Tales From the Newsroom: An angry Goose
How a college play by play broadcaster inadvertently violated a Major League clubhouse protocol
My junior year of college at San Diego State, I got involved with KCR — the student-run campus radio station. Our FM signal was fed to the local cable providers, where anyone with cable service (so in hilly San Diego where TV reception stinks, pretty much everyone) could listen to the next breaking trend in music a good six months before the so-called “alternative” commercial station, 91X, would even have a clue it was on the horizon.
In addition to hosting the Sunday morning jazz show, I’d fill in whenever another dee jay called out sick or failed to show up. I only lived 10 minutes away, and was more than willing to work the midnight-6 a.m. show just to get airtime.
One day just hanging out in the studios, I found some old portable tape decks in a storage closet. I recruited my buddy, Ray, who was on staff with me at the Daily Aztec across campus, to re-start the defunct news desk at KCR. We put flyers up all over campus, and ended up getting a half-dozen students who were interested in a career in broadcast journalism and had no chance of getting airtime at the public radio station, KPBS — which got rent-free quarters on campus, but only let a handful of students get meaningful training.
Soon we were showing up at Associated Students meetings, tape recorders in hand, interviewing AS officers; showing up at rallies and protests and poetry readings — wherever news was happening, we were there. (And with a student population of over 30,000, SDSU was bigger than many towns.)
The station manager and program director were only too happy to give our news team 5 minutes a the top of the hour in the early evenings to broadcast campus news — it only increased our prestige.
Then we realized that the remote broadcast gear that was stowed with the portable tape decks could be used to broadcast Aztec games.
There was a caveat, however: We could only broadcast those sports that didn’t already have a commercial station carrying them. That eliminated football, and men’s and women’s basketball.
But it left all the other sports, and at the time State’s women’s volleyball team was nationally ranked, featuring future Olympic setter Liane Sato.
So I’d grab the gear, and head over to the San Diego Sports Arena to call play by play for women’s volleyball — sometimes alone, sometimes with a color analyst. (Note to any budding sports broadcasters: If you can call indoor volleyball, you can call anything. It is as fast-paced a sports as exists.)
Not that either of us knew what we were talking about, but the players and coaches seemed to appreciate the attention.
I don’t think they realized that our sports broadcasts were only carried on our AM signal — which was basically a micropower station that could only be picked up on campus, primarily in the dorms. (I later found out that the dining halls would put our station over the PA system when a game was on.)
Most of the time, the AM signal was silent. Those semesters and years when we had more would-be dee-jays than time slots on the more prestigious FM side, we’d open up AM to more mainstream rock. We had three fully equipped studios then — one for FM, one for AM, and the third for pre-recording public service announcements, interviews with local bands, and our news programming.
(When a series of lawsuits forced the football and men’s basketball teams to open up their locker rooms to female reporters so long as male reporters were allowed in, we requested access to the women’s volleyball locker room after games; the school responded by denying all media access to women’s locker rooms. The female sportswriter for the Daily Aztec who covered the volleyball team never did forgive us.)
Fall semester of my senior year, we made arrangements to broadcast Aztecs home baseball games.
Smith Field, before there was a Tony Gwynn Stadium around it, wasn’t much bigger than a high school diamond — with a couple sections of bleachers, and a rickety, plywood press box I’m pretty sure the coaching staff built by hand, standing about 14 feet above the ground behind home plate. (When the wind blew hard, you could feel the press box sway.)
Despite all that, there was something purely magical about calling a baseball game over the radio. Usually I called it alone, unable to round up a color analyst. There’d usually be three to four other folks in the press box: The Daily Aztec sportswriter covering the game, the PA announcer, the official scorer, usually a statistician from the Athletic Department.
And except for the Aztec reporter — who only knew of me as a news reporter and what did I think I was doing in his world? — everyone was very friendly and welcoming.
I had never taken a broadcast class, had zero training. To be honest, I didn’t have any idea what I was doing that first game — except for the fact that I’d been a baseball fan since I was about 8, and had spent a childhood surreptitiously listening to Reds games on a crystal radio hidden under my pillow when I was supposed to be sleeping.
Listening to Al Michaels, and then Marty Brennamen and Joe Nuxhall, then moving to San Diego and getting to listen to Bob Chandler, Jerry Coleman, Dave Campbell and Ted Leitner — well, those had been my teachers even if I hadn’t realized it at the time.
I don’t know if I was any good, and I never could figure out how to make an aircheck with the remote gear, so there’s no way to find out now.
But I don’t think I started out any more slowly in the booth than the 1985-86 Aztecs did on the field.
College baseball teams in the sunbelt back in the ’80s would start their nonconference schedule as early as November, so by the time the snowbelt teams started play in March, the Aztecs would already have 20 games under their belt. The power conferences in cold-weather locales put an end to that a few years later.
Even with that, though, the Aztecs started out play in the Western Athletic Conference something like 1-8.
I remember the Utah Utes came to town for a series, and the Aztecs needed a sweep just to stay alive. They ran the table against Utah, then BYU, and ended up qualifying for the conference tournament and made the NCAAs that year.
But the highlight of every Aztec baseball season back then was the annual exhibition game against the San Diego Padres. After the Padres left their Yuma spring training home, they’d open up Jack Murphy Stadium for a free game against the Aztecs.
It was a great chance to give the stadium crew a dry run before the madness of Opening Day. I’m sure the Padres made decent money off the concessions that night, and they would donate the parking concession to the Aztecs program — those games used to draw 30,000 or more, and if each car paid $5 to park, that was a nice bump to Coach Jim Dietz’s budget.
For the players, I’m sure it was a thrill — getting to play in a Major League ballpark against Major League players in front of the largest crowd any of them had ever played in front of before. Most of those college players would never even get to the minors — college ball was the highlight of their playing career.
For a college broadcaster who pretty much knew his future was in print journalism, it was also a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.
The SDSU sports information director got our parking passes and media passes all lined up. Bill Early, who went on to be a sideline reporter for Aztecs football some years later, was my color man that night.
We parked in the media lot, showed our passes, got directions to the visiting team’s broadcast booth, set up our gear, and then tried not to be nervous.
Before the game started, Padres’ radio announcer Bob Chandler stuck his head in our booth and asked if he could go over the pronunciation of the Aztecs’ players names with us. Later, Ted Leitner stuck his head in to say hi.
The game ... well, it’s all a blur in my memory now. I was calling a baseball game at a Major League ballpark. I was in heaven.
After the game, we went down to the locker rooms and interviewed Coach Dietz. It was an exhibition game — as well as a great recruiting tool — but it didn’t count in the standings, so he wasn’t too concerned with the outcome, more with how specific players had performed.
Then we headed over to the Padres clubhouse — we wanted to interview Tony Gwynn, the Padres’ star outfielder and former Aztec whose younger brother Chris had been drafted by the Dodgers the year before, and had just had his first spring training with them.
Our media passes got us past security, and we were directed to Tony’s locker to wait for him to finish showering.
Bill and I were standing there, me in my ever-present Reds hat that I wore everywhere, Bill dressed more like a normal human being.
Suddenly I hear a growl, then a thunderous roar: “TAKE THAT G%&#$%*$ REDS CAP OFF BEFORE I COME RIP IT OFF YOUR F%&#$%* HEAD!”
I look over, and Goose Gossage, the Padres’ star reliever with a reputation as a man not to be trifled with, is glaring at me from his locker. I quickly took the cap off and stuffed it in my shirt.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Who the hell are you anyway?” he demanded.
“San Diego State student radio ... we wanted to interview Mr. Gwynn.”
“Huh.” He looked us over with obvious disapproval, then, satisfied the offending headwear was gone, turned back to whatever he’d been doing.
Outfielder Carmelo Martinez, who’d witnessed this, came over and flashed us a smile.
“Don’t let him get to you — but you shouldn’t wear another team’s gear into a clubhouse.”
Lesson learned.
And Tony Gwynn was as good as gold — he talked about how Chris was doing at Spring Training, how impressed he was with the Aztecs that year, he even recorded a station ID: “You’re listening to Aztecs baseball on KCR Radio.”
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Nice. Thanks
You talked to Tony Gwynn. Outstanding. A fun column after a serious one yesterday. Keep up the good work Jim.