you'redoing and you've got forty five minutes per
half without commercial I try to stickto that kind of baseball way of doing
(37:06):
it every two to three minutes max. Because you never know when somebody's tuning
in, and they might tune inafter you had just given the score,
and then if you wait ten minutes, they may turn it off not having
heard the score, and you don'twant that. So did all all your
sids for basketball handy? These likereally sloppy handwritten yeah si notes towards the
(37:28):
end of the game when something BIG'shappening. Note this is a career high
or such and such. And thehandwriting was so messy most of the time
because I was trying to do like, you know, tweet, go on
Instagram, do this, do this, listen to the coach tell me things,
do a score book, and thenI t andy this Anthony this note.
That was just messy, and I'dbe like, later, I'd see
(37:50):
it laying there next to him,like when we were packing up our stuff,
and I'd be like, I wonderif he ever read that. I
wonder if he even could read that. So sometimes sometimes I can't and It's
not like I can take the headphonesoff and ask you, what is this?
What do you mean by this?After a while, the shorthand,
like you know about an announcer workingwith a sports information director or stage director,
(38:12):
you start to understand the shorthand.Or if I'm getting a note from
Michelle and I'm looking at the statsand so and so has thirty eight points,
probably related to the fact that thisperson has scored a lot, rebounded
a lot, or the margin ofvictory is high, and so after a
while you start to kind of getwhat those notes mean. But I think
that's the cleanest and most effective wayto do it, and nobody's come up
(38:39):
with a better way, so thatkeeps happening. Yeah. Yeah, What
kind of advice would you have foranyone that might be looking to go into
broadcasting. So my advice would be, if you want to be a broadcaster,
start broadcasting, and if you're earlyin your career and you think you
(39:05):
might want to do it. Andmost of the young men and women that
I talked to about this, andwe actually had somebody come up the other
night after a game and introduce themselves. While we were trying to introduce themselves
while we were in the postgame show, so they didn't realize that we were
on the air. And he wantsto give me his card and talk about
would you be willing to listen tomy tape? So do all that.
(39:29):
Get yourself in front of the peoplethat are doing the job you want to
do. And that's not just forbroadcasting, that's any industry. If you
think, hey, I want todo that, go talk to that person.
More often than not, that personwould love to talk to you about
their experiences, things they recommend,and then they're invested in you as somebody
up and coming in the business,whatever business it is. But if you
(39:51):
want to be a broadcaster, startbroadcasting. Don't wait until you get a
job in broadcasting. Take your Wehave a minor league baseball team here in
San Jose To sant I was aGiants, and I believe I came home
from college one summer and I wasgoing to go work at a local restaurant
to earn money during the summer,and I wanted to broadcast, and so
(40:12):
I took my one pair of headphonesthat I bought, and a mixer and
a cassette recorder, and I justbought a ticket, and I sat as
far away from people as I possiblycould so as not to annoy them,
and I just broadcast a game Iprepared, and I learned about the players,
and I wanted to get better.So don't wait for someone to hand
(40:32):
you a job, or don't waituntil you work hard to get a job.
You're going to need a demo,tape, go broadcast, and now,
especially with laptops and recording software andediting software, you can do all
that and then share it with thepeople that are doing the job you want
to do. Don't wait until it'sperfect. I lost a whole year waiting
(40:53):
to get a perfect demo, andguess what, I'm still waiting for a
perfect demo. So had I waitedfor a perfect demo to share with somebody
to get their feedback, I wouldn'tbe doing it. And I'm super fortunate
that I've been able to. Imean, you just have so much passion
about it. That's the thing thatif somebody would say, give me describing
(41:14):
Anthony in one word, I wouldbe passionate, like in a heartbeat,
passionate. But everybody's broadcasting journey isdifferent, right, some people are full
time broadcaster. You actually have afull time career in marketing in tech companies
in the Bay Area. So howdo you balance that job and the job
(41:36):
you have the broadcasting job and themarketing job very carefully. So a lot
of it has to do with justso where I live is very expensive,
and it's more and more places aroundthe company are like the San Francisco Bay
Area. It's just expensive to live. Right. So, I was on
(41:57):
my path toward becoming a broadcast anannouncer, and I worked at radio stations
full time, and then I wasgoing to get married. Well, I
knew how much I was making atthe radio station, and I knew how
much I would have to make makingmy way up the ladder to the jobs
that pay enough to live. AndI decided I didn't want to do that,
and so I thought of a wayI could still broadcast, or I
(42:20):
tried to think of a way.And other people are doing this too.
I've met other guys that men andwomen that do this as well. I
had to get another job. Ihad to do something else to earn money
and pay for health care and allthose types of things. I was working
in Sacramento at a radio station fulltime, and I was talking to my
mother one day and she said shewas asking me how much I was making
(42:40):
and I told her and I wasin my minute twenty what and she said,
you know, hold on a second, and she pulled up a search
or something on the computer and said, well, that's right about the poverty
line. I said. She said, how do you expect to be getting
married and have a fan family andmaybe someday buy a house, all things
(43:01):
I want? How do you expectto do that on that amount of money?
And so I moved. I wentback to the Bay Area. I
was lucky enough to get some fillin work at a pretty big station in
San Francisco doing sports updates. AndI have a family member who is in
high tech that said, we needsomebody to come and the equivalent of being
the mail room. And so Iwas twenty six or twenty seven. That
(43:24):
mail room job came with health careand I'm like, okay, I think
I can try and figure this out. So I look at broadcasting and a
lot of men and women do thebroadcasting full time. They hustle their tails
off to work. You know someTV here, a fill in radio here,
and you know voice over here.And I have so much admiration for
(43:47):
them, because I want to dida little bit of a different path based
on where I wanted to be withfamily and getting married and having kids.
And so it has been at timeswhen I was younger, and I think
we show you might have been atSanta Clara when I got to a point
where I was probably working seventy oreighty hours a week. Now you didn't
(44:08):
know that because I was only aroundplay by play at Santa Clara for a
certain amount of time. But wewere traveling to Vegas for the conference tournament.
That same weekend. I had myfull time job, had a training
that we were delivering for three daysin Las Vegas, and then I was
coming home and doing my first soccergame for MLS. For oh, I
(44:31):
remember that. I remember that particularlyy and then my stomach was hurting.
I was feeling light headed, andthat was me my body telling me,
you're not I think this was like, what twenty twelve, So I wasn't
twenty let's just put it that way. And I have always been if there's
(44:51):
enough hours in the day, youcan do anything well. In order to
do the full time job and broadcasting, I had to kind of recalibrate,
cut back on some of the extrawork I was doing for broadcasting at radio
stations and things, and then kindof find what my body could handle.
But it's you know, be openwith my employer at the full time job
(45:12):
and open with you when you wereat Santa Clara. This is my schedule,
this is what I'm going to bedoing, this is what I think.
Sometimes you would say that's not goingto work for us, and sometimes
my full time job would say that'snot going to work for us. So
we would try and figure out theright way to navigate, and I think
for the most part, I thinkI've been able to do. Okay,
you were so good though, soand you were always so giving and really
(45:37):
good about your time, and soI always appreciated that, like how you're
just a good person. Oh thankyou. That's great that you could make
it work, and you know hereyou are kind of still doing that today
for sure. Yeah, super fortunate. I've worked with Santa Clara, I've
worked with the earthquakes, a coupleof radio staatesations that have been super supportive.
(46:01):
And family. I mean, Ihave kids and a wife, a
hit door, and it's adjusting alittle bit So last year was the first
year that or this past season wasthe first year that Apple TV had an
agreement with Major League Soccer to hireall the announcers separately. So Apple TV
(46:22):
decided instead of having or thirty announcersin thirty different cities, the local announcers,
they were going to hire national announcers, just like NFL does. Right,
there's no Tampa Bay Buccaneers local TV. They have local radio, and
so Apple decided to do that thisway. So this was the first summer
that I didn't have any work,just a full time job since ninety eight,
(46:47):
ninety seven or ninety eight, Soit took a little adjusting. I
felt like I was quasi retired andI didn't know what to do with myself.
Like Saturday mornings, I would wakeup and I wouldn't have a game
to prepare for, and like whatdo I do now? Like over the
years, by Angela, my wife, her work is now adjusted to weekends
(47:07):
because I would be gone most weekendsand my daughter's out of the house.
She's older and living in State ofWashington, and my son's a senior in
high school. He has his job. So I'd wake up Saturday mornings and
nobody would be around, and Iwould just be like, what do I
What do I do? That's calledyour second life. So we all get
to that point and we figure itout, right, So that's how we
(47:31):
got here, Michelle, right,yeah, exactly. That's why we have
a podcast, Yeah, exactly.So you just find what's the next thing
you want to do, and that'sthat's what I do. Well, Anthony,
it's been great talking to you today. Before we close, though,
for this episode, we want toput you through the spin cycle. So
we just have a couple of likequick answer questions. You ready. You
(47:53):
can tell by looking at me.I've been through the spin cycle a few
times, so I'm ready for it. All right. Well, see this
one not quite delicate, but it'llbe easy, all right. Least exciting
sport to watch. Oh my gosh, I like almost everything that's going to
(48:15):
be really tough to watch darts.Darts, I mean you really have to
go. Like I like watching bowling, I like watching curling. I will
if I can pick a side,I will watch and try and learn about
it. But darts, I've whereI went to school, there was quite
(48:36):
a bit of darts in the bars, and I don't know, I tend
my mind tends to wander darts.Okay, so this is this is oh
Di Dustin currents this question. Who'snow the head coach that was at Santa
Clara. Has he been on?No, not yet, but he's going
to be. And he's texted meand said I will and I'm like,
well, probably not during the season. And they're actually really good this year,
so I don't want to mess uphis flow. Is it Gonzaga or
(49:01):
Gonzaga Gonzaga? So this is wejust Santa Clair just played them, and
I hear announcers talking about, youknow, it's a down year, uh
for Gonzaga, and I'm like abecause you know, it's pronounced phonetically in
(49:21):
the press notes and if you oranywhere around that school, they will hit
you over the head with a clubif they hear you say it that way.
So yeah, I mean, that'sthat's one of the easier ones.
So Dustin used to call in,not not to to take over the Spin
Chicks spin cycle, but Dustin usedto call into the radio show and do
the Gonzaga's radio show like they're youknow, and he would say Gonzaga.
(49:50):
He would take Zagaga Gonzaga. Itwould get really mad on the radio broadcast,
like that's not how it's pronounced,and he would go back to the
same pronunciation and keep saying it wrong. So anyway, do you think he
was doing that on purpose, justto kind of get him a little bit?
Oh? Absolutely. And as soonas you get on the bus he
would tell the coaches yep, andhe would tell him. I said,
(50:13):
you know, Sega the whole time. Oh, oh my gosh, that's
funny. That's funny. But yeah, I'll hear national play by play announcers
say it incorrectly and I kind ofgo, oh, it's in the notes.
It's in the notes. They allright, morning person or night owl.
(50:34):
I am a morning person. Iam up. I think part of
it has to do with just havingkids and being up early for a long
time. But I used to workin morning radio where I had to be
in the studio at four forty five, and for about I want to say,
six to ten months, I livedan hour and twenty minutes away from
the studio, so I would setmy alarm for two thirty and I would
(50:59):
drive in. I would go tobed at like eight o'clock the night before,
so you're actually a night person ifyou're getting up that early. Well,
it was dark for sure, butI consider that morning, so it
was morning radio. I do splitshifts, and so I think I've been
a morning person since then. Okay, Beckham or Messy, I'm a big
MESSI fan, And it might haveto do if I've seen more of his
(51:22):
career than I've seen. I've beenaround for more of his career than I
have for David Beckham's. Although Idid get a chance to call a game
that they called the Classico here inthe Bay Area at Stanford Stadium with fifty
thousand fans, and it was DavidBeckham playing for the LA Galaxy and our
(51:44):
mascot after a game where the Quakesbeat the Galaxy had a sign they used
to have those signs. That's atSports Center coming up next, and so
the mascot was trying to get inthe camera shot. The camera shot was
on Beckham clearly disappointed after a loss, and I think you can find it
on YouTube. I believe Beckham shovedQ the mascot and it got pretty heated.
(52:07):
Either that or the mascot was aroundwhere Beckham was getting into some some
issues. I haven't called a messygame, and I'm not going to get
a chance to. But the factthat he's at MLS is great. And
was so happy for him to winthe World Cup last time out and or
two times out ago. But yeah, I'm a messy guy, like literally,
(52:30):
I'm a slob, but I'm alsoa messy fan. Last question,
what's for dinner? That is agreat question. That's probably the hardest.
I don't know what's for dinner.We have some leftover prime rib that we
had frozen. This is probably gonnabe sound awful, but it was.
(52:52):
We had it for New Year's andthen it was so much meat that we
had to put half of it inthe freezer and it is coming back beautifully,
so I may have some of that. Angela made risotto mushroom risotto last
night, which was also very good, so it is leftovers without a doubt.
Although Angela was saying that she wasthinking about maybe some lettuce raps,
(53:15):
so it's either lettuce raps or primerib with risotto. No love, nice
nice. So we've had a littleextra rent cycle with this spin cycle,
so I'm loving it. Very good, lots of good information. It was
so awesome to meet you, Anthony, and I'm I'm going to be tempted
to tune into a Santa Clara gamejust because I want to hear your voice
on a broadcast. Just check theSanta Clara website and you can catch our
(53:37):
games either on the SPN Plus orcan I do a plug or Santa Clara
Broncos dot com slash Watch. Butit's fun to meet you, Erica.
Always good to see Michelle. Yes, it is good to see you,
and thank you so much for yourtime. We appreciate it. You're always
one of my favorites. Love doingit. Thank you, Michelle. Anthony
(53:58):
was so much fun. I mean, first of all, the fact that
he just literally wanted to be abroadcaster from a young age. I always
love when you know, he justcompletely followed his dream and he's just made
it work no matter what. Yeah, he's got a full time job and
he's doing this this little I wouldn'tcall it a side hustle, but some
people might call it a side hustleof this full time career as a broadcaster.
(54:21):
So yeah, and just what wasreally cool too is to hear him
talk about, you know, radio, I don't listen to a lot of
traditional radio, but I know fansdefinitely do and they kind of identify with
that voice. But he's also beenable to do television and how those things
are two completely different ways to broadcasta game, and kind of how he's
pivoted and what he liked and didn'tlike about each one of those, and
(54:44):
very interesting and just how he's grownin his career. Yeah, I would
never have thought. I guess Ijust thought, you know, you can
do one, you can do theother. It's pretty seamless. But you
know, you've got somebody when you'redoing TV. You've got a truck talking
in your ear, the producer,and we're showing this now on the screen,
and we're going to show this andmake sure you and then you're trying
to not talk over your part.I mean, it's not an easy thing
(55:06):
to be a broadcaster. And thenif you're a radio guy, you know,
if you've got to go to thebathroom, you're not going uncluse you've
got some recorded stuff for a while. So maybe some other tricks we didn't
ask him about, but that's minorleague baseball anyway. Just his his passion
really shines through and the fact thathe can tell a story with his voice
(55:29):
and kind of bring that to thefans. Very cool. And he's such
a nice guy, Like I can'tsay that enough. Anthony is a really
good guy. Well, hope yousee him down the road here. I
don't know how Santa Clara will bethis year, but you never know.
Maybe, I don't know. Dowe have another NCAA tournament round to work
(55:49):
in US? Probably not? Yes? Oh I hope so. I wish
that would be so much fun.We could reunite. We could reunite at
the ESSA. Yes, Well,thank you for listening. Follow us at
the spin Chicks. Listen to thepodcast, follow us on our socials.
Make sure you spell it correctly,c h I, c ks, and
(56:14):
give us a like and we'll seeyou next time. Thank you,
In the show. Hey Erica,how are you. I'm doing wonderful.
Welcome to the Spin Chicks. We'reglad to have you listen. I'm excited.
You know what's coming up your birthday? Oh yes, but a little
bit down the road March Madness.Madness sad about football season, but that's
(00:31):
always something to look forward to.I love March Madness. And we both
work from home now so we don'thave to have the boss protect or whatever
it is. When you know you'relike watching the games at work and you
hit the screen and like a bigspreadsheet of numbers comes up. No boss
of mine would ever believe that theywould walk up behind me and be,
you don't know a whole lot aboutnumbers? What's going on here? Oh?
(00:51):
I thought everybody's watching March Madness.It's just an excuse to be streaming
out everything. All the games.Very exciting. But I know, like
even back in the day, likewe worked together for a short time,
but we got to work a coupleof the NCAA, like the hosting rounds
back in Chicago. Yeah, wedon't want to date ourselves, but well,
what was your job? I thinkI was a runner and maybe sat
(01:17):
underneath the basket to watch the photographers. Nice. Nice. I don't remember
too much of the action and everythingbecause my job was to moderate the press
conference, and of course Duke wasthere, so all I was worried about
was saying the coach's name correctly,and that's all I could concentrate on.
And I didn't even look at thename card. I just sat there and
(01:38):
I was like Rzewski, Krzyzewski.And again, don't know who won or
lost. Don't remember. Oh Iremember. I totally remember who won that
one. Cal upset Duke, andthat team had Jason Kidd. God,
we're really dating ourselves, Jason KiddMurray, I think love it when the
(02:01):
players that you watched they're like nowcoaching or like weretired. Yeah exactly,
I'm like, but this was veryvery early in our careers. We were
interacted at the time, so veryearly. But I remember the president of
Cal running on the court after thegame because he was so excited they beat
(02:22):
Duke. It's hilarious, this littleman. And there are some things I
remember about that after post game too. It's a little kind of crazy on
the Cal side. So it isexciting though well, and I think that's
the only one we may have gotto work together, but I think we
both worked countless. NCAA post seasonevents always fun, March madness always brings
(02:44):
the drama, the whole thing.So looking forward to it again. But
our guest today has some basketball ties. Yes, Anthony Pasarelli is the voice
of the Broncos Santa Clara University Broncomen's basketball team. He has been for
gosh, I don't know long time, fifteen twenty years, so he's called
some he's called some great games,and he's certainly called some duds. So
(03:06):
well, from what you have saidand what I've read up, he was
just kind of born to be abroadcaster, So I'm glad he's kind of
living out that dream. It'll befun to talk to him a little bit
about some behind the scenes because boy, when you're like radio right there,
you see a lot. So lookingforward to talking to Anthony. Yeah.
I think he was born, youknow, just like we said, Eric
Hemery was born with a coach's playbookin his hand. He was born with
(03:31):
a mic in his hand because hereally loves doing play by play. So
all right, let's do it,all right, Anthony, Welcome to the
spin Chicks. How are you.I'm doing well, Thanks for having me,
nice to see Michelle, see youagain. And Eric, nice to
meet you. Absolutely having you.Yeah, well, let's just jump right
(03:54):
in. I mean, being aplay by play just in general, has
to be one of the toughest jobsout there, I think. So how
do you do it? Well,that's interesting. I it doesn't feel hard
to me. And I don't knowif it's because I've been doing it a
long time or it's something I alwayswanted to do. Like I was one
of the people or kids or whateverthat would sleep with a radio under my
(04:17):
pillow. And that's back when yourradio wasn't your phone. It was an
actual radio and you put it underyour pillow and there was a dial you
turn to get to different stations.And so when I was in an elementary
school and I was going to bedearly, I was the Giants were on.
I'm a San Francisco Giants fan withit was baseball or basketball or whatever.
I played those sports when I wasa kid. So I would listen
(04:39):
to those games at night and hearthe crowd and hear the announcer's excitement and
thought, I wish I were thereinstead of listening to it under my pillow.
So it was pretty early it wasthis is what I think I want
to do. How do I getto go to the games where they pay
me and I don't have to payto see the games? That was one
(05:00):
of the jobs that you could do. And so I all of a sudden
became hyper focused on radio play byplay announcers, TV play by play announcers,
the words they used, how theygot excited, and just it just
seemed like such a heaven like placefor somebody like me who loves sports.
So it never really seems hard,and unless it's a really bad game,
(05:26):
then it seems hard. So howdo you keep it like you're a basketball
announcer and there's a lot of actiongoing on? How do you know you
don't say, like trestling? Hepasses it to Foster, who passes it
to brown Ridge, who gets readyto shoot, and he rebounds. I
mean, how do you say,how do you keep your mouth moving that
fast? That wasn't even fast,But how do you keep it moving that
(05:49):
fast and your eyes moving that fast? And then you're looking down at your
statu sheet and keep it all straight? Are you a second behind the action.
Are you right in the action?When I first started, I tried
to be right on top of theaction, and that's when I made most
of my mistakes. By the way, that was very good play by play.
If you you might want to getlook into some maybe junior college where
(06:11):
nearby where you live. Those guysplay on the same teams with the Broncos.
But I give it a world thereyou go. It was good.
No, but it's I think youget used to. So I started doing
play by play for baseball, andthat's a lot slower in college. And
my buddy of mine sent the cassettetapes to me and said, this is
the first game you ever did,and it was dreadful. And I can't
(06:33):
when I want a good laugh orI think I've had a really good game.
I just put those cassettes in andlistened to that game because it was
a nightmare. And I try tobe on top of the like a split
second behind the action. And whatI've learned over the years is if you
can be a little bit further behindthe action if you're on radio, obviously
because your listener can't see it,but it allows you to call it a
(06:56):
little more descriptively, not too differentfrom what you were doing. That's a
that's a radio call, follow theball. I had a couple of mentors
when I was coming up and tryingto get jobs in radio, and they
both said, if it's basketball orbaseball or football, whatever it is,
soccer, the listener needs to knowwhere the ball is at all times.
So you would do that similar onradio. We're on TV, which was
(07:17):
really difficult for me for years.I would people would say, don't you
want to be on TV. Isaid, no, I think I've got
I think I look pretty good onradio. I think that's perfect for me.
But I think when you're talking aboutthe difference between TV and radio,
I feel like sometimes with TV,people have a tendency just to want to
turn the person down. When you'reon radio, you're really presenting the visual
(07:41):
because they don't have it. Sodo you prefer it? Sounds like you
prefer radio, clearly, but notjust I do prefer radio. Sorry to
interrupt Erica, I do prefer radio. And part of it is because then
it's like it's not just the ballgoes up into the air, the first
pitch is thrown out or they,you know, do the first kick of
the soccer game. It starts withyour pregame show, it starts with the
(08:01):
interviews you've done that week, andnow you're setting up a two hour story
where nobody knows the beginning, middle, and end of it until it happens.
So you can bring in the coacheson the pregame show and the information
you learned off the interview. Thenyou have, you know, the first
media timeout of a basketball game andeverything that's happened up until that point,
(08:22):
and you can craft the story frombeginning to end. And then it's like
a choose your own adventure. Duringthe course of the game, it goes
different directions, and that's the mostexciting part for me. But yeah,
very different TV and radio, andI was terrified. I think I worked
in radio for probably fifteen twenty yearsbefore I did my first TV game,
(08:43):
and I was terrified, What wasyour first TV game? My first TV
game was doing soccer for the SansEarthquakes and MLS and it was in twenty
fourteen, and it was with aveteran production crew and somebody my analyst,
had done soccer before, and theyreally didn't tell me much. I don't
(09:05):
know what that is they didn't really. I wasn't asking for help. I
thought, well, you should justact like you can do it. You
just got to do it. Andso we went to take the open and
I was making it up off thetop of my head, and my producer
was saying, hey, these arethe graphics were showing it. This is
the this is the b roll thehighlights for you have to talk about this
(09:26):
stuff. So it took about fourtakes and we finally got it right.
And I learned very quickly from aveteran and this guy used to work for
the LA Dodgers when Vince Skeully wason TV, and he's like, you're
doing it all wrong, and thisis how you need to do it next
time. And so you learned veryquickly because you would think TV and radio,
(09:48):
what's the difference. A broadcaster isa broadcaster? Yeah, well,
my my having a producer in yourear in IFB saying and roll you know,
roll tape, or we're going toshow this commer, or we're going
to show do this live read orhere's a close up of the coach.
Be ready to talk, I mean, and you can have the talkback button.
You could talk back to the truckand kind of set up what you
want the storylines to be. Butwhen you're doing radio, it's all you.
(10:13):
I mean, there might be somebodyback at the station playing the commercial,
but you're setting up the entire story. And it took me a while
to learn that. In TV it'sa bigger team telling the story, not
just you, and so it didtake a little while. Well, I
think what I would struggle with maybeis that do you ever have to like
be quiet, like not talk likeand TV like you've got the visuals.
(10:35):
I mean, people can take abreak, but like, do you feel
like in radio like you just alwayshave to be saying something during the broadcast
or is there a time when silenceis okay? Well? For TV,
definitely, And that took me awhile to learn as well. I had
a producer my first year of doingsoccer on TV tell me to let it
breathe, Anthony, you don't haveto talk the entire time. They can
(10:56):
see where the ball is, theycan see which player has it. You
should be adding to it. Andreally, for me, TV is setting
up the analyst, right because theanalyst, unall likelihood was a former player,
has been in the locker room orthe boot room or whatever, and
can add a lot more than justsaying what the play is and what's happening.
In statistics for radio, it alldepends on what If I'm quiet.
(11:18):
This is just my opinion. Everybodydoes it differently. If I'm quiet,
what is the listener here? Soif it's a big call, like you
know, like let's say it's ahome run, the crowd's going to be
yelling, so you can kind oflay out and not talk while there's you
know, crowd noise, or ifthere's officials talking near the scorer's table.
(11:41):
Sometimes I'll stop talking so that thelistener can hear what the officials are talking
about at the review at the reviewmonitor and so as you can already tell,
I love to hear the sound ofmy own voice, but there are
times when I stop talking to letthe listener hear what might be going on
inside the gym or or the baseballstadium. So what's one question that you
(12:05):
get from listeners that surprises you?Like something they've asked in the past that
you're like what The question I getmost often is how do you know all
that information? And sometimes like MLS, I mean you used to do this
create the notes package. Obviously thegame notes MLS does a game notes package
(12:28):
for the home team visiting team,and then the league sends something on an
overview of the match. And soI just have to say I didn't uncover
all this information. I don't sitin front of the laptop for hours and
hours and hours. I just gothrough and I try and find the things
from the notes that are provided.And if you do a team like I've
done Santa Clara for a long time, there's certain storylines I just know,
(12:52):
like I don't know, I knowwhen a player is likely coming up on
a thousand points for his career,or I don't know. Just some things
you just know because you follow theteam and you might watch film that day
or that type of thing. Butthat's the one I think. I think
there's a sense of Wow, thisperson really knows a lot about this team
because they research and are laboring overthe laptop. But the reality is is
(13:16):
that there's people giving us the informationthat drastically helps our broadcast. And that's
what I rely on quite a bit. I do do research on my own
try and uncover some things. Nowthat they make notes available to the fans,
because you can download those off thewebsite. So I look for things
that maybe the fan or the listenerwouldn't have gotten from that or couldn't get
(13:39):
from that, so I can addsomething extra on radio or television. It's
really I mean, when you thinkabout it, Erica, it's really kind
of interesting. We're going to somedaysoon we're going to get somebody that's been
a a color analyst for men's basketballat South Carolina for thirty something years,
Casey Manning, and it'll be interestingto talk to him about what it's like
(14:01):
to compliment a the play by playas opposed to So what's it like for
you to compliment what an analyst does? You said, many times it's a
former player and they give you someinformation. So what's it like for you
when you work with somebody You talkedabout working with the earthquake soccer? Yeah,
(14:22):
yeah, Well I've been super luckythat my analyst with the earthquakes on
two years for radio in nine yearson TV was Chris Dangerfield, who's a
good friend of mine now and heplayed in the seventies and he played in
Portland. He's from England. He'sgot great phrasing about things. An immense
amount of knowledge having played an MLS, and if I could set him up
(14:48):
to be the star and be theone who is providing a lot of the
entertainment, and I kind of playedit more of a down the line,
get straight down the line, thisis the play balls here. You know,
that was the third time in thisgame that you know whatever happened off
sides, or it takes a while, like when you're first starting out,
you do a lot of looking ateach other so that you're not talking while
(15:11):
the other one's talking, or can'tsee in the person's eyes that they're really
excited about something so I should backoff and let them finish. And then
by the time we were done,after our eleven years, we didn't even
have to look at each other.He knew my cadence. He knew when
it was time for him to talk. He knew when the replay came up
on the monitor it was his timeto shine. He knew when there was
(15:31):
a live ad read that was mine. I read the commercials. But it
does take a while, And thereare different kinds of analysts that I've worked
with. One type of analyst islike might be a big cheerleader, like
really excited. I don't remember theChicago Cubs Ron Santo, who was the
analyst for years on radio, soexcited. And sometimes he would talk over
(15:54):
Pat Hughes, who's from where Ilive right now. He's in the Barry
and my kids went to the samego to the same school he did.
But some are cheerleaders, some getreal excited, and others are ex's and
o's like they will be like formercoaches, especially, they can tell you
exactly why this team set up thistype of defense off of the main free
throw and all that sort of things. So I prefer a mix of those
(16:15):
two. But I can work witheither one, and there's different aspects that
are important for both of them.So how is play by play different from
let's say basketball to soccer to maybea volleyball? Yeah, and I've only
learned, just learned volleyball in thelast probably a handful of years. Always
(16:37):
interested in learning about a new sport. And when I started in baseball some
I did a year of minor leaguebaseball after college and got to ride buses
up there. You went to ChicoState, Yeah, I went to Chico
State. They had a great stateErica. Yeah, Okay, it's a
big party school. Okay, Well, but what I will say is if
(17:02):
you were into that sort of thing, there was plenty of it for you
to do. But as I pushup my glasses, I was the guy
who was at the radio station onSaturday morning at seven point thirty getting the
equipment to go out to a collegebaseball game that nobody would hear so I
could send it back to our littlestudent radio station that you had to plug
in a coaxial cable into the backof your tuner and then find the Yeah,
(17:27):
it was a big production. ButI those words coax cable because I
remember sometimes at Santa Clair wouldn't beworking, be like I don't know,
and I'd be like, I don'tknow. I have enough stress about this
game. I can't do that.You're gonna have to figure it out.
And you always knew it. Youwould just look at me and be like,
I don't know why this isn't working. Not the right girl to ask
(17:48):
that question, too, right,And so while I did enjoy my time
at Chico State, I would havebuddies call me from the bars and say,
hey, are you coming out ordo you have a game tomorrow?
And so I would sitting out therein the rain try to soldering equipment together
to get ready for a doubleheader.Again that nobody would listen to but baseball.
And then I went on to dominor league. Some of those baseball
(18:08):
games were four and a half hoursand there might be like a thirty five
minute rain delay, and the stationthat we were on in Monterey, they
didn't like you didn't throw it backto the station for their programming until the
game was ready to go on.You stayed on. And so back then,
(18:29):
so you know my age, theInternet was not really a big deal
back then, So I subscribed toevery baseball periodical, Baseball America, local
newspapers I would pick up on myway into the ballpark, and I would
read books. I have a bookabout the California League, minor league baseball,
and some of the promotions that theyused to do in the cal League,
(18:52):
including I think Ricky Henderson once raceda horse in the outfield. Absolutely,
and so I on the internet absolutelyabsolutely playing in the California League.
Yes he did. Yeah, Andso I would go to the library and
check out books on baseball and justjust and I would jot down notes in
(19:15):
a notebook and if it looked likewe were it was going to be raining,
or the score was twenty seven tosix in the fifth inning, I
would start going through the notebook.And so baseball has the plus is you
can tell stories a lot easier inbaseball because the action. There's a lot
of time in between action, eventhough baseball trying to change that. But
(19:38):
for basketball, it's happening, happening, happening, happening, and so I
enjoy that part of it. Ienjoy the baseball storytelling part of it,
and I came to enjoy the soccerpart, which is no commercials for forty
five minutes until you get to halftime. So you're on and you're talking,
and then you have to be realclear on Okay, if the ball's out
of play, now I can starttelling a story. But if the ball
(20:00):
is, you know, thirty yardsfrom goal and one team is attacking and
they're getting close to scoring, nota great time to start a story.
So that, yeah, well,he would tell a story regardless of what
was happening. One of my favorites. Yeah, so it's some of your
favorites for baseball. I think Imentioned Vince Scully. I mean, he's
(20:25):
just when I was had the theradio under the pillow, I could catch
KDEWN Las Vegas from California, SanJose, California in the Bay Area.
So I'd finished listening to the Giants, and then I would turn it over
the dial. I think from sixeighty am on the dial to seven twenty
am, so it wasn't far andI could hear the end of the Dodger
game. And I'm not a Dodgerfan, but I'm a huge Vin Scully
(20:48):
fan, and so i Vin Scullyis one of my favorites. There are
quite a few soccer play by playguys who I just am like, I
don't know how you do it,Like they are so good and so engaging.
Basketball. There's a guy in Sacramentonamed Gary Jerrell who has been doing
it for years for the Sacramento Kings, and I worked in Sacramento for a
(21:11):
couple of years, and he justhas such a smooth way of talking.
And it's kind of like a pastgeneration of broadcasters that really you can just
kind of feel their personality. AndI think that's harder to do for the
subsequent generations because we're so focused ondoing play by play and being a clear
(21:32):
play by play broadcaster that back thenthey had other jobs and they did play
by play, so it's not asmaybe well rounded from a life standpoint and
to bring that character. But thoseguys are fantastic. I feel like,
definitely it is an art form becauseI think not everybody can just kind of
especially in radio, because you're really, like you said, telling the story.
(21:53):
And then I think people form ofyou know, they get familiar and
they just associate a lot of memoriesand things with a voice like that.
So in some ways, I don'tknow, I mean, do you think
what do you think has been thebiggest change from like when you started till
now in your career? You mean, like, yeah, here, I
haven't had here since I was seventeen, I think, so it's been a
(22:15):
while. You knew that, youknew that that was a traumatic experience maybe
for another podcast, But what haschanged? So what has changed is the
technology has changed clearly. I meannow you can be a play by play
broadcaster just by going Facebook live orLinkedIn live or on Twitter or Twitch or
(22:41):
any of those places, and youcan still bury all the same equipment around
that you did when I was atSanta Clara, same stuff that you broadcast
off, or do you have newstuff. We might have some newer equipment.
Like most of its streaming now.So it used to be you had
to have a radio station to getyour broadcast dot out. Now you can
just uh, you can just streamit. And so we streamed the broadcast
(23:04):
the Santa Clair broadcast off our websiteand we don't have a radio station for
the first time in seventeen years sinceI've been doing it. And it's a
lot of it has to do withbudget, and so it does cost to
get on a radio station. Obviously, schools, the big schools, like
the Power Conference schools are all goingto have a radio network that goes into
(23:29):
the you know, town that thecollege is in, plus surrounding areas like
in Spokane, Gonzaga University still hastheir network. But here in the Bay
Area, I mean a lot ofschools are going to just streaming their broadcasts
and so that's something that's changed drasticallyas you used to have to sell ads
and make sure you had a stationand all that sort of thing, and
some schools still do that, butyou know, uh seven up, yeah,
(23:55):
yeah, yeah, we'll do we'lldo sponsors of the school, so
it's you know, they might besponsoring other things, and part of the
packages they get to have a thirtysecond or sixty second commercial or a live
announcer read. So we still dosome of those things, but the streaming
versus having to be on commercial radioand everything is subscription based now or just
(24:18):
about everything. So we do ourgames on ESPN Plus and so you have
to buy a subscription for that tobe able to watch those games. And
so many other places right, Socbssports dot com does games, Fox Sports
one, Fox Sports two, thedifferent ESPN properties, there's Peacock. There's
a lot of different places to getgames now. And it's not just you
(24:44):
know, Georgetown and Villanova are goingto be on the Big East Game of
the Week and now almost every gameis on. If I wanted to look
at our opponent for this Thursday,Santa Clair plays Pacific. The West Coast
Conference has a deal with ESPN Plusthat all of our games are on ESPN
Plus. So I can go watchall of Pacific's home games because they're on
(25:07):
ESPN Plus archived, and so it'sjust very different. There's a lot more
access to content and makes my jobeasier. But from the standpoint of where
broadcasters used to kind of have topay their dues to move up, you
don't really have to do that asmuch anymore, which can be good in
that you may find that person whois ready, or people ready right out
(25:30):
of the gate. They're nineteen andthey're so good that they can be on
right away. They don't have towait for ten years or five years.
But then you also get some folksthat maybe could use a little more seasoning,
and they're on right away. Sothey're kind of learning by fire,
trial by fire, and I thinkthat can backfire in some cases, but
I think it goes both ways.You talked about, you know, doing
(25:52):
minor league baseball and how how manyguys are getting their chops cut or whatever
the word is doing minor league anddoing minor league sports, and that's where
they get started. You know,they have an internship in college and they
do some minor league baseball and thenyou know, go from there and then
like John Nash, then you goin go into real estate instead of doing
(26:15):
broadcasting. But it was really good. I have quite a few friends when
I was starting out. We wereall starting out, like in the Western
League, or starting in college basketball, or I was in Sacramento for a
couple of years and just used totake my recorder, my laptop, and
my equipment to Sack State games,and I made friends with the sports information
(26:37):
director there, and I covered thegames for the station I was working for,
but I didn't have a play byplay job, and I wanted to
stay fresh, so I just tookmy stuff there and sat in the upper
level of the Hornet's Nest is whatthey call it, the Sack State Hornets,
and I would just record and doa game for two hours and nobody
heard it. I'd go back andI'd listen to a little bit of it,
and I usually fall asleep. Sothat was my That was my You
(27:03):
need to be a little more activeand energetic, but it's I think a
lot of it is you just wantto do it. There's something in you
that makes you want to do this. And it would be like that for
somebody who's really into cars or likeracing cars, or you know, whatever
your hobby might be. But itjust so happens we're lucky enough to get
(27:25):
paid for some of it. Well, have you ever been maybe out and
around town and someone has recognized youby your voice instead of just oh hey.
I know that it hasn't happened alot, but I was at San
Jose International Airport, and I thinkthe combination of looking at my ID and
(27:47):
hearing me talk the person behind theSouthwest counter goes because I was working as
a fill in sports anchor at astation in San Francisco and they said,
oh, Anthony passed you work forthat station. You do sports in the
afternoon, and I said, yeah, that's me, and they just kind
of look at you and they gooh, almost like so that's what you
(28:08):
look like. And I can't helpbut feel just that they're disappointed. But
maybe that's just me. But everynow and then, every now and then
someone will recognize the name because Ithink the name is more recognizable than the
boys. And it's only happened onceor twice with my kids who are now
(28:29):
out of college and high school agedwhere they're not sports fans in my family,
So my wife and kids are notsports fans at all, and so
there is you're shaking your head,Michelle, but there is a plus to
know. I remember when we worktogether, they would be like, do
we have to go to a game? I'd be like, are you using
your tickets for who? Not formy family? So yeah, so I
figured out with who to reach outwith reach out to for those tickets over
(28:55):
the years. But they're not sportsfans. So when they when I were
out in public together and somebody mightrecognize me and like I said, it
doesn't happen that often, they almostlook at me like, well, that's
right. So people hear what youdo. I think that scares them a
little bit. But it's a coupleof times the kids are like wow,
(29:15):
or you know what was funny?My daughter had in high school. There
was a kind of a kid inanother group who I don't know if she
was she kind of liked this kidor whatever, but the kid said something
like, hey, your dad doesgames for the stands the earthquakes, right,
And she had to think. Shetold me she had to think for
(29:36):
a second and be like, yeah, he does, absolutely, he sure
does. I guess I know.Which is fine. So the upside to
that is you come home from agame that might have been a blowout or
just you didn't have a good game, like maybe I wasn't feeling right or
didn't connect the commercials to the liveaction very well or just whatever, and
you come home and then and thequestion is how'd they do? And I'll
(29:57):
say they won or they and that'sit, and you just go on.
You go on about being a familyand enjoying your time and all that sort
of thing. Anthony tell us likeone of your most memorable calls or one
of your favorite calls, your bestcall. Oh gosh, I still don't
think I've had my best call.So I think that's probably said something about
(30:18):
me, and that I really think, like, oh, that could have
been better. I'm go back andlisten and go I should have done it
this way. I'm a classic secondguesser and always could have been better.
But we had an MLS game wherethe Earthquakes, which is the team I
grew up watching and then got itfortunate enough to be able to work for
(30:40):
them, we were doing a TVgame and it was the last game of
the season. They call it decisionDay and MLS because you really get the
decision on which teams are going toget into the playoffs or not. And
the Earthquakes hadn't been in the playoffsin I want to say, six or
seven years, and so the fanbase at home at our home stadium,
eighteen thousand or probably maybe not quiteeighteen maybe seventeen thousand fans, but a
(31:02):
great crowd, and the Earthquakes hadto win in order to get into the
playoffs, and they were behind onenothing, two to one. It got
later into the game, the shadowsin October start to you know, come
over the field, and then itwas probably the last play before they blew
the whistle and the Earthquake scored ona kind of a rebound, and I
(31:27):
kind of was just like, letit all out. And so when that
when when the team promotes, likethat time of year when it's time to
get excited about maybe getting the playoffs, and I'll see that video show up
on social media. I'm like,yeah, I think I may have gotten
that one right. And so thatwas a big one for me, especially
(31:47):
with such a big crowd, andit gets played every now and then and
I think like, hey, Iguess I can't do this. I guess
I am good at this. What'ssomething that you would say, you who
because you said your heart on yourself, but truly something that you rarely mess
up, but truly something you werelike, oh, I cannot believe I
just did that. Well, It'ssomething that I've tried to kind of stop
(32:13):
doing over the course of my careeris it's really easy for announcers, especially
those who work with a team everygame, to start getting on the officials.
And that was a bad call.I don't know what that guy's doing,
and I noticed myself doing that,and it really wasn't fair to the
officials. They've got a very hardjob and it's just easy to pile on.
(32:37):
And so that was something that Ineeded to stop doing. And then
I had one game where we wereat Santa Clara and we were playing a
team from out of town and itwas a TV game, so it was
our video was streamed and they hadour home radio call tied into the video.
(33:00):
And this looked so weird for thelistener, you well, especially especially
if it was the listener or theviewer of the opposing school that the school
promoted the link to the broadcast intheir game notes and in their social media.
And then this team has a coachthat is notorious for getting on officials
(33:22):
and kind of flying off the handlea little bit. And this team was
ahead by quite a bit in thefirst half, and the coach was getting
mad at every single call, andtheir team was up by twenty or thirty,
and so I made a comment thathe was acting a little foolish,
and that got back to you.No, it was not BYU. I'll
(33:45):
tell you after it, but anyway, you get real time feedback. The
coach came out after the game andwas smiling at me and asked if I
was Anthony, if I was theone broadcasting, and then started yelling at
me. And I was kind ofshocked at first. We had given this
(34:05):
coach a lot of praise early inthe game for being successful in his career,
and then I was just describing whatI was seeing when he was getting
mad at officials and his assistant coacheshad to hold him back. But I
was losing sight of the fact thatwe were promoting this broadcast to that fan
base. And so that was kindof a wake up call for me.
(34:28):
It's the only time in twenty someodd years of me doing this that I've
had a coach come out and saysomething to me. And I said,
well, you know, did youlisten to the game, And of course
he didn't listen to the game,but he was gazed. I didn't have
to I was getting texts from peopletelling me what a horrible job you guys
were doing, and I said,I said, well, if you'd like
(34:50):
to go back and listen to thegame, I'm happy to send you a
link, and I'd be happy totalk to you about why I talked about
the game the way I did,Why I described what you were doing the
way I did, And of coursehe had no interest in that. But
it was out on the floor withpeople like, you know, the facilities,
people cleaning up, and you know, fans milling around and parents of
(35:13):
kids, student athletes that were there, and it just kind of reminded me,
even though I don't feel like Iwas in the wrong for describing what
was happening the way I was justa reminder that, you know, better
to welcome the visiting audience to thebroadcast and do your best to try not
to make it about something that wasn'tbasketball related on you know, plays and
(35:36):
things like that, try and keepit positive. But yeah, that was
that was one I will remember forever. Wow, I was I was not
there when that happens. You werenot there? Nope, you were not
there. No, So what aboutlike, how often do you because I
know this is a pet peeve ofanybody that listens to the game on the
radio, any game, give thescore, score, to give the score?
(36:00):
And do you have a thing alittle posted that says give the score
or do you just for baseball?Yes? And I know some broadcasters use
like little hour glass, like alittle mini hour glass that when it's out
of sand, then you give thescore. I've heard of that before.
I've heard it. People broadcaster aresending timers to give the score. If
(36:22):
it's a long inning in baseball,you need some kind of reminder. So
I will do that and I willtry and do it every two to three
minutes max. Basketball is easier becausepeople are scoring all the time and there's
always an opportunity. Rather people playersare scoring all the time, and there's
always an opportunity to give the scoreafter the score changes. So in basketball
you have to be careful. Youdon't need to give the score. Every
(36:43):
time a free throw or a basketis made. You can say the lead
is up to four for which team, but you don't have to give the
score. And in soccer, alsoif you're on TV, you don't really
have to give the score at allbecause they can see the score usually there's
a score bug. But if you'redoing and you've got forty five minutes per
half without commercial I try to stickto that kind of baseball way of doing
(37:06):
it every two to three minutes max. Because you never know when somebody's tuning
in, and they might tune inafter you had just given the score,
and then if you wait ten minutes, they may turn it off not having
heard the score, and you don'twant that. So did all all your
sids for basketball handy? These likereally sloppy handwritten yeah si notes towards the
(37:28):
end of the game when something BIG'shappening. Note this is a career high
or such and such. And thehandwriting was so messy most of the time
because I was trying to do like, you know, tweet, go on
Instagram, do this, do this, listen to the coach tell me things,
do a score book, and thenI t andy this Anthony this note.
That was just messy, and I'dbe like, later, I'd see
(37:50):
it laying there next to him,like when we were packing up our stuff,
and I'd be like, I wonderif he ever read that. I
wonder if he even could read that. So sometimes sometimes I can't and It's
not like I can take the headphonesoff and ask you, what is this?
What do you mean by this?After a while, the shorthand,
like you know about an announcer workingwith a sports information director or stage director,
(38:12):
you start to understand the shorthand.Or if I'm getting a note from
Michelle and I'm looking at the statsand so and so has thirty eight points,
probably related to the fact that thisperson has scored a lot, rebounded
a lot, or the margin ofvictory is high, and so after a
while you start to kind of getwhat those notes mean. But I think
that's the cleanest and most effective wayto do it, and nobody's come up
(38:39):
with a better way, so thatkeeps happening. Yeah. Yeah, What
kind of advice would you have foranyone that might be looking to go into
broadcasting. So my advice would be, if you want to be a broadcaster,
start broadcasting, and if you're earlyin your career and you think you
(39:05):
might want to do it. Andmost of the young men and women that
I talked to about this, andwe actually had somebody come up the other
night after a game and introduce themselves. While we were trying to introduce themselves
while we were in the postgame show, so they didn't realize that we were
on the air. And he wantsto give me his card and talk about
would you be willing to listen tomy tape? So do all that.
(39:29):
Get yourself in front of the peoplethat are doing the job you want to
do. And that's not just forbroadcasting, that's any industry. If you
think, hey, I want todo that, go talk to that person.
More often than not, that personwould love to talk to you about
their experiences, things they recommend,and then they're invested in you as somebody
up and coming in the business,whatever business it is. But if you
(39:51):
want to be a broadcaster, startbroadcasting. Don't wait until you get a
job in broadcasting. Take your Wehave a minor league baseball team here in
San Jose To sant I was aGiants, and I believe I came home
from college one summer and I wasgoing to go work at a local restaurant
to earn money during the summer,and I wanted to broadcast, and so
(40:12):
I took my one pair of headphonesthat I bought, and a mixer and
a cassette recorder, and I justbought a ticket, and I sat as
far away from people as I possiblycould so as not to annoy them,
and I just broadcast a game Iprepared, and I learned about the players,
and I wanted to get better.So don't wait for someone to hand
(40:32):
you a job, or don't waituntil you work hard to get a job.
You're going to need a demo,tape, go broadcast, and now,
especially with laptops and recording software andediting software, you can do all
that and then share it with thepeople that are doing the job you want
to do. Don't wait until it'sperfect. I lost a whole year waiting
(40:53):
to get a perfect demo, andguess what, I'm still waiting for a
perfect demo. So had I waitedfor a perfect demo to share with somebody
to get their feedback, I wouldn'tbe doing it. And I'm super fortunate
that I've been able to. Imean, you just have so much passion
about it. That's the thing thatif somebody would say, give me describing
(41:14):
Anthony in one word, I wouldbe passionate, like in a heartbeat,
passionate. But everybody's broadcasting journey isdifferent, right, some people are full
time broadcaster. You actually have afull time career in marketing in tech companies
in the Bay Area. So howdo you balance that job and the job
(41:36):
you have the broadcasting job and themarketing job very carefully. So a lot
of it has to do with justso where I live is very expensive,
and it's more and more places aroundthe company are like the San Francisco Bay
Area. It's just expensive to live. Right. So, I was on
(41:57):
my path toward becoming a broadcast anannouncer, and I worked at radio stations
full time, and then I wasgoing to get married. Well, I
knew how much I was making atthe radio station, and I knew how
much I would have to make makingmy way up the ladder to the jobs
that pay enough to live. AndI decided I didn't want to do that,
and so I thought of a wayI could still broadcast, or I
(42:20):
tried to think of a way.And other people are doing this too.
I've met other guys that men andwomen that do this as well. I
had to get another job. Ihad to do something else to earn money
and pay for health care and allthose types of things. I was working
in Sacramento at a radio station fulltime, and I was talking to my
mother one day and she said shewas asking me how much I was making
(42:40):
and I told her and I wasin my minute twenty what and she said,
you know, hold on a second, and she pulled up a search
or something on the computer and said, well, that's right about the poverty
line. I said. She said, how do you expect to be getting
married and have a fan family andmaybe someday buy a house, all things
(43:01):
I want? How do you expectto do that on that amount of money?
And so I moved. I wentback to the Bay Area. I
was lucky enough to get some fillin work at a pretty big station in
San Francisco doing sports updates. AndI have a family member who is in
high tech that said, we needsomebody to come and the equivalent of being
the mail room. And so Iwas twenty six or twenty seven. That
(43:24):
mail room job came with health careand I'm like, okay, I think
I can try and figure this out. So I look at broadcasting and a
lot of men and women do thebroadcasting full time. They hustle their tails
off to work. You know someTV here, a fill in radio here,
and you know voice over here.And I have so much admiration for
(43:47):
them, because I want to dida little bit of a different path based
on where I wanted to be withfamily and getting married and having kids.
And so it has been at timeswhen I was younger, and I think
we show you might have been atSanta Clara when I got to a point
where I was probably working seventy oreighty hours a week. Now you didn't
(44:08):
know that because I was only aroundplay by play at Santa Clara for a
certain amount of time. But wewere traveling to Vegas for the conference tournament.
That same weekend. I had myfull time job, had a training
that we were delivering for three daysin Las Vegas, and then I was
coming home and doing my first soccergame for MLS. For oh, I
(44:31):
remember that. I remember that particularlyy and then my stomach was hurting.
I was feeling light headed, andthat was me my body telling me,
you're not I think this was like, what twenty twelve, So I wasn't
twenty let's just put it that way. And I have always been if there's
(44:51):
enough hours in the day, youcan do anything well. In order to
do the full time job and broadcasting, I had to kind of recalibrate,
cut back on some of the extrawork I was doing for broadcasting at radio
stations and things, and then kindof find what my body could handle.
But it's you know, be openwith my employer at the full time job
(45:12):
and open with you when you wereat Santa Clara. This is my schedule,
this is what I'm going to bedoing, this is what I think.
Sometimes you would say that's not goingto work for us, and sometimes
my full time job would say that'snot going to work for us. So
we would try and figure out theright way to navigate, and I think
for the most part, I thinkI've been able to do. Okay,
you were so good though, soand you were always so giving and really
(45:37):
good about your time, and soI always appreciated that, like how you're
just a good person. Oh thankyou. That's great that you could make
it work, and you know hereyou are kind of still doing that today
for sure. Yeah, super fortunate. I've worked with Santa Clara, I've
worked with the earthquakes, a coupleof radio staatesations that have been super supportive.
(46:01):
And family. I mean, Ihave kids and a wife, a
hit door, and it's adjusting alittle bit So last year was the first
year that or this past season wasthe first year that Apple TV had an
agreement with Major League Soccer to hireall the announcers separately. So Apple TV
(46:22):
decided instead of having or thirty announcersin thirty different cities, the local announcers,
they were going to hire national announcers, just like NFL does. Right,
there's no Tampa Bay Buccaneers local TV. They have local radio, and
so Apple decided to do that thisway. So this was the first summer
that I didn't have any work,just a full time job since ninety eight,
(46:47):
ninety seven or ninety eight, Soit took a little adjusting. I
felt like I was quasi retired andI didn't know what to do with myself.
Like Saturday mornings, I would wakeup and I wouldn't have a game
to prepare for, and like whatdo I do now? Like over the
years, by Angela, my wife, her work is now adjusted to weekends
(47:07):
because I would be gone most weekendsand my daughter's out of the house.
She's older and living in State ofWashington, and my son's a senior in
high school. He has his job. So I'd wake up Saturday mornings and
nobody would be around, and Iwould just be like, what do I
What do I do? That's calledyour second life. So we all get
to that point and we figure itout, right, So that's how we
(47:31):
got here, Michelle, right,yeah, exactly. That's why we have
a podcast, Yeah, exactly.So you just find what's the next thing
you want to do, and that'sthat's what I do. Well, Anthony,
it's been great talking to you today. Before we close, though,
for this episode, we want toput you through the spin cycle. So
we just have a couple of likequick answer questions. You ready. You
(47:53):
can tell by looking at me.I've been through the spin cycle a few
times, so I'm ready for it. All right. Well, see this
one not quite delicate, but it'llbe easy, all right. Least exciting
sport to watch. Oh my gosh, I like almost everything that's going to
(48:15):
be really tough to watch darts.Darts, I mean you really have to
go. Like I like watching bowling, I like watching curling. I will
if I can pick a side,I will watch and try and learn about
it. But darts, I've whereI went to school, there was quite
(48:36):
a bit of darts in the bars, and I don't know, I tend
my mind tends to wander darts.Okay, so this is this is oh
Di Dustin currents this question. Who'snow the head coach that was at Santa
Clara. Has he been on?No, not yet, but he's going
to be. And he's texted meand said I will and I'm like,
well, probably not during the season. And they're actually really good this year,
so I don't want to mess uphis flow. Is it Gonzaga or
(49:01):
Gonzaga Gonzaga? So this is wejust Santa Clair just played them, and
I hear announcers talking about, youknow, it's a down year, uh
for Gonzaga, and I'm like abecause you know, it's pronounced phonetically in
(49:21):
the press notes and if you oranywhere around that school, they will hit
you over the head with a clubif they hear you say it that way.
So yeah, I mean, that'sthat's one of the easier ones.
So Dustin used to call in,not not to to take over the Spin
Chicks spin cycle, but Dustin usedto call into the radio show and do
the Gonzaga's radio show like they're youknow, and he would say Gonzaga.
(49:50):
He would take Zagaga Gonzaga. Itwould get really mad on the radio broadcast,
like that's not how it's pronounced,and he would go back to the
same pronunciation and keep saying it wrong. So anyway, do you think he
was doing that on purpose, justto kind of get him a little bit?
Oh? Absolutely. And as soonas you get on the bus he
would tell the coaches yep, andhe would tell him. I said,
(50:13):
you know, Sega the whole time. Oh, oh my gosh, that's
funny. That's funny. But yeah, I'll hear national play by play announcers
say it incorrectly and I kind ofgo, oh, it's in the notes.
It's in the notes. They allright, morning person or night owl.
(50:34):
I am a morning person. Iam up. I think part of
it has to do with just havingkids and being up early for a long
time. But I used to workin morning radio where I had to be
in the studio at four forty five, and for about I want to say,
six to ten months, I livedan hour and twenty minutes away from
the studio, so I would setmy alarm for two thirty and I would
(50:59):
drive in. I would go tobed at like eight o'clock the night before,
so you're actually a night person ifyou're getting up that early. Well,
it was dark for sure, butI consider that morning, so it
was morning radio. I do splitshifts, and so I think I've been
a morning person since then. Okay, Beckham or Messy, I'm a big
MESSI fan, And it might haveto do if I've seen more of his
(51:22):
career than I've seen. I've beenaround for more of his career than I
have for David Beckham's. Although Idid get a chance to call a game
that they called the Classico here inthe Bay Area at Stanford Stadium with fifty
thousand fans, and it was DavidBeckham playing for the LA Galaxy and our
(51:44):
mascot after a game where the Quakesbeat the Galaxy had a sign they used
to have those signs. That's atSports Center coming up next, and so
the mascot was trying to get inthe camera shot. The camera shot was
on Beckham clearly disappointed after a loss, and I think you can find it
on YouTube. I believe Beckham shovedQ the mascot and it got pretty heated.
(52:07):
Either that or the mascot was aroundwhere Beckham was getting into some some
issues. I haven't called a messygame, and I'm not going to get
a chance to. But the factthat he's at MLS is great. And
was so happy for him to winthe World Cup last time out and or
two times out ago. But yeah, I'm a messy guy, like literally,
(52:30):
I'm a slob, but I'm alsoa messy fan. Last question,
what's for dinner? That is agreat question. That's probably the hardest.
I don't know what's for dinner.We have some leftover prime rib that we
had frozen. This is probably gonnabe sound awful, but it was.
(52:52):
We had it for New Year's andthen it was so much meat that we
had to put half of it inthe freezer and it is coming back beautifully,
so I may have some of that. Angela made risotto mushroom risotto last
night, which was also very good, so it is leftovers without a doubt.
Although Angela was saying that she wasthinking about maybe some lettuce raps,
(53:15):
so it's either lettuce raps or primerib with risotto. No love, nice
nice. So we've had a littleextra rent cycle with this spin cycle,
so I'm loving it. Very good, lots of good information. It was
so awesome to meet you, Anthony, and I'm I'm going to be tempted
to tune into a Santa Clara gamejust because I want to hear your voice
on a broadcast. Just check theSanta Clara website and you can catch our
(53:37):
games either on the SPN Plus orcan I do a plug or Santa Clara
Broncos dot com slash Watch. Butit's fun to meet you, Erica.
Always good to see Michelle. Yes, it is good to see you,
and thank you so much for yourtime. We appreciate it. You're always
one of my favorites. Love doingit. Thank you, Michelle. Anthony
(53:58):
was so much fun. I mean, first of all, the fact that
he just literally wanted to be abroadcaster from a young age. I always
love when you know, he justcompletely followed his dream and he's just made
it work no matter what. Yeah, he's got a full time job and
he's doing this this little I wouldn'tcall it a side hustle, but some
people might call it a side hustleof this full time career as a broadcaster.
(54:21):
So yeah, and just what wasreally cool too is to hear him
talk about, you know, radio, I don't listen to a lot of
traditional radio, but I know fansdefinitely do and they kind of identify with
that voice. But he's also beenable to do television and how those things
are two completely different ways to broadcasta game, and kind of how he's
pivoted and what he liked and didn'tlike about each one of those, and
(54:44):
very interesting and just how he's grownin his career. Yeah, I would
never have thought. I guess Ijust thought, you know, you can
do one, you can do theother. It's pretty seamless. But you
know, you've got somebody when you'redoing TV. You've got a truck talking
in your ear, the producer,and we're showing this now on the screen,
and we're going to show this andmake sure you and then you're trying
to not talk over your part.I mean, it's not an easy thing
(55:06):
to be a broadcaster. And thenif you're a radio guy, you know,
if you've got to go to thebathroom, you're not going uncluse you've
got some recorded stuff for a while. So maybe some other tricks we didn't
ask him about, but that's minorleague baseball anyway. Just his his passion
really shines through and the fact thathe can tell a story with his voice
(55:29):
and kind of bring that to thefans. Very cool. And he's such
a nice guy, Like I can'tsay that enough. Anthony is a really
good guy. Well, hope yousee him down the road here. I
don't know how Santa Clara will bethis year, but you never know.
Maybe, I don't know. Dowe have another NCAA tournament round to work
(55:49):
in US? Probably not? Yes? Oh I hope so. I wish
that would be so much fun.We could reunite. We could reunite at
the ESSA. Yes, Well,thank you for listening. Follow us at
the spin Chicks. Listen to thepodcast, follow us on our socials.
Make sure you spell it correctly,c h I, c ks, and
(56:14):
give us a like and we'll seeyou next time. Thank you,
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