Latest / The Pat McGann Show / Adam Amin on the Chicago Bulls, Bob Costas & Competitive Hot Dog Eating | The Pat McGann Show Ep. 57

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Adam Amin on the Chicago Bulls, Bob Costas & Competitive Hot Dog Eating | The Pat McGann Show Ep. 57 · The Pat McGann Show

0:00
SPEAKER_00: It's episode 57 of the Pat McGann Show.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: This week, Pat welcomes sports broadcaster and voice of the Chicago Bulls, Adam Amin and Dwayne Kennedy.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: The Pat McGann Show, as always, is brought to you by Teege Hanley, Uncomplicated Skin Care for Men.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: And now, here's Pat.
0:15
SPEAKER_06: All right, hello from Chicago to the rest of the world.
0:18
SPEAKER_06: It's the Pat McGann Show with Dwayne Kennedy.
0:21
SPEAKER_06: We're live in the Teege Hanley Studios on the west side of Chicago, and we got a wonderful guest with us.
0:27
SPEAKER_06: We got Adam Amin jumping in here.
0:29
SPEAKER_06: Adam, what is up, man?
0:30
SPEAKER_04: Oh, this is a pleasure, man.
0:31
SPEAKER_04: Thanks so much for having me, guys.
0:33
SPEAKER_04: I really appreciate this.
0:34
SPEAKER_06: Adam is the voice of the Chicago Bulls.
0:37
SPEAKER_06: I say that was like your primary hang your hat there, but we go way beyond that, especially this time of year.
0:44
SPEAKER_06: I want to get into how busy you are.
0:46
SPEAKER_04: This is my favorite time of year.
0:47
SPEAKER_04: October, especially, is my favorite time of year because we have NFL.
0:50
SPEAKER_04: I cover NFL for Fox Sports, Major League Baseball, playoffs for Fox Sports, and then the bull season is right around the corner.
0:55
SPEAKER_04: So we're uh this is like one of my the most beloved times of year.
0:59
SPEAKER_05: Thanks for squeezing us in.
1:01
SPEAKER_05: This is an absolute pleasure.
1:02
SPEAKER_04: I was I geeked out a little bit because I've I've seen you you perform before.
1:06
SPEAKER_04: I've seen Dwayne perform multiple times and over the years, and uh I've been a fan of him from afar.
1:11
SPEAKER_04: So this is really cool just to sit in front of two people that uh I've enjoyed in the past.
1:15
SPEAKER_04: So this is awesome.
1:15
SPEAKER_03: We'll prepare for disappointment.
1:17
SPEAKER_04: Yes, I am I cannot wait to walk in with a very high bar set and then trip over it on the way out because of how low it's gone.
1:25
SPEAKER_06: You know, it's funny because like I know a lot of people listening have maybe seen some of my stand-up, they've seen maybe some of Dwayne's clips and stuff.
1:32
SPEAKER_06: But if you haven't seen Dwayne do a whole set, like a his show, phenomenal, right?
1:39
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I I love it when you walked up and you were like, Dwayne, I know you.
1:42
SPEAKER_06: I've seen you, man.
1:43
SPEAKER_06: I was like, you do?
1:45
SPEAKER_04: I have been uh been to Zanies and I've seen you like Laugh Factory and stuff in the past, and it's uh it's always a pleasure.
1:51
SPEAKER_04: So I I geeked out, I told you guys over stand-up comedy from the time I was seven and started watching like Showtime at the Apollo after Saturday Night Live.
2:00
SPEAKER_04: Uh the first DVD I ever bought was uh Chris Rock's Bigger and Blacker, his second uh HBO special.
2:05
SPEAKER_04: And from then on, it was just any stand-up I could get my hands on, whether it was George Carlin, Seinfeld Pryor, uh eventually became guys like Adam Ferrero, who I was a big fan of.
2:14
SPEAKER_04: Like when you're like 12, 13, Pablo Francisco, every Comedy Central presents that was on television was like I obsessively watched all of them.
2:21
SPEAKER_04: Uh Mitch Hedberg became like my favorite comedian growing up, and then I'd still tune in every Netflix special that pops out, I'm curious about.
2:30
SPEAKER_04: So I always I still it's just a medium that I could never perform in, but I absolutely love.
2:34
SPEAKER_04: I love writers, I love people who think the way that comics do.
2:38
SPEAKER_04: Uh it's always fun to just hear people's viewpoints on stuff from the opposite side of things, and I just thought it was uh it's it's a rebellious way to look at common things, and it always stuck with me for some reason.
2:50
SPEAKER_04: Like I said, I could never do it.
2:51
SPEAKER_04: Uh I did it for the fifth grade talent show at Fullerton Elementary School in Addison, Illinois, and uh I basically ripped off Rocco.
3:01
SPEAKER_04: I I I though I had one original bit.
3:03
SPEAKER_04: Uh do you remember the show Rocco's Modern Life?
3:05
SPEAKER_04: It was a cartoon.
3:06
SPEAKER_04: They there there was some bit, and you're a kid, you're watching it nine, ten years old, and it's the plumber who just can't lift it.
3:18
SPEAKER_04: So it's just you see crack on the backside, and I had some bit about how a plumber came into my parents' house and would ask my father to lift his pants up every time.
3:30
SPEAKER_04: And it was making a dumb, dumb joke with a stupid voice, but a bunch of 10-year-olds thought it was funny.
3:35
SPEAKER_04: And I think I got a few of like the older teachers to crack a smile, which was a very satisfying moment.
3:41
SPEAKER_04: I never did stand up after that again because I thought that's that's a win.
3:44
SPEAKER_04: I'll take that win and then I'll just watch people who actually know what they're doing do it from the time.
3:47
SPEAKER_03: George Kastans at it.
3:49
SPEAKER_03: I'm out.
3:50
SPEAKER_04: I'm out.
3:51
SPEAKER_04: I said just leave on a high, and I left on a high.
3:53
SPEAKER_06: Well, to get up in fifth grade and do that, just that would be like something to smile about.
3:58
SPEAKER_06: And you have this background in I I was, you know, I did a deep dive on you, Adam.
4:03
SPEAKER_06: Oh gosh.
4:03
SPEAKER_06: You have a background in theater, right?
4:05
SPEAKER_06: You saw you did some stuff growing up, like in high school and stuff, and also played some instruments.
4:11
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
4:11
SPEAKER_04: I was I was I I was a big performance geek.
4:13
SPEAKER_04: So I started playing the violin when I was six.
4:15
SPEAKER_04: I started playing the guitar when I was twelve.
4:17
SPEAKER_04: I started DJing when I was thirteen.
4:18
SPEAKER_06: I started family into this, or they're not well.
4:21
SPEAKER_04: My my older uh my older brother was a was like a wedding and like corporate event DJ.
4:26
SPEAKER_04: So like he'd go do weddings and things like that.
4:28
SPEAKER_04: So I he always had this case of big, like a huge case of CDs, two crates full of CDs.
4:34
SPEAKER_04: He had three or four crates of old uh house music records and things like that.
4:38
SPEAKER_04: So I got exposed to a lot of music through him.
4:41
SPEAKER_04: Uh, and I think it was always on because of him.
4:44
SPEAKER_04: Anytime I was in the car with him, my brothers are a lot older, they're 9, 13, and 17 years older than me.
4:48
SPEAKER_04: So I got exposed to a lot of stuff that like teenagers were exposed to when I was very young.
4:52
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, uh it was a great great learning experience.
4:55
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, basically, great learning experience.
4:57
SPEAKER_04: You get exposed to a lot of cool things, and I was attracted to all that music, theater, acting.
5:02
SPEAKER_04: Uh I did all of it uh all the way through college.
5:05
SPEAKER_04: You played violin at a young age.
5:07
SPEAKER_04: I played violin when I was six, and then I was an all-state singer, like in Illinois.
5:10
SPEAKER_04: I did all-state theater.
5:12
SPEAKER_04: Uh I uh I like I said, I DJ'd all the parties and all the homecoming dances and things like that when I was in high school.
5:18
SPEAKER_04: I did that all the way through college.
5:20
SPEAKER_04: You know what?
5:20
SPEAKER_03: You take over the rest of the show.
5:23
SPEAKER_04: It's a it's just the it's performance, right?
5:25
SPEAKER_04: Like what I get to do now as a broadcaster, it's basically a combination of performance and musicality and intonation, and then whatever the theater of sports happens to be, it's a cool like amalgamation of a lot of things that somehow hit me from the time I was six to the time I was twenty.
5:42
SPEAKER_03: So that was the other thing.
5:43
SPEAKER_03: So in addition to all the performing thing that you did, you had a love for sports as well.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: Very much so.
5:48
SPEAKER_03: Very much so.
5:49
SPEAKER_04: I think uh I think that's that that's been a fun crossroads to kind of develop over the course of the last like 20 years.
5:54
SPEAKER_06: Dude, I want to hear all about it.
5:56
SPEAKER_06: We got Adam Amin here with us.
5:58
SPEAKER_06: We're gonna talk bulls, we're gonna talk baseball, you got the playoffs coming up, and we're gonna talk football.
6:03
SPEAKER_06: You're doing a lot of national games.
6:05
SPEAKER_06: So stay with us.
6:06
SPEAKER_06: We're here on the Pat McGann show.
6:08
SPEAKER_06: We'll be right back.
6:10
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6:44
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6:49
SPEAKER_06: Alright, welcome back.
6:51
SPEAKER_06: We are talking to Adam Amin here in the uh Tiege Hanley Studios.
6:55
SPEAKER_06: It's a Pat McGann show with Dwayne Kennedy and Adam.
6:57
SPEAKER_06: We were talking about your background in the arts and uh, you know, playing uh instruments and all of this stuff probably like comes together as your broadcasting, because you have to like show your personality maybe a little bit more.
7:11
SPEAKER_06: A little bit.
7:12
SPEAKER_04: I I feel like part of the reason I like I probably part of the reason I probably liked music is because I was doing something that somebody else wrote and tried to perform it to the best of my ability.
7:20
SPEAKER_04: I was uh the reason I think I liked uh broadcasting as much as I did is because I didn't have to put myself out there like play by play as a job.
7:28
SPEAKER_04: Uh for those who don't kind of understand the separation of it.
7:31
SPEAKER_04: Uh there usually when you watch a broadcast, there's two or three people, usually just two.
7:35
SPEAKER_04: One is a former player or coach who's got understanding and nuance of the game that's being played, so that's the how and the why, and kind of explaining more complex concepts in a simple fashion so that a casual audience member can absorb it as best as possible.
7:50
SPEAKER_04: And then the play-by-play announcer, which has been my job for the last you know 15 years on national TV and radio, is the who and the what.
7:57
SPEAKER_04: I identify who a person is, what are they doing for a common goal, which is to win the game, what are the things you do to win this particular game, and that's what you describe.
8:05
SPEAKER_04: And then you kind of blend those things together and try to form some context about why it's important to that team or that person or that coach or that city or whatever it may be, whatever the stakes are, you try to apply those to the acts that are being performed.
8:17
SPEAKER_04: So I think that's the most simple way I can describe the job itself.
8:21
SPEAKER_04: Bob Costas, who's obviously one of the great sportscasters of of multiple generations, said it's a fairly easy job to do adequately.
8:28
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
8:29
SPEAKER_04: I think it's an exceptionally hard job to do really, really well.
8:32
SPEAKER_04: And the goal is to do it really, really well.
8:35
SPEAKER_04: And I think your personality starts to come out when you feel confident in the basics of what the job actually is.
8:41
SPEAKER_04: So it took a long time for me to even feel like I could share a personality.
8:45
SPEAKER_04: Sometimes I don't think I have a personality.
8:46
SPEAKER_04: I think I just blend in with whatever's happening uh because I'm so focused on on what the actual game is is doing, what what's happening on the floor or on the court uh or on the field in front of us.
8:57
SPEAKER_06: We like to have people on that don't have personalities.
8:59
SPEAKER_06: I like to I wanted to flatline the show as soon as I came on.
9:04
SPEAKER_06: I just wanted to have so much going on.
9:07
SPEAKER_06: You brought up Bob Costas.
9:08
SPEAKER_06: I was he like a mentor to you?
9:10
SPEAKER_04: Not a you know, he was a Syracuse guy.
9:11
SPEAKER_04: I was not I didn't go to Syracuse or any big school.
9:13
SPEAKER_04: I went to Valparaiso about 50 miles east of here in Indiana.
9:17
SPEAKER_04: So for me, it was more about just doing it.
9:19
SPEAKER_04: But Bob Costas, who called uh the last Bulls championship on NBC, he had the famous call, you know, uh Jordan shot Jordan you know uh 17 seconds from game six, you know, from champion uh from overtime or championship number six, which is a call I absolutely ripped off when I was calling it NCAA championship game uh about eight years ago.
9:39
SPEAKER_04: I said with three seconds from overtime or national championship.
9:42
SPEAKER_04: And I was like, yep, I just ripped that off from Bob Costus.
9:44
SPEAKER_04: I imagine I imagine for me guys.
9:47
SPEAKER_06: He's been influenced by other people to this, of course, painting the picture, right?
9:50
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, when well when you guys are you guys are comics and you when you first start, all everybody in this room probably had a crib note from somebody.
9:56
SPEAKER_04: Right?
9:56
SPEAKER_04: You crib note from just people that you like or that you think are funny or you think are good at this or you think are good craftspeople at this, because you want to be great at it.
10:04
SPEAKER_04: If you want to be great at it, you look at who you think is great and you just take whatever notes you can from them.
10:10
SPEAKER_04: And you said personality.
10:12
SPEAKER_04: For me, it was over time to try to figure out who am I as a person, what is my sense of humor, if that applies at all during a broadcast, because you want to have some moments of levity as well, you want to be light.
10:22
SPEAKER_04: You this isn't a heavy thing typically that we're doing.
10:25
SPEAKER_04: We're talking about sports, and it's supposed to be a light thing, and over time, as you crib noted from the people that do this skillfully, then you start to apply your own dynamics to it, your own sense of humor, and how you would write a phrase or how you would say a phrase in real time, and then apply the actual fundamentals of the job.
10:41
SPEAKER_04: So it's it's over a lot of time.
10:43
SPEAKER_04: I imagine that's why again I probably like lean into the stand to watching stand-up comedy and listening to writers because a lot of that is the same path that I think this is how I look at the job as well.
10:55
SPEAKER_04: I look at it as you learn from the best, you figure out how it works in your own voice, and then you start applying it and building it over time.
11:01
SPEAKER_06: Well, you're an entertainment basically.
11:03
SPEAKER_06: This is an entertainment job.
11:04
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
11:05
SPEAKER_06: I uh was thinking about Bob Costas when he brought up his name because uh I don't know if you ever had an opportunity to open like for a music Dwayne.
11:13
SPEAKER_06: Have you ever over like I did a thing in St.
11:15
SPEAKER_06: Louis?
11:15
SPEAKER_06: He's beloved in St.
11:16
SPEAKER_06: Louis.
11:17
SPEAKER_06: He's from there, right?
11:18
SPEAKER_06: Tim McGraw is the is the main act, and I had to do like 20 minutes before Tim McGraw.
11:23
SPEAKER_06: Interesting audience, large audience.
11:25
SPEAKER_06: I ate it.
11:27
SPEAKER_06: Ate it, absolutely ate it for 20 minutes.
11:32
SPEAKER_06: Over and over.
11:33
SPEAKER_06: I hated it.
11:34
SPEAKER_06: And Bob Costis is right there.
11:36
SPEAKER_06: He's the very first person that you know I'm looking to the right, and he's there.
11:41
SPEAKER_06: And I came off stage and he almost like gave me like he almost held me.
11:47
SPEAKER_06: He's like, man, that was.
11:48
SPEAKER_04: I've been there before somehow.
11:50
SPEAKER_04: Somehow there was an experience that he was like, yep, I've he told it, he told a great story about how he got one of his first jobs.
11:56
SPEAKER_04: He for the uh Spirits of St.
11:58
SPEAKER_04: Louis, which is an old ABA franchise, and to get the job, he or or he had been working basketball.
12:05
SPEAKER_04: He what he got a hockey job.
12:06
SPEAKER_04: He was not a hockey announcer, but the hockey team out in like Syracuse needed an announcer, and he didn't have any of his he didn't have any hockey tape, he didn't call hockey, but he said, I have basketball tape, and I call hockey just as well as I call basketball.
12:19
SPEAKER_04: He lied his way into getting the job.
12:21
SPEAKER_04: So he shows up and they're playing the team that was is it the Johnstown Jets in the in Slapshot in the in the movie?
12:28
SPEAKER_04: Oh, I forget.
12:29
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I can't remember what the team name was, but that was the franchise that the movie was based off of.
12:33
SPEAKER_04: So they're paying, they're playing that team.
12:36
SPEAKER_04: And for the first time in like the franchise's history, that team sprung for new uniforms.
12:41
SPEAKER_04: So Bob Costas, all of a sudden, who's never called hockey, doesn't know any of the players because he can't identify them by their numbers because they're brand new jerseys and brand new numbers.
12:49
SPEAKER_04: So he basically said this like one guy's name, like Guy Lamette, for 60 minutes of hockey, and said this guy had the game of his life.
12:59
SPEAKER_04: He was passing to himself for goals.
13:01
SPEAKER_04: He had all the goals and the assists, he got all the penalty minutes somehow, and like he like lied his way through that job.
13:08
SPEAKER_04: And then, you know, 40 years, 50 years later, whatever it is, he's one of the greats, you know, in in the history of the business.
13:14
SPEAKER_06: You had to start out that way too, though, right?
13:15
SPEAKER_06: Did you add like smaller leagues?
13:17
SPEAKER_06: Very much so.
13:18
SPEAKER_06: So who were those teams?
13:20
SPEAKER_06: Would you cut your teeth?
13:21
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I uh I went to school at Valpo uh in in northwest Indiana, and in between Chicago and Valpo is Gary, and they have a minor league baseball team, the Gary South Shore Railcats.
13:30
SPEAKER_06: And are you a broadcast major at Valpo?
13:32
SPEAKER_04: I I was a TV and radio major, and then a lot of the broadcasting stuff was all extracurricular.
13:35
SPEAKER_04: Like you kind of went into the student radio station, and they gave you all the opportunities.
13:39
SPEAKER_04: That was the difference between going to like a bigger school.
13:41
SPEAKER_04: You could go to Valpo, a smaller school with a smaller program, and get on the air right away.
13:45
SPEAKER_04: I had a I had a friend of mine who was there uh from my hometown.
13:48
SPEAKER_04: His mom was my preschool teacher, and his name's Ken.
13:51
SPEAKER_04: He was a few years older than me.
13:52
SPEAKER_04: We went to the same high school for a year, and he's like, if you want to try this, come here.
13:56
SPEAKER_04: Come to Valpo.
13:57
SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna be the general manager of the radio station.
13:59
SPEAKER_04: I'll just put you on the radio and you can try it.
14:01
SPEAKER_04: And if you like doing it, which I had messed around with it a little bit in high school, come come here, I'll put you on the air and you can see what you're doing.
14:07
SPEAKER_04: You had these pipes by then.
14:08
SPEAKER_04: Did were people telling you, like, hey man, you got a good voice?
14:11
SPEAKER_04: I had a I had a really good voice, but I was a tenor when I was in when I was singing originally.
14:14
SPEAKER_04: When I was like a freshman and sophomore, I was a higher pitched voice, I was a tenor, I had a higher range.
14:19
SPEAKER_04: I thought I was gonna go to Italy.
14:21
SPEAKER_04: I wanted to go to Turin.
14:22
SPEAKER_04: Oh, wow.
14:23
SPEAKER_04: Uh there was this program out there that would help train you as like an opera singer, basically, in Italy.
14:27
SPEAKER_04: So it was like a study abroad program, and I was really considering it.
14:30
SPEAKER_04: And then about six months before like the deadline of like applying for it, my voice just dropped.
14:36
SPEAKER_04: I don't know what happened, it just went.
14:38
SPEAKER_04: And it went down like almost like a three-quarters of an octave, like a like I became a baritone and eventually like a bass voice.
14:45
SPEAKER_04: So I had this voice from the time I was about 15 or 16.
14:48
SPEAKER_04: Not this exactly, but like heading in the trajectory of being a big one.
14:51
SPEAKER_04: Some people say becoming a man, but or perhaps perhaps, yeah.
14:55
SPEAKER_04: If announcer, well, one of the it was some something was in the future, I guess.
14:59
SPEAKER_04: So I was like, I have to use this voice for something.
15:01
SPEAKER_04: Uh and I I messed around with broadcasting.
15:03
SPEAKER_04: He said, Come here, I'll put you on the air.
15:05
SPEAKER_04: I tried it at in college, I loved it.
15:07
SPEAKER_04: I was like, I don't I think all the performance stuff, the first time I called a basketball game for like a mock broadcast, it was so fast and there was so much adrenaline kind of flowing through me.
15:17
SPEAKER_04: Like it wasn't going anywhere.
15:19
SPEAKER_04: It was on it was on tape just for practice.
15:21
SPEAKER_04: But I remember like white knuckling the table and thinking, this is so intense, this is so cool, this is so fun.
15:27
SPEAKER_04: And the energy of it and trying to keep track of what was happening, it was my like all the synapses in my brain were firing off because you're trying to keep up with who's that person, who's that person.
15:36
SPEAKER_04: I've never seen this guy until today, but I know he's number 18, and I have to be able to, you know, identify that in my head as soon as I see him.
15:43
SPEAKER_04: I have to be able to say his name.
15:44
SPEAKER_04: I have to be able to describe where he is on the court.
15:46
SPEAKER_04: So all these things were just firing off.
15:48
SPEAKER_04: And I remember being done and like, I need a cigarette, you know, like that the the Newports actually.
15:52
SPEAKER_04: I used to I used to be a Newport smoker.
15:54
SPEAKER_04: That probably changed my voice a little bit too.
15:55
SPEAKER_04: I'm glad I gave it up eventually, but like that dropped my voice significantly as well.
15:59
SPEAKER_04: Um, and I just remember kind of like being exhausted and like Newports at 14 in the theaters and the I think I started when I was like 15 years old.
16:07
SPEAKER_04: Not I I do not recommend it, but uh this is great.
16:10
SPEAKER_06: This is yesterday.
16:11
SPEAKER_06: My son is telling me, he's like, my fifth my teacher told me that she started smoking at fifth grade.
16:15
SPEAKER_06: I'm like, she told you that.
16:17
SPEAKER_04: Wow.
16:17
SPEAKER_04: I like how she's like, you know, you should consider something.
16:20
SPEAKER_04: I don't know if you've ever thought about this.
16:22
SPEAKER_05: Oh, career day?
16:23
SPEAKER_04: If you're thinking about going into broadcasting, here's a here's some uh I'm imagining myself at a you know a small Lutheran college uh on the track watching a basketball game and like old school, like smoking while the broadcast is going on.
16:35
SPEAKER_04: I feel like that would have been interesting to do.
16:36
SPEAKER_04: But a lot of guys do though.
16:38
SPEAKER_04: I think I think old school for sure.
16:39
SPEAKER_04: Like Jim Durham was the longtime voice of the Chicago Bulls, Neil Funk.
16:43
SPEAKER_04: You know, I think all of them kind of were they all ripped heaters at some point or another.
16:47
SPEAKER_04: And uh I I guess it's a tradition, if not, if nothing else now.
16:51
SPEAKER_04: Um, but I I I I fell in love with it immediately.
16:53
SPEAKER_04: And I don't know what the rush was like when you first went on stage.
16:56
SPEAKER_04: Even if you didn't do well, and I did not do well, I just felt like, oh, this is something.
17:01
SPEAKER_04: There's a there's a juice in this that it's a it's a little bit of an addiction in in a lot of ways.
17:05
SPEAKER_04: Like you get it.
17:05
SPEAKER_04: You gotta go back to it.
17:07
SPEAKER_04: There's a rush that you I couldn't, I I only got that from performing, and performing in this way with sports as the the backdrop of it, something I I grew up watching, as you talked about, DK.
17:18
SPEAKER_04: Like I grew up on sports.
17:19
SPEAKER_04: I my father was a huge Cub fan.
17:21
SPEAKER_04: Uh we watched all the Bulls games together, um, Bears games.
17:26
SPEAKER_04: Well, I went to White Sox games as a kid.
17:27
SPEAKER_04: We watched the Blackhawks when they were actually on TV.
17:30
SPEAKER_04: Half the time they weren't uh when I was growing up.
17:32
SPEAKER_04: Uh my brother was my baseball coach and my basketball coach growing up, and we were like the three of us, I have three older brothers, one of my brothers and me and my dad were huge sports nerds, and I watched every game and I had this love for it.
17:45
SPEAKER_04: I couldn't play it after, you know, couldn't play baseball after 14, wasn't big enough to play basketball.
17:50
SPEAKER_04: I played volleyball all the way through high school because it was just something that I could do, and I fell in love with broadcasting, all of those things by the time I was in college, and I knew that's what I wanted to do, so all of a sudden my focus completely narrowed.
18:02
SPEAKER_04: I was like, I have to do this.
18:03
SPEAKER_04: This is the tunnel vision thing that I have to do, and I pursued it pretty much wholeheartedly from the time I was 19 or 20 until now.
18:12
SPEAKER_06: Did you have a sport that stuck out to you or felt more natural to you to broadcast?
18:16
SPEAKER_06: It was basketball.
18:17
SPEAKER_04: It was I I I loved baseball.
18:19
SPEAKER_04: I had my first like professional job was doing minor league baseball and Gary, but basketball was the thing that I just had like this kind of natural rhythm with.
18:27
SPEAKER_04: I loved the rhythm of it.
18:28
SPEAKER_04: It's the sport I've called the most by far in my life.
18:31
SPEAKER_06: Do you guys talk about like which one's more difficult?
18:34
SPEAKER_06: Like, do broadcasters say, like, oh dude, I got a baseball game, a little bit more chill.
18:39
SPEAKER_04: I think traditionally, like most broadcasters have said, baseball, and I don't I don't cover hockey, and I would imagine that hockey is incredibly difficult.
18:46
SPEAKER_04: I think it's a completely different skill set.
18:47
SPEAKER_04: The speed, the identification, uh, the language is completely different.
18:52
SPEAKER_04: Um, but of the three that I cover baseball, football, basketball, I think most people who cover those sports would tell you that baseball is the hardest to do.
18:58
SPEAKER_04: Because there's more than there's more, there's more time, there's more connectivity, there's more randomness, more things can happen, there's more quirky rules.
19:07
SPEAKER_04: Uh every ballpark is different, so you have to navigate a lot of different things.
19:11
SPEAKER_04: Like it's not like going I do a football game in Detroit, New Jersey, Chicago, LA.
19:16
SPEAKER_04: The stadiums are different, but the field of play is the same everywhere.
19:19
SPEAKER_04: I do a basketball game in any of the you know 30 places we go to uh during the NBA in NBA season, the court is the same.
19:26
SPEAKER_04: You do a baseball game, the wall out in the outfield is shorter and left or deeper in right, the gaps are wider, there's less room in foul territory, the bounce off the backstop on a wild pitch is different in Milwaukee than it is in Chicago, than it is in San Diego.
19:39
SPEAKER_04: So like the there's a lot more to see and absorb.
19:43
SPEAKER_04: There is more downtime, although pitch clock has kind of changed that a little bit.
19:46
SPEAKER_04: It is a little bit more regimented and rhythmic than it used to be, but it's still telling stories, it's still anecdotal stuff.
19:53
SPEAKER_04: There's a million numbers you can look at, and as I get older and more experienced, I get less and less interested in the numbers themselves and more of the why those numbers are what they are.
20:03
SPEAKER_04: And I don't even care what the number, the raw number is.
20:06
SPEAKER_04: I want to tell the story behind it.
20:08
SPEAKER_04: This guy hits 097 against fastballs.
20:12
SPEAKER_04: All right, I don't need to say that.
20:13
SPEAKER_04: That may not mean anything to somebody watching just casually, but if I say this guy has really struggled hitting a fastball, and if two pitches later he hits a fastball for a home run, that is a legitimate story that you can tell because it means something to those two individual people.
20:28
SPEAKER_04: That pitcher knows this guy can't hit a fastball, so I'm gonna throw my best one.
20:31
SPEAKER_04: This guy at the plate thinks that guy doesn't think I can hit his fastball.
20:35
SPEAKER_04: Watch this, and he does it.
20:37
SPEAKER_04: And that in two lines and one number, I gave you a story that's gonna mean something to those two individuals.
20:44
SPEAKER_04: And I think that's the beauty of calling baseball, but that's the difficulty of calling it as well.
20:49
SPEAKER_04: You have to find the little in-between spaces to really make it sing, and that's what Costas was talking about when he said it's easy to do adequately, it's exceptionally hard to do exceptionally well.
20:58
SPEAKER_06: And you have to have chemistry with your partner.
21:00
SPEAKER_06: Always.
21:01
SPEAKER_06: So that's gotta be tough sometimes because you could be tell me what it's like when you are assigned an NFL game.
21:08
SPEAKER_06: Like, do you know your schedule now?
21:09
SPEAKER_06: The next how far out?
21:10
SPEAKER_06: We got our first like four or five weeks of the season.
21:13
SPEAKER_04: So I know like this week I'm off of NFL to go do baseball playoffs.
21:16
SPEAKER_04: Next week I'll be in New Orleans for a Viking Saints game, and then we'll get like little chunks.
21:21
SPEAKER_04: Like, here's two weeks here, three weeks there.
21:23
SPEAKER_04: As we get deeper into the season, it gets a little bit tighter.
21:26
SPEAKER_04: So one week.
21:27
SPEAKER_06: Your Saturday is booked.
21:28
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
21:28
SPEAKER_06: But you don't know what city you're going to yet?
21:30
SPEAKER_04: Or so the so I know Milwaukee, like like I'm getting ready to go.
21:33
SPEAKER_04: Milwaukee's hosting the Milwaukee's hosting game one and game two, so nice and easy.
21:37
SPEAKER_04: I can drive up to Milwaukee, do those two games.
21:39
SPEAKER_04: If the Cubs beat the Padres in the wild card series, I get to stay home and I get to do games at Wrigley Field.
21:45
SPEAKER_04: If the Padres win that series, then on Monday I'm taking a flight to Los or to Los Angeles and driving up to San Diego.
21:50
SPEAKER_06: Wow.
21:50
SPEAKER_06: Have you done the uh Cubs before?
21:52
SPEAKER_04: Not in the playoffs.
21:53
SPEAKER_04: This is the first time, if they were to make it, that I would get to call a Cubs game in the playoffs.
21:57
SPEAKER_04: I did the White Sox series five years ago, the last time they were in the play.
22:00
SPEAKER_04: The playoffs playing the same opponent that they're gearing up to play uh this week.
22:03
SPEAKER_04: They're playing the Astros.
22:04
SPEAKER_04: So we did that series.
22:06
SPEAKER_04: Uh I still remember doing game three, which was the blackout game in 2021.
22:11
SPEAKER_04: I've been very fortunate.
22:12
SPEAKER_04: I covered Cubs games and Sox games before I I worked and worked for the Bulls.
22:18
SPEAKER_04: So I had experiences at Wrigley and on the South Side, and I always enjoyed it because it was home.
22:24
SPEAKER_04: But that game three, the blackout game, is one of the most intense.
22:27
SPEAKER_04: Forget Chicago sporting events, maybe the most intense sporting event I've ever covered, or one of the five most intense places I've ever been to.
22:34
SPEAKER_04: Just how loud it was.
22:36
SPEAKER_04: They had waited so long for a moment like that, and they played really well for the entirety of the game.
22:41
SPEAKER_04: They blew out the Astros in that game.
22:43
SPEAKER_04: There was a rain out the next night, and then fortunately they lost the series two days later.
22:46
SPEAKER_04: But that's the Leori Garcia.
22:48
SPEAKER_04: That the Lauri Garcia's home run is still one of like the moments I still can picture in my head.
22:53
SPEAKER_04: I can picture the pitch.
22:54
SPEAKER_04: I remember it was Yimmy Garcia, it was Garcia against Garcia, straightaway center, the most unlikely of sources to hit a home run at that point.
23:02
SPEAKER_04: A guy had been one of the more longer tenured White Sox uh on the roster, and I'm looking around, and it is just it's like a sea of black.
23:09
SPEAKER_04: You basically black out.
23:10
SPEAKER_04: Everybody's wearing a black shirt, they're waving black towels.
23:13
SPEAKER_04: You you kind of get like thrown off by the visual of it, and it's one of the great like sporting memories I have.
23:18
SPEAKER_06: Can you share your go-to home run call?
23:22
SPEAKER_06: Like where what do you usually go with?
23:24
SPEAKER_06: So I don't have one.
23:25
SPEAKER_04: That's the thing.
23:26
SPEAKER_04: Like we have crutch phrases, like I'll say gone as most broadcasters often do.
23:31
SPEAKER_04: Um I I try to come up with a line that's individual to that moment.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:35
SPEAKER_04: Um, I think you know, like the white socks.
23:38
SPEAKER_04: I think I said like the White Sox have the lead in game three.
23:40
SPEAKER_04: That's all I said.
23:41
SPEAKER_04: I didn't like cap it with like a phrase or a word.
23:44
SPEAKER_04: Um I I've never become like a catchphrase broadcaster.
23:48
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's kind of it's it's interesting.
23:50
SPEAKER_06: Not as common, maybe.
23:52
SPEAKER_04: It's probably not as common now.
23:53
SPEAKER_04: I do think it's organic, though.
23:54
SPEAKER_04: It happens organically, and it's not as if um you know we're we're against it.
23:59
SPEAKER_04: I just I kind of see moments as individual moments, and I haven't if I worked baseball for a team, I bet that over time you would get to to get to saying something that feels really good.
24:10
SPEAKER_04: I'm sure a fan has told broadcast a broadcaster plenty of times over the years, hey, I love when you said this, and then it sticks in your head and you go, All right, well, maybe I'll I'll try that out a little bit or or whatever.
24:20
SPEAKER_04: I don't I don't know if it's ever hit me.
24:22
SPEAKER_04: Maybe it'll happen or g but I if it does, I want it to happen organically.
24:25
SPEAKER_06: Do you have the bandwidth to take on a major league team?
24:28
SPEAKER_04: It's really hard.
24:28
SPEAKER_04: Uh it's I I have a great schedule.
24:32
SPEAKER_04: I've been covering pretty much anywhere from 95 to 120 events for the last 15 years, per 120 events per year for the last like 15 years doing this professionally.
24:42
SPEAKER_04: It used to be everything I did just about was a national broadcast.
24:46
SPEAKER_04: So I used to work for ESPN for nine years.
24:48
SPEAKER_04: Uh everything I did was basically a national broadcast.
24:51
SPEAKER_04: I could cover games in Chicago a decent amount, but maybe five times a year, you're like, oh great.
24:55
SPEAKER_04: I don't have to go anywhere.
24:56
SPEAKER_04: I can cover the Bears or the Cubs or the Bulls or whatever.
24:59
SPEAKER_04: Uh when I went to Fox Sports and took the Bulls job, which was now six and a half years ago, six years ago.
25:05
SPEAKER_04: I I was still covering about the same amount of games, but suddenly 35 of them and maybe f closer to 40 or 45 are now down the street, or a quick train ride, or a quick cab ride, or whatever.
25:17
SPEAKER_04: Like that changed my life.
25:19
SPEAKER_04: I was home more often.
25:20
SPEAKER_04: I could see my family, which still lives in the suburbs, uh, but I could still see them more often.
25:24
SPEAKER_04: Like that completely changed my life.
25:26
SPEAKER_04: And now that I've gotten a taste of like, hey, you have a decent amount of time during the summer in the city that you love and in a city that everybody loves, uh, for the most part during the summertime, especially, I get to enjoy that now.
25:38
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
25:38
SPEAKER_04: My girlfriend's here, her son's here.
25:40
SPEAKER_04: Like, we get to enjoy the city, and that's the one deterrent.
25:43
SPEAKER_04: Not to say that I wouldn't ever do it or wouldn't want to do it, but I cover so much during the months of August through April, and I get a little bit of time off during the summer just of easier baseball schedule.
25:56
SPEAKER_04: Now suddenly it's really hard to imagine giving that up, but that doesn't mean it it I wouldn't I I I wouldn't consider it for the right circumstance.
26:03
SPEAKER_03: Man, I I wish we had known that you didn't have any phrases because maybe Pat and I could have.
26:08
SPEAKER_03: Oh, you could have come up with something.
26:09
SPEAKER_03: You could have come up with something.
26:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, man.
26:11
SPEAKER_03: Last last show, Pat and you were talking about like old timey, we were trying to bring back old timey phrases.
26:17
SPEAKER_04: Maybe we just how old timey were we talking about?
26:19
SPEAKER_04: How tinged with yours?
26:21
SPEAKER_04: How tinged with prejudice were there?
26:23
SPEAKER_03: A dandy.
26:24
SPEAKER_03: So that could be a phrase, but a home run.
26:26
SPEAKER_03: Oh my dandy.
26:27
SPEAKER_04: That that was a dandy?
26:30
SPEAKER_03: How about jumping Jehovah Fast?
26:33
SPEAKER_04: This is I want to bring back a flavor from 1957 that that and then we can do the parliament.
26:38
SPEAKER_04: We can do parliament commercials in the middle of a baseball broadcast, just like they used to in 1957.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: Have a scam.
26:46
SPEAKER_04: They're unfiltered.
26:48
SPEAKER_04: Chesterfields.
26:50
SPEAKER_04: And then I would have to do the voice, too.
26:51
SPEAKER_04: I'd have to do like the old timey, ah, here's McGann.
26:54
SPEAKER_04: He comes to the plate.
26:55
SPEAKER_04: And he oh, he waits for that dandy of a fastball.
26:57
SPEAKER_04: There it is.
26:58
SPEAKER_06: Like that, I think that could have press card in your hat.
27:03
SPEAKER_04: I think every baseball team once a year should be required.
27:06
SPEAKER_04: And I know the Cubs and the White Sox had done this once or once like in a blue moon.
27:10
SPEAKER_04: I think every baseball broadcast once per year should be required to have their broadcasters wear like old timey vest tie combos with the fedora and the press pass in the in the hat and only use like an old school microphone setup, no headsets.
27:25
SPEAKER_04: You have the old school microphone setup, and they would just like sepia tone the entire broadcast once a year.
27:30
SPEAKER_04: I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
27:31
SPEAKER_03: And then how far back would they be going as far as what era?
27:35
SPEAKER_03: Too far back then.
27:36
SPEAKER_04: I don't I don't want to go pre-integration.
27:38
SPEAKER_04: I think that would be nice to keep it you know at least post-47.
27:45
SPEAKER_04: He was he was uh healthy scratch today.
27:48
SPEAKER_04: He was a healthy scratch today, so not allowed on the field, unfortunately.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: He's outside turning back the clock tonight.
27:54
SPEAKER_06: We turned it too far back, I think, is what ended up happening.
27:57
SPEAKER_04: So that I think every broadcast should be required to do it once a year.
28:00
SPEAKER_06: When you were with ESPN, is this how you got uh tied into to doing the hot dog, Nathan?
28:06
SPEAKER_06: Yes, yes.
28:10
SPEAKER_04: Oh my goodness.
28:10
SPEAKER_04: I remember them.
28:11
SPEAKER_04: I remember them approaching me for it.
28:12
SPEAKER_06: There were so Did you do a lot of background on that?
28:14
SPEAKER_04: Did you I did do a lot of background on it.
28:16
SPEAKER_04: I was doing college football on Friday nights, and the Friday night games weren't always the best like scheduled game.
28:22
SPEAKER_04: It was like a, you know, sometimes the matchup wasn't great, but we'd go to interesting places Albuquerque, New Mexico, uh Boise, Idaho, great food towns.
28:29
SPEAKER_04: So we would always do like a food segment on Friday nights.
28:32
SPEAKER_04: So it became like kind of a running, like inside college football bit, and we had a great time with it, and I gained a lot of weight and it was a lot of fun doing it.
28:40
SPEAKER_04: And our bosses approached me and said, Hey, this food thing seems to be taking off.
28:45
SPEAKER_04: Why don't you cover the hot dog eating contest?
28:47
SPEAKER_04: Which was not in my like not in the cards that I when I when we first started doing this bit.
28:52
SPEAKER_04: I was not expecting that to be the case, but suddenly it became a thing.
28:55
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, how do I call the Nathan's hot dog eating contest?
28:58
SPEAKER_04: Well, I do all this preparation, I do profiles on every player that I'm getting ready to cover.
29:03
SPEAKER_04: Player?
29:04
SPEAKER_04: Like, so it's like now it's like, all right, I'm gonna do on every glutton.
29:08
SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna do a profile on each gluttonous competitor and write down what their personal best in hot dog eating is and what records, you know, world records do they have.
29:17
SPEAKER_04: So Joey Chestnut section is pretty large, as you might expect.
29:20
SPEAKER_04: Matt Stoney, who is uh another very popular competitive eater, pretty large section.
29:24
SPEAKER_04: And then there's like a 70-year-old woman on the women's side who's doing the competition with her daughter, and they won like the regional round in Lincoln, Nebraska, and they're doing it in Nathan's.
29:35
SPEAKER_04: And it's like, this is this is a great story.
29:37
SPEAKER_04: What a wonderful story to be able to tell on the 4th of July.
29:41
SPEAKER_04: And how long's that telecast?
29:42
SPEAKER_04: It was a couple of hours.
29:43
SPEAKER_04: Like they did the hour of like lead up, they do the intros, which were really fun.
29:47
SPEAKER_04: Like uh I the the gentleman with the hat, and he does like the old-timey like Carnival Barker like introductions, and uh it was a great experience.
29:54
SPEAKER_04: We were far away from what what is colloquially known as the splash zone.
29:59
SPEAKER_04: That was good.
29:59
SPEAKER_04: Uh we got to be a little bit further away from the dipping island, they're dipping in water, and then they're gonna be.
30:08
SPEAKER_04: But because I because we weren't right next to the stage, that actually helped.
30:12
SPEAKER_04: I didn't have to like really absorb all of it.
30:14
SPEAKER_04: I was trying to keep count, and like we we had people feeding like the count to us, like, hey, he's at 58.
30:19
SPEAKER_04: Like Joey Chestnut broke multiple world records, like his own personal records, while we were calling it.
30:25
SPEAKER_04: Like he was the first man to eat 70 in 10 minutes, which was wild, 70 hot dogs and buns.
30:30
SPEAKER_04: Uh, I interviewed a bunch of the competitors beforehand, and they approach it like an athlete.
30:35
SPEAKER_04: They go, hey, I have to be on this type of regimen.
30:38
SPEAKER_04: I have to work out this much so I can keep burning all the calories that I'm consuming.
30:42
SPEAKER_04: I only eat lettuce on like certain days of the week so that I have room in my stomach for the following training day where I'm trying to eat 50 and then building to 60, and they treat this like a competition.
30:54
SPEAKER_04: So it's uh it's one of those like rare a million people, a one to two million people tune in for this thing on ESPN on the 4th of July, and it's become like an interesting tradition over time.
31:04
SPEAKER_03: Only in the United States can you have eating content.
31:07
SPEAKER_04: Only in this country, yeah.
31:08
SPEAKER_04: This is a very much a Don King phrase that's coming.
31:10
SPEAKER_04: Only in America is this where you're gonna find something like this, our our gluttonous background.
31:15
SPEAKER_06: Would you say that's one of the most odd things on your resume?
31:17
SPEAKER_04: Maybe the most uh quirky thing I've called.
31:20
SPEAKER_04: For sure the most quirky thing I've called.
31:21
SPEAKER_04: I think I've done like water polo, which is a great Olympic sport.
31:25
SPEAKER_04: I've I've done soccer, volleyball, NCA wrestling championships.
31:28
SPEAKER_04: Uh I've done a lot of like niche sports, a lot of Olympic sports.
31:31
SPEAKER_04: Like I said, I played volleyball, I've called NCA volleyball championships before, but that was by far the quirkiest event I've ever had the chance to call.
31:38
SPEAKER_03: How much homework do you have to do before you the the homework is the job?
31:43
SPEAKER_04: I think like you guys probably love the performance.
31:46
SPEAKER_04: When you guys get up on stage, you finally get to do the thing that you've been working on.
31:49
SPEAKER_04: You've been honing, you've been writing it, you've been crafting it.
31:51
SPEAKER_04: This word sucks, this word didn't land.
31:54
SPEAKER_04: I gotta use a different word here.
31:55
SPEAKER_04: This word's funnier, that person laughed, I'm gonna use that here.
31:58
SPEAKER_04: The prep is the thing that I gear up for more than anything else.
32:02
SPEAKER_04: I would say like 70% of my job is the research of it.
32:05
SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, I'm I'm I'm always looking for like ways to incorporate stories and anecdotes.
32:10
SPEAKER_04: I I have huge files on my iPad and my laptop of just player information and coaches' notes and stats and stories and anecdotes, and you're trying to figure out what is applicable that day, what works that night for that game or that series.
32:24
SPEAKER_04: For the the old rule of thumb for me was for every hour of TV that I'm doing, I'm probably prepping at least three hours.
32:32
SPEAKER_04: So it's minimum.
32:34
SPEAKER_04: I have a really good like recall.
32:36
SPEAKER_04: I have a great recall, but I think a lot of the reason I have great recall is because I study so much of it and so deeply.
32:42
SPEAKER_06: That's gotta be what separates a lot of the people.
32:45
SPEAKER_06: I think so.
32:46
SPEAKER_06: And your business, like just knowing I want to hear more about this dude.
32:50
SPEAKER_06: We had Adam Amin here.
32:51
SPEAKER_06: Um, we are talking bulls.
32:53
SPEAKER_06: I want to get more into uh what we got coming because a lot of excitement about Chicago Bulls this year.
32:59
SPEAKER_06: Um and uh we're gonna be right back with more Adam Amin.
33:03
SPEAKER_06: It's the Pat McGann show.
33:06
SPEAKER_06: Tease Hanley has changed my life.
33:09
SPEAKER_03: This guy has been amazing.
33:10
SPEAKER_04: Uh we're the number one men's skincare routine in America.
33:14
SPEAKER_06: When I got here, they go, uh, we're just waiting for the podcast guest.
33:18
SPEAKER_06: We know you're here for pictures.
33:19
SPEAKER_06: You thought you were a model?
33:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you guys, he's glowing.
33:22
SPEAKER_04: In fact, a brighten was like, your skin's awesome.
33:24
SPEAKER_06: Just like I look forward to like, I'm washing my face before I go to sleep.
33:28
SPEAKER_06: I think we haven't had any 40-year-olds on the podcast, and I said I'm 50.
33:31
SPEAKER_06: And everyone goes, What?
33:33
SPEAKER_06: Tiege Hanley.
33:34
SPEAKER_06: It's the way we face the day.
33:37
SPEAKER_06: Alright, we're back.
33:37
SPEAKER_06: It's the Pat McGann show with Dwayne Kennedy, and Adam Amina is here.
33:41
SPEAKER_06: And Adam, we were just discussing heroes, people that you know you looked up to, and you've probably gotten a chance to meet and maybe even work with some of these.
33:49
SPEAKER_04: Very much so.
33:49
SPEAKER_04: Like uh, we were talking about Bob Costas.
33:51
SPEAKER_04: I've never actually met Bob Costas.
33:53
SPEAKER_04: He's one of those guys who are almost like he's kind of such a mythical legendary figure in the business to me that I almost put him up too much on a pedestal.
34:00
SPEAKER_04: But like Ian Eagle, one of the great broadcasters in our business, kind of took me under his wing.
34:04
SPEAKER_04: I guess it's funny that his last name's Eagle.
34:06
SPEAKER_04: I that's a terrible pun for in front of comics.
34:08
SPEAKER_04: I a room full of comics just roll their eyes at me.
34:12
SPEAKER_04: He uh I met him when I was working minor league baseball in New Jersey.
34:14
SPEAKER_04: So I did a couple years in Gary, Indiana, a couple years in Somerset, New Jersey, and I met him while he was while I was out there.
34:20
SPEAKER_04: And for whatever reason, he like took a liking to me, he thought I I I had a bright future in this and gave me a lot of encouragement.
34:27
SPEAKER_04: Um I think that's the big thing in this business.
34:29
SPEAKER_04: Like I've tried to pay it forward a lot because I had a ton of people, uh, whether they were colleagues of mine, whether I had gone up to them and asked them for advice.
34:38
SPEAKER_04: Uh a lot of people kind of push you in in a positive direction to do this job.
34:42
SPEAKER_04: I met Tim Brando, longtime broadcaster at CBS, now at Vox, when I was 24 years old, doing a Division II men's basketball tournament, and he was so gracious to me.
34:54
SPEAKER_04: This weekend I'm off of football because I'm going to do the baseball playoffs.
34:57
SPEAKER_04: He's filling in for me on another NFL game?
35:00
SPEAKER_04: No, I'm not sure.
35:00
SPEAKER_04: Which is insane.
35:01
SPEAKER_04: Like, what a weird 16-year full circle moment that like I was asking this guy for advice, and now he's taking care of my crew while I'm gone because I'm calling a playoff series.
35:11
SPEAKER_04: Like, that's uh stuff like that does not I I don't want it to ever like leave how crazy that is.
35:17
SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's a better story then.
35:18
SPEAKER_03: You know what?
35:19
SPEAKER_03: I was driving somewhere in a valet and I handed my keys.
35:21
SPEAKER_03: It was Tim Brando.
35:23
SPEAKER_04: He hit a heart, he hit harder times, and now uh he took the keys to my camera.
35:28
SPEAKER_06: Do you know who you're working with this weekend with uh MLB?
35:30
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
35:31
SPEAKER_04: Uh I work with AJ Pierzinski and Adam Wainwright and Tom Berducci.
35:36
SPEAKER_04: I have like an incredible crew.
35:37
SPEAKER_04: We have an amazing crew.
35:38
SPEAKER_04: I've worked with them on the playoffs since 2021 together, or since 2020 together.
35:43
SPEAKER_04: So this is our uh seventh year doing playoffs together, and I'm so fortunate.
35:47
SPEAKER_04: Tom Berducci is one of the greatest baseball writers that's ever ever put pen to paper.
35:52
SPEAKER_04: He he has such a deep knowledge of the game, he's an incredible reporter.
35:56
SPEAKER_04: Uh AJ has a World Series ring with the White Sox, obviously, and over time we've become great friends.
36:01
SPEAKER_04: Adam Wainwright has a couple of World Series rings with the Cardinals, and like we just we we turned it into it turned into a friendship so fast, and I love doing big games with them because they let me direct them a little.
36:15
SPEAKER_04: Like I I s they still lean on me to like set the pace and the tone of of a of a baseball game.
36:21
SPEAKER_03: Which is which is great, right?
36:22
SPEAKER_03: That they're not coming into with such an ego that you can't tell them anything.
36:25
SPEAKER_04: I I can't tell you how much I appreciate that.
36:27
SPEAKER_04: That like these are champion players who have more knowledge of the game than I will even remotely come close to.
36:33
SPEAKER_04: I I will never even have a fraction of the knowledge that they have, but they let me handle so much of the broadcast side.
36:40
SPEAKER_04: Like they know I understand this is a big pitch coming up.
36:43
SPEAKER_04: I know that the crowd is gonna get up here, and on TV, the crowd is so much of a tool of what we want to show.
36:50
SPEAKER_04: Like, that's a club in the bag.
36:52
SPEAKER_04: Like, when the crowd goes nuts, what am I gonna say that's really that much better like than 45,000 people screaming their lungs out because they want to be able to do that?
37:00
SPEAKER_04: That's an art knowing when to let that truly that's that's cost us.
37:05
SPEAKER_04: That's cost laying out for the crowd.
37:07
SPEAKER_04: That's that's the term in TV.
37:08
SPEAKER_04: It's called laying out.
37:09
SPEAKER_06: Do you have ever have someone in your air in your ear saying like how often are you getting a lot of stuff in my ear?
37:16
SPEAKER_04: So we have a so for those who don't know the the way the TV truck works, in the truck you have a director who's calling for and then taking the shots that you see on TV while you're sitting on your couch or you're at the bar.
37:26
SPEAKER_04: If you see the camera change, that's the director calling for the next shot.
37:30
SPEAKER_04: The producer is kind of guiding the storylines of the game and letting you know, hey, we're gonna talk about this, or I want uh if you want to go here, or remember that this is what the manager said seems applicable here.
37:41
SPEAKER_04: I'm hearing all of that in my headset while I'm either talking to Adam and AJ, or I'm looking at the field calling a play or getting ready to call a play, and you're trying to weave in storylines, graphics that are coming up.
37:54
SPEAKER_04: Hey, if we get a foul ball, we're gonna show his home run from the second inning.
37:57
SPEAKER_04: So be ready.
37:58
SPEAKER_04: So I I know not to start a story after the foul ball if we get it.
38:03
SPEAKER_04: AJ and Adam know, all right, we're gonna go to that.
38:05
SPEAKER_04: So one of they, one of them has to be ready to make a point about that pitch that he hit a home run on back in the second inning.
38:11
SPEAKER_04: So it becomes like a little bit of organized chaos.
38:14
SPEAKER_04: It's a symphony that has a lot of chaos to it.
38:16
SPEAKER_04: And my job and the producer's job is to try to keep it on the tracks that to make it make the most amount of sense as possible for a viewer who doesn't have all of this knowledge, doesn't need all of the knowledge that we've accrued over time.
38:30
SPEAKER_04: They just need what's happening now, they need the information that's pertinent and impactful and that helps contextualize the moment.
38:36
SPEAKER_04: So that's what we're trying to do during a game.
38:38
SPEAKER_03: I feel anxiety just hearing you describe all of that.
38:40
SPEAKER_04: It's it's it can be it's it's a fun, it used to kill me.
38:44
SPEAKER_04: I was 24 when I first started doing this on national TV.
38:47
SPEAKER_04: I was 24 years old doing a high school football game in Las Vegas for ESPN, and I was like, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know, I'm gonna screw this up.
38:55
SPEAKER_04: This is gonna be really bad.
38:57
SPEAKER_04: And it wasn't.
38:57
SPEAKER_04: And I all the mistakes I made, which there were plenty of them, nobody cared.
39:01
SPEAKER_04: And you watch yourself?
39:02
SPEAKER_04: I I I try to less less now.
39:04
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
39:05
SPEAKER_04: I I still watch back highlights to make sure I'm like punching a call correctly.
39:09
SPEAKER_04: But every broadcaster that you like or respect makes mistakes.
39:12
SPEAKER_04: What does that mean?
39:12
SPEAKER_04: Like when when um you want like we were talking about the crowd, right?
39:16
SPEAKER_04: The crowd being a tool.
39:17
SPEAKER_04: If a guy hits a home run to left field in the eighth inning to flip the game, I want to punch the call, like deep drive to left, way back there.
39:26
SPEAKER_04: It's gone.
39:26
SPEAKER_04: Philadelphia's got the lead, the crowd goes nuts.
39:29
SPEAKER_04: I want to punch Philadelphia's got the lead.
39:32
SPEAKER_04: Like hard, I want to give it like some some thrust and and strength to it, and then I back out.
39:37
SPEAKER_04: I punch, I punch the call and then lay out.
39:40
SPEAKER_04: I want to hit it and then back off so that the crowd can take over.
39:43
SPEAKER_04: And that's what like it's like punch punctuating a great joke.
39:46
SPEAKER_04: That's our punchline is to really like hammer it home.
39:49
SPEAKER_04: That's the laugh line.
39:50
SPEAKER_04: For us, it's the crowd line.
39:51
SPEAKER_04: Or if the crowd goes silent because the road team did something good, like we want to back out and listen to like the silence of that moment.
39:58
SPEAKER_04: So that's the kind of goal.
39:59
SPEAKER_04: Like, I just want to hit the call right and then get out of the way.
40:03
SPEAKER_04: And even now, the broadcasters that you like or have listened to for years, they probably make more mistakes than you even realize.
40:09
SPEAKER_04: It's little things we try not to, our goal is perfection, you're never gonna get it.
40:14
SPEAKER_04: I made a mistake the other day on a Jets Lions game.
40:16
SPEAKER_04: Guy made an incredible catch for his first NFL touchdown reception.
40:21
SPEAKER_04: I said it was his first NFL touchdown.
40:23
SPEAKER_04: He had a rushing touchdown two weeks prior.
40:25
SPEAKER_04: That that's a small mistake.
40:27
SPEAKER_04: Kenyon Sadiq from uh from Oregon.
40:29
SPEAKER_04: The tight end.
40:29
SPEAKER_04: Yes, sir.
40:30
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
40:30
SPEAKER_04: Incredible laying out catch.
40:31
SPEAKER_04: He made it.
40:32
SPEAKER_04: Dwayne remembers this mistake.
40:34
SPEAKER_04: He's all over again.
40:36
SPEAKER_04: And look at the city.
40:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, that's his first touchdown and oh.
40:41
SPEAKER_04: I feel bad because I kind of like I oversold something.
40:44
SPEAKER_04: I could have just punched the call well because he made a great laying out diving catch for the score, and it was his first reception for a touchdown.
40:51
SPEAKER_04: So it's one word, but to me, that's gonna stick in my craw for for until I get another chance to do it.
40:56
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
40:56
SPEAKER_04: So it's little things like that, but every broadcaster you like makes those mistakes and maybe you don't notice them, and every broadcaster you hate makes more of those mistakes than they actually did, and you just keep pointing them out because you think that person is not good, and that's okay too.
41:08
SPEAKER_04: That I think this job is so much more of human psychology than I ever realized when I first started it.
41:15
SPEAKER_04: Like comedy is human psychology.
41:16
SPEAKER_04: You're trying to find something that makes someone uncomfortable for a moment, you give them a little bit of tension, and then you re release, right?
41:22
SPEAKER_04: With the joke and the punchline, and everybody's like, ah, there's the laugh.
41:25
SPEAKER_04: Okay, I see where they were going with this joke.
41:27
SPEAKER_04: For us, it's tension and release.
41:29
SPEAKER_04: We're building up tension for every big play that could take place, and then you see what the release is.
41:34
SPEAKER_04: He scores the touchdown, he gets the base hit, he hits the three-pointer to take the lead, whatever it is, we're building tension and then giving you a release in a lot of those ways.
41:43
SPEAKER_04: And so much of what that is is human psychology.
41:46
SPEAKER_04: You're building people's emotions, you're giving them some form of anxiety in a lot of ways.
41:52
SPEAKER_04: You're you're giving them some kind of butterfly in their stomach so that they understand this matters.
41:58
SPEAKER_04: And especially if you're not a fan of those teams, but the game has high stakes.
42:02
SPEAKER_04: You watch the Super Bowl, you may not have the Bears in the Super Bowl, but you're gonna watch.
42:06
SPEAKER_04: So the broadcasters are trying to give you some sense of these teams that maybe you don't know, give you some context, give you some anecdotal material.
42:13
SPEAKER_04: Maybe there's a great story about a player that you don't know that might give you an emotional connection to them, and suddenly you have some investment, some emotional investment.
42:21
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it creates some drama.
42:22
SPEAKER_04: It creates drama.
42:23
SPEAKER_04: And at the end of the day, it's entertainment.
42:25
SPEAKER_04: We want to build the story.
42:26
SPEAKER_04: It's a three-hour NFL game, it's a three-hour story.
42:29
SPEAKER_04: We're building up characters who are eventually going to try to be the hero.
42:32
SPEAKER_04: It's a baseball game with everything on the line.
42:35
SPEAKER_04: We we had a 15-inning winner-take-all playoff game last year in a series.
42:40
SPEAKER_04: Mariners Tigers.
42:41
SPEAKER_04: Mariners Tigers.
42:42
SPEAKER_04: Five hour game.
42:43
SPEAKER_06: Dude, you got a lot of love for that game, dude.
42:45
SPEAKER_04: I appreciate that.
42:46
SPEAKER_06: You kind of went viral.
42:47
SPEAKER_06: A little bit.
42:47
SPEAKER_06: Because there were a lot of huge moments.
42:49
SPEAKER_06: You painted a great picture.
42:50
SPEAKER_04: I appreciate it.
42:51
SPEAKER_06: I saw a lot of that on social.
42:53
SPEAKER_06: I was very proud of the crew.
42:54
SPEAKER_04: That's and that's I don't walk out often going like, all right, we nailed it.
42:58
SPEAKER_04: Like, there's always something that I'm like, I could have done that better.
43:00
SPEAKER_04: The call that we I was just talking about the other day.
43:02
SPEAKER_04: I didn't think I had a very good broadcast the other day.
43:05
SPEAKER_04: You try to take the positives of it, you watch the highlights, you go, I could have done that better, we'll do it better next time.
43:09
SPEAKER_04: I didn't do that when I was 24.
43:10
SPEAKER_04: That was the end of the world for me.
43:12
SPEAKER_04: I was like, I made a mistake, I suck at this, I'm not gonna have a future.
43:15
SPEAKER_04: Now it's become let's not do that, let's do it better the next time.
43:18
SPEAKER_04: But that game, that 15 inning game, was one of the few times I walked out and said, I don't think there was a single thing that I really feel like I would have changed.
43:25
SPEAKER_04: I was proud of how we how I did it, how my broadcast partners did it, how the crew and the production team put that show together.
43:34
SPEAKER_04: Uh, those are rare moments, man.
43:35
SPEAKER_06: Did you feed you during that game?
43:36
SPEAKER_06: I they they would.
43:38
SPEAKER_04: I I didn't eat.
43:39
SPEAKER_04: I didn't I barely drank any water.
43:41
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, what do you drink during the game?
43:42
SPEAKER_04: You water by you?
43:43
SPEAKER_04: I have some tea, uh some water.
43:44
SPEAKER_04: I drink like a Celsius or like an energy thing like a couple hours before the game just to get some caffeine.
43:49
SPEAKER_04: And I don't love coffee, but I'll I'll down a Celsius with the best of them.
43:53
SPEAKER_06: Any vocal exercises?
43:54
SPEAKER_04: I used to do a lot of like operatic stuff.
43:56
SPEAKER_04: I don't do as much of that anymore.
43:58
SPEAKER_04: If my voice I do a lot of games.
44:00
SPEAKER_04: Like I said, I do like ninety to a hundred five, hundred and ten games a year.
44:03
SPEAKER_04: So every few days or every week, I'm pretty much doing this.
44:07
SPEAKER_04: And at the meeting the night before, if we're having a production meeting, I'm talking a lot, you know, I'm I'm chatting a lot beforehand.
44:12
SPEAKER_04: So that's kind of become more of the vocal warm-up.
44:15
SPEAKER_04: I know my range, I know where my voice needs to be at the top of it.
44:18
SPEAKER_04: I know where the bottom of it is of it's gonna be.
44:21
SPEAKER_04: So I don't have to do that as often as I used to as like a singer or an actor, but it's good to still do a lot of that stuff.
44:26
SPEAKER_04: And when I when I can feel it, I'm gonna have to do more of that.
44:29
SPEAKER_04: What's Adam?
44:30
SPEAKER_03: I mean, cut you up.
44:32
SPEAKER_03: Next time, maybe doing a rain delay, break out the violin.
44:36
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
44:37
SPEAKER_04: Can you that that you want to talk about a viral moment?
44:39
SPEAKER_04: I think people would be like, what is what is this guy doing with himself?
44:42
SPEAKER_04: You still play?
44:43
SPEAKER_04: I have not picked up a violin in about three years, but if I if you gave me like a week, I could probably pick back up to at least a decent enough level to where I could read music and perform this.
44:53
SPEAKER_03: We're on a 40-minute rain delay.
44:55
SPEAKER_03: Who wants to hear Turkey in the straw?
44:58
SPEAKER_04: You guys into Stravinsky?
44:59
SPEAKER_04: Who loves Stravinsky out there?
45:03
SPEAKER_05: Krasinsky to Stravinsky.
45:05
SPEAKER_05: There's the line.
45:05
SPEAKER_06: There's the line, man.
45:07
SPEAKER_06: What's your take on when you are on camera?
45:10
SPEAKER_06: You're coming back into the game or to take a break.
45:12
SPEAKER_06: I've seen people talk about this.
45:14
SPEAKER_06: So when you're not talking, are you looking at the guy?
45:17
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
45:18
SPEAKER_06: Or because Joe Buck used to get a lot of crap.
45:20
SPEAKER_06: Joe Buck didn't.
45:21
SPEAKER_06: You look at the camera and smile.
45:23
SPEAKER_06: Joe Buck's.
45:24
SPEAKER_04: And a good friend of mine, Joe Davis, who I work with at Fox, they both kind of will always look at the camera and give a smile.
45:29
SPEAKER_04: And I feel so damn awkward doing it that I just, I was like, I'm not gonna do it.
45:33
SPEAKER_04: I'm not gonna do it.
45:34
SPEAKER_04: I don't feel I feel too weird.
45:36
SPEAKER_04: I've never been overly comfortable on camera.
45:38
SPEAKER_04: Hopefully it doesn't come off that way.
45:39
SPEAKER_04: But I try to look at my partner.
45:41
SPEAKER_04: I try to look at them and and again, especially when they're saying something.
45:44
SPEAKER_04: And the way I I tell younger broadcasters now, when you're on when you're in a conversation with somebody, and it is three people like it is right now, you guys are looking at me while I'm talking because you you want to show that, like, all right, I have an interest in what you're saying, or I'm curious about this, or I might be listening for something that's gonna get me to my next point or the next question or whatever it is.
46:04
SPEAKER_04: And I always thought that that's what I would want to do if I were on camera.
46:07
SPEAKER_04: I wanted to feel like this is a conversation and you're a part of it watching from home.
46:11
SPEAKER_04: So I'm looking at Drew Brees, who I work with on NFL, and I'm like, yeah, I want to hear what the Hall of Fame quarterback has to say.
46:17
SPEAKER_04: So I'm just looking at him.
46:18
SPEAKER_04: And then when I get it back, I'll look at the camera and I'll try to look more at Drew and kind of engage him.
46:24
SPEAKER_04: And that's not the right way.
46:26
SPEAKER_04: There's no right way to do it, but that's the way that's made me feel most comfortable, especially in a position that's probably not the most naturally comfortable thing to do.
46:35
SPEAKER_04: This makes me feel comfortable being able to do that.
46:37
SPEAKER_04: I'm not a great anchor.
46:38
SPEAKER_04: I was never good at sitting in front of a uh in front of a camera looking at it and looking at the telestrator or a teleprompter and saying whatever the story was.
46:46
SPEAKER_04: That's not really what I'm great at.
46:48
SPEAKER_04: I was more comfortable just having a conversation, getting to point A, point B, point C, and taking it a break.
46:53
SPEAKER_03: I mean, as a viewer, looking at it just looks natural to me.
46:55
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I that's what that's the goal.
46:57
SPEAKER_04: It's a real fake it till you make it, and then you keep on faking it after that.
47:01
SPEAKER_06: Kind of like hosting the show, too.
47:02
SPEAKER_06: You're hosting like running it.
47:04
SPEAKER_04: It's it's presentation, and that's like when I work with younger broadcasters or newer broadcasters, like I did with Adam and AJ, and like I'm doing with Drew right now.
47:12
SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, you you try to just make people comfortable.
47:15
SPEAKER_04: You want them to talk about the thing that they've been studying or performing or uh working on for the last 20 to maybe 30 years, 40 years of their life, depending on how old they are and how long they've been doing that job.
47:28
SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, the the AJ Pierzinski's been playing baseball since he was six.
47:32
SPEAKER_04: He's in all he's in his forties now.
47:34
SPEAKER_04: Like he's been in this game in some way for 40 years, but when he first started broadcasting, like it I'm sure it was very uncomfortable for him.
47:42
SPEAKER_04: And now, as we got a chance to work together over the last seven years, like it feels very easy.
47:47
SPEAKER_04: He knows my cues, I know his, same thing with Wayneo.
47:49
SPEAKER_04: Like, it's become a really easy conversation that is within the structure of the game itself.
47:55
SPEAKER_04: And I think that if the more you can make it feel that way to any audience member, whether whether they're a diehard fan of the team that you're covering, or it's a national broadcast and they're watching two teams that they know nothing about, if you can make your partner feel comfortable, make it feel like a conversation, I think it's easier for the human psychology of a person to be comfortable listening to those people as well.
48:15
SPEAKER_06: Have you ever had a time where you like I have no chemistry with this partner?
48:19
SPEAKER_06: Like, this is uh Sure.
48:20
SPEAKER_04: I mean, and and more often than Tom enjoyed that one.
48:27
SPEAKER_04: He got he got a kick out of that one.
48:28
SPEAKER_04: Um I I worked with almost like 200 people over nine years at ESPN because it covered a lot of sports.
48:35
SPEAKER_04: So there were a lot of one-offs with people, and you had to learn how to build chemistry quite fast.
48:41
SPEAKER_04: Like I've I have done games with people that I had not met until five minutes before we went to air.
48:48
SPEAKER_04: Bobby, Bobby Knight and Digger Phelps.
48:51
SPEAKER_04: Oh, come on, you worked with them?
48:52
SPEAKER_04: I worked with I was in a three-person booth with them.
48:55
SPEAKER_04: I had to fill in choked?
48:57
SPEAKER_04: I did not.
48:58
SPEAKER_04: I almost choked just the broadcast.
49:01
SPEAKER_04: I almost screwed it up.
49:02
SPEAKER_04: I felt like I was screwed.
49:03
SPEAKER_04: I went up to Bobby Knight about 20 minutes before we were going on the air.
49:07
SPEAKER_03: And I was to get pre-cursed out.
49:10
SPEAKER_04: To get pre-cursed out.
49:11
SPEAKER_04: I was like, let him get this out of the way now.
49:13
SPEAKER_04: Maybe it'll be out of the system by the time Virginia and Notre Dame tip off.
49:16
SPEAKER_04: Like, so I went up to him, I was like, Mr.
49:18
SPEAKER_04: Knight, I just wanted to let you know I'm filling in for Reese Davis, I'll be your announcer.
49:22
SPEAKER_04: And he goes, get out of here, kid.
49:23
SPEAKER_04: Like he was he was talking to somebody.
49:26
SPEAKER_04: I I sure I am I surely was interrupting.
49:30
SPEAKER_04: So then we're like two minutes from airtime, and I got a text from an old producer of mine that had worked with Bobby, and she told me, Hey, if you can find some like Snickers bars, toss him a couple of Snickers bars right before the game.
49:43
SPEAKER_04: So I went to our craft service table.
49:44
SPEAKER_04: It's like sloth from Goonies.
49:46
SPEAKER_04: Basically, it's like you just need to feed him, and I think he'll be okay.
49:49
SPEAKER_04: He could have been in the commercials, he could have been the Snickers commercial guy.
49:52
SPEAKER_04: So I grabbed a couple like candies from the truck, like the table over there, went back to the seat.
49:56
SPEAKER_04: We're just I'm I'm writing stuff down, writing notes down.
49:59
SPEAKER_04: We're like three minutes from tip off, and I was like, hey, here you go.
50:01
SPEAKER_04: Didn't say anything else because the the last thing he had said to me was get out of here.
50:05
SPEAKER_04: And I was like, all right, hey, here you go.
50:07
SPEAKER_04: And all of a sudden I saw his like shoulders went go down just a little bit.
50:10
SPEAKER_04: And I was like, oh my god, did that work?
50:11
SPEAKER_04: Did that just work?
50:12
SPEAKER_04: Holy shit.
50:13
SPEAKER_04: Bobby likes candy.
50:14
SPEAKER_03: So didn't even unwrap it.
50:18
SPEAKER_04: Like just gnawing away at it.
50:19
SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
50:20
SPEAKER_04: So at the end, at the end of the broadcast, I did I just did the job.
50:22
SPEAKER_04: I was like, I know I'm probably never gonna work with these two gentlemen again.
50:25
SPEAKER_04: Let me just do the job, do it to the best of my ability.
50:27
SPEAKER_04: And at the end of the day, Bobby Knight wrote down on the final box score, you're gonna have a hell of a career, Bobby Knight, and gave me the gave me the P uh piece of paper, the score score box out of the box score.
50:38
SPEAKER_04: Get out of my sight.
50:39
SPEAKER_04: Now, get the hell out of my sight, kid, before I choke you out and throw a chair at you.
50:42
SPEAKER_04: Like that we didn't have great chemistry out of the gate, but as as the game went on, he got more comfortable, I got more comfortable, and had we worked together again, we would have been able to build off of that.
50:53
SPEAKER_04: Did you hang on to that?
50:54
SPEAKER_04: It's in a frame in my apartment right now.
50:56
SPEAKER_04: That's great.
50:57
SPEAKER_04: Do you have a lot of memorabilia?
50:59
SPEAKER_04: A lot of photos, a lot of you know, just cool moments, press passes, photos that were taken.
51:03
SPEAKER_04: I have a photo from my first NBA playoff game where I'm sitting with PJ Carlissimo, speaking of the choke as well.
51:09
SPEAKER_04: He was on the back end of that from Latrell's freewell.
51:11
SPEAKER_04: Uh PJ's one of my all-time favorite people.
51:14
SPEAKER_04: We worked together a ton of games, and my first playoff game was at Golden State at old Oracle Arena before they went to the Chase Center in San Francisco.
51:21
SPEAKER_04: They were in Oakland, and it was the atmosphere there is is one of the best you you could find in the NBA.
51:26
SPEAKER_04: And there's a photo of Steph Curry at the table doing an interview with me and PJ, and then a photo of Kevin Durant from the following game at the table doing the post-game interview.
51:36
SPEAKER_04: And those are photos that I just like I will always have those moments to like remember that there was a time where this still felt yeah this was completely novel.
51:45
SPEAKER_04: And and it's cool that it doesn't feel that way now or as deeply as it used to.
51:51
SPEAKER_04: Like it was so new and scary and fresh then.
51:55
SPEAKER_04: Now it's not as scary.
51:57
SPEAKER_04: It's not as new, but it still feels like a fresh thing every time I'm fortunate enough to do something like this.
52:01
SPEAKER_04: It's it's awesome.
52:02
SPEAKER_06: It is, man.
52:02
SPEAKER_06: What a what a what a ride.
52:04
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52:28
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52:32
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52:36
SPEAKER_06: Um this year I know is gonna be uh a little emotional, and I just want to start this by saying I'm very sorry, man.
52:42
SPEAKER_06: I'm very sorry about Stacey King and the loss for uh the entire city, for the game, for the NBA.
52:48
SPEAKER_06: I mean, you know, um and for you personally, I know you guys were you were great friends.
52:53
SPEAKER_06: Very much so.
52:54
SPEAKER_04: And uh, you know, we were watching the the giddy game winning shot versus the Lakers, and like that that was what really made me sad for a couple of months.
53:03
SPEAKER_04: Anytime I would pop up, because it popped up all the time after he passed, he passed in early June, and it would pop up all the time, and I would cry and I would be sad.
53:10
SPEAKER_04: And the more I see it now and the closer we get to the season, I know it's gonna be awkward for a little while, and I'm prepared for that mentally.
53:17
SPEAKER_04: I think our crew is prepared for that mentally.
53:19
SPEAKER_04: But the more I see those things now, the less I feel the sadness of it, and it just makes me smile and it makes me happier.
53:27
SPEAKER_04: And yeah, it's gonna suck, and they're gonna be some nights that just suck during the season because I would have loved to have him next to me.
53:33
SPEAKER_04: But I think those have become much more happy memories now than they than they were a couple of months ago, and I hope that keeps keeps on being the case over time.
53:40
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I saw that they're gonna be honoring him all year, and they have a patch on the jersey.
53:45
SPEAKER_04: Yep.
53:45
SPEAKER_04: And then uh yeah, uh February 4th, when they play the Thunder, the their the team from his home state of Oklahoma, uh, that'll be uh Stacey King Knight at the United Center.
53:53
SPEAKER_04: That'll be a good moment.
53:54
SPEAKER_06: What a uh what a guy that what what a like feature and fixture of the organization and ties it to the Jordan era and the and those nineties bulls.
54:06
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
54:06
SPEAKER_06: He's gonna be so missed.
54:07
SPEAKER_04: And the Derek Rose era and and you know, like the the hard hustle and muscle era, like he he he was the voice for a not one generation of fans, that's like maybe two or three generations.
54:19
SPEAKER_04: There are there are people that have grandchildren that know who Stacey King is because they watched him as a player and now their grandkids knew them as knew him as a broadcaster.
54:28
SPEAKER_04: And like that's that's a connection that is gonna be more and more rare.
54:33
SPEAKER_04: That will be rarer and rarer in broadcasting as time goes because it's a split media landscape right now in a lot of ways.
54:40
SPEAKER_04: I have multiple jobs, I miss some Bulls games to do NFL and and baseball and things like that.
54:45
SPEAKER_04: And a lot of guys, dude, that's just what the media landscape is.
54:48
SPEAKER_04: It's a very fortunate circumstance that Bulls fans have been in for the last 20 years, where just about, you know, a game here or there, but just about every night when they tuned in, they were gonna hear their guy.
54:57
SPEAKER_06: And he was always so honest and maybe a little homer in a way, but Chicago way.
55:03
SPEAKER_06: The fun way.
55:04
SPEAKER_06: But he was honest, incredibly balanced.
55:06
SPEAKER_04: Incredibly balanced and said, hey, if a guy's not playing well, we're gonna call it out.
55:09
SPEAKER_04: He never made it personal, and that's the lesson that I've always taken.
55:12
SPEAKER_04: You can be critical when you have knowledge, but don't make it personal.
55:15
SPEAKER_04: It's not about the person, it's just about the player, and players are the ones who sets uh are the ones who set the standard.
55:22
SPEAKER_04: I know what players are capable of, especially if you've scored 30 in a game before.
55:26
SPEAKER_04: I know you're capable of that.
55:28
SPEAKER_04: Maybe you need the right circumstances, but that's you at your best.
55:30
SPEAKER_04: So if you're not gonna live up to that on a more consistent basis, that's where the critic criticism can come in.
55:36
SPEAKER_04: But it's not about the person, it's about the player.
55:38
SPEAKER_06: I remember him being funny as a player and like loving him for that, because you're always like, you know, when they show their personality, especially back then, because you didn't have the access, you didn't have the social media.
55:48
SPEAKER_06: Right.
55:48
SPEAKER_06: But I remember him doing like a Bill Cartwright impression.
55:51
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's like the dude's deep voice, Bill Cartwright.
55:53
SPEAKER_04: Like I can't I can't even come close to it.
55:55
SPEAKER_04: Like he he had such a like a big, joyous, jovial personality.
56:03
SPEAKER_04: And the thing that I've always said about him, even before he had passed, and it only obviously hits harder now that he's gone, there are few people in this world that we're fortunate enough to meet or become close to that have this innate, inherent gift, blessing, ability, whatever, to just make everybody feel very comfortable where they're where they are.
56:24
SPEAKER_04: Like it didn't matter where you came from, what your you know what class you're a part of, what status you're in.
56:29
SPEAKER_04: He he didn't care about those things.
56:30
SPEAKER_04: If you were within like five feet of him, it was kind of like he was hey come come hang out.
56:34
SPEAKER_04: I don't want to I wanna I want everybody to feel like they're a part of this.
56:37
SPEAKER_04: And he was very good at that.
56:39
SPEAKER_04: He was good at that with fans, with strangers, uh, with people he was arguing with on social media.
56:46
SPEAKER_04: He eventually won him over uh by just being a good dude, and he was like that with everybody on our crew, and that's uh that's a rare, rare gift to be able to share with the world.
56:56
SPEAKER_04: And I was just one of the many, many fortunate people that got a chance to kind of live in that gift from him for a long time.
57:02
SPEAKER_06: Well, you could tell he loved you and respected you as well.
57:05
SPEAKER_06: And now, you know, being so hard to replace this guy, you're gonna have a rotating group this season, which I'm looking forward to.
57:13
SPEAKER_06: This would be cool.
57:14
SPEAKER_06: Um who we have Kendall Gill.
57:16
SPEAKER_04: Kendall Gill, Robbie Hummel, Bill Wennington, Stacy, or I'm that's gonna be I'm gonna have to work on that.
57:22
SPEAKER_04: Scott Williams, who is a really close friend of Stacy's.
57:25
SPEAKER_04: They played together on those uh 90s Bulls teams, as did Will Purdue.
57:28
SPEAKER_04: And these are all great broadcasters, great dudes, people I know personally.
57:35
SPEAKER_04: So this if you were gonna have a transitional period, this is about as soft of a landing spot as I think fans can have, as I could have, you know, just being selfish about it.
57:46
SPEAKER_04: Uh talk about that for a minute.
57:47
SPEAKER_06: Are you looking forward to that?
57:48
SPEAKER_06: This is gonna make it a little bit easier to have.
57:50
SPEAKER_04: It will make it easier.
57:51
SPEAKER_04: And and there was a time where I knew this was probably going to be the plan.
57:55
SPEAKER_04: I didn't push my I didn't have an agenda or anything.
57:58
SPEAKER_04: I was like, whatever you guys think is best, I think is probably gonna be the best thing for for everybody.
58:02
SPEAKER_04: I I trusted the Bulls uh completely, and I think they did a wonderful job of being very considerate and thoughtful in this process.
58:09
SPEAKER_04: And they're like, let's bring people in that you're familiar with.
58:13
SPEAKER_04: Robbie has filled in on a bunch of Bulls games in the past.
58:15
SPEAKER_04: Kendall has worked on the studio show for years.
58:18
SPEAKER_04: Same thing with Will Purdue, worked on the studio show for years.
58:20
SPEAKER_04: Scott has been a broadcaster for a long time, does college basketball nationally now, and uh has done NBA broadcasting for multiple teams and obviously has a great connection to Chicago.
58:30
SPEAKER_04: And I just feel like and and Bill, by the way, just easy slide over from radio to TV.
58:36
SPEAKER_04: And and Bill loves hanging out.
58:37
SPEAKER_04: I love hanging out with Bill.
58:38
SPEAKER_04: We hang out on the plane together.
58:39
SPEAKER_04: Uh I have often worn like a rock music shirt or a music shirt, and he'll we'll end up wearing the exact same thing.
58:45
SPEAKER_04: What's the vibe on the team playing?
58:47
SPEAKER_04: Uh it'll it'll be a little different without Stace.
58:50
SPEAKER_04: He he was definitely the most uh most levity we were gonna get.
58:53
SPEAKER_04: Uh and obviously everybody knew him because he's been around for so long, but it's fun, man.
58:58
SPEAKER_04: It's it's what a fortunate circumstance to travel with a team that you love, people that you like.
59:03
SPEAKER_04: You know, I've I've I've over time I've just become friends with everybody in the organization because you're together for six months out of the year, and for you know, 80 to 90 days out of the year, you're traveling with them through bad weather and delays and uh back to back where you're landing in you know uh Los Angeles at 3 a.m.
59:20
SPEAKER_04: after a game in Salt Lake City, and like you go through like these little trials and tribulations with them.
59:25
SPEAKER_04: Again, it's not manual labor, we're not coal mining here, but it's bonding.
59:28
SPEAKER_04: It's got its own, it's got its own like trials and tribulations that always lead to some form of trauma bonding.
59:34
SPEAKER_04: Again, trauma's a heavy word for this, but like you're together and you're in the trenches with your team, especially when the team's not performing well, everybody kind of feels it.
59:43
SPEAKER_04: You're like, oh man, they've lost six in a row and now we gotta finish this trip out in Portland.
59:46
SPEAKER_04: Oh my god, please get us through this.
59:47
SPEAKER_04: Let's go home.
59:48
SPEAKER_04: It's always out west, it's always out west because those are the longest trips.
59:51
SPEAKER_04: And like you you bond through those things, and uh that's the thing I'll miss about Stacy the most.
59:57
SPEAKER_04: Like the circumstance I'll miss the most is traveling on the team plane, just talking shit with people.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_04: Like, like that was the most fun thing that we we did.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_04: And um that that's the thing that I think of all the circumstances that I was fortunate enough to enjoy with him, that's the one I'll miss the most.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_04: But it'll be a different vibe without him, but we'll do our best.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_04: And eventually, when you're comfortable enough to watch it, like I don't begrudge anybody who's like, it's I'm not ready to listen to somebody other than my guy, you know.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_04: And if that's the case, I do not begrud anybody for that.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_04: My only hope is that eventually you'll feel comfortable enough to take us off mute or or you know, go back from the radio, which hey, listen to the radio too.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_04: Chuck and Bill are awesome.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_04: But when you're when you're comfortable enough to come back and listen to us, please do because uh I I think we're gonna work our butts off to make sure the show is good for you.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_06: They're gonna be listening, they're gonna be watching.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_06: A lot of optimism too.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_06: The team itself.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_06: Talk about the the the new crop, Caleb Wilson, man, uh Daniel Swain.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_04: Media Day was uh was the other day, and I I covered Caleb at North Carolina when he was one of the premier freshmen in the country, and I I talked with him, you know, he was 18 years old at the time.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_04: You could already tell he had a maturity that kind of belied his years.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_04: Like he's clearly like comes from a great family in Atlanta.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_04: His parents, I met his father at the Cubs game um about a month ago.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_04: He couldn't have been kinder and nicer, and he was really thrilled for his son.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_04: And I remember thinking like, and he was great on the floor, too.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_04: He's playing a really good Michigan State team, a veteran team where he's you know the youngest guy on the floor, and he's playing out playing veteran college players on the floor against a good program.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_04: And I was like, man, this guy's good.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_04: That'd be he'd be a great, great fit.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_04: And I didn't think anything of it because it was November, yeah, and I'm not thinking about the draft at that point.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_04: Then when we got to the trade deadline, and the team is completely different, and the team does seem to be pivoting towards playing for the lottery.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_04: You're like, well, who could end up on this team?
1:01:45
SPEAKER_04: And then you're getting closer to the draft.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_04: You're like, Caleb Wilson could actually land with the Bulls, and I was very much hopeful.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_04: I didn't think uh the pick was gonna be bad.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_04: You're at number four in a really good class.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_04: Anyone you picked of those top four players was gonna be great.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_04: I just thought Caleb would be a great fit for what the Bulls have, what they're trying to build.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_04: They have a new front office, new head coach, uh, and and an influx, sudden influx of younger players with a mix of some veterans.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_04: So, like, I love Norman Powell.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_04: That's a great backcourt player to have teaching some of the younger guards on your team.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_04: Uh, they just brought in uh Buddy Healed, desperately needing three-point shooting over the last several years.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_04: He's been one of the high volume, great three-point shooters in the NBA and a great guy, and exactly the type of person you want to have for young wings and forwards to learn from.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_04: Learn what the process of the NBA is like.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_04: And then you look at the young guys, Modus Buzelis, Dalen Swain, Caleb Wilson, there's so much personality there.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_04: They've really acclimated to the environment of this city very well.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_04: I call the Cubs Brewers game uh earlier in September where Modus Buzelis, Caleb Wilson, and Caleb Williams and Connor Bedard.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, that went by from lyrical lemonade.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_04: They're all just hanging behind the cub dugout.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_04: Starting chance for Pete Crow Armstrong, who's part of this like Chicago sports rat pack of 2026.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_04: Like, that's insane that we have that in this city.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_04: And I'm I've been here almost my entire life.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_04: I was born in '86.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_04: I've been here almost the entirety of four decades.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_04: I've never seen anything like this, if you exclude like the level of fame that Michael Jordan had worldwide.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_06: Like you remember those posters like Walter Payton, Andre Dawson, yes, Jordan.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_04: That would that would have to be the equivalent.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_04: And I don't know, and again, we didn't have social media, so maybe Andre Dawson and Walter Payton were hanging out on certain nights with MJ at you know at Gibson's or something like that.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_04: That's a possibility, but we didn't know about it as much.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_04: And in a modern era, you get to see these young guys all kind of matriculate together in a way that gets the whole city juiced up and excited.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_04: And that's not even counting some of the young great players that the White Sox have as well.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_04: Like there's great young stars in this city all together at the same time, and this is probably like the highest vibes I can remember for Chicago sports in a really long time.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and this month you could call a Cubs playoff game.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_06: Sure.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_06: A Bears game, and you'll be doing the Bulls.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_04: It's a this is like this.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_04: This time of year is it's one of those things where like if you told the 24-year-old version or the 20-year-old version or the 16-year-old version of me, like that this is your life, I don't know if I I would believe it.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_04: Um it's one of the But it might get you to quit smoking.
1:04:28
SPEAKER_06: It finally did, right?
1:04:29
SPEAKER_04: It did it did finally get me to quit.
1:04:31
SPEAKER_04: Like my dad, you know, passed about eight years ago.
1:04:33
SPEAKER_04: He would have loved this.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_04: Like he would have thought this was the coolest thing.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_04: He came to the States when he was 40 years old from Pakistan, uh, was a banker in Pac in Pakistan and came over here and was like a manual laborer, saved up all this uh all the money to bring over the rest of the family.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_04: I was the first person in my family born in the States.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_04: My mom wanted me to go into pre-med, uh, my dad wanted me to go into business, and then I chose this.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_04: And I imagine that after all this time, they would probably my mom still thinks it's really cool, even though she used to lie to her friends about me being in medical school.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_04: Uh she used to lie to her friends.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_04: I'm I went to a wedding with my mom.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_04: My dad was like had uh like the flu or something, so I was like, Oh, I'll take you to the wedding.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_04: And it was one of her friends' daughters.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_04: And before we walked into this banquet hall, and again, this is a uh a South Asian wedding, very extravagant at this like nice banquet hall.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_04: And before she goes, before we go in, she turns to me and goes, I told them you're in med school, so if anybody asks, and that and then turned around and walked right in.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_04: And I was like, Are you shitting me?
1:05:30
SPEAKER_04: This is you could have told me this hours ago and I would have had time to mentally prepare my monologue.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_04: Could have figured out some improv for this, and instead, like Zaleika auntie is coming up to me and saying, like, Oh, I hear you're in pre med.
1:05:43
SPEAKER_04: How's that going?
1:05:43
SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, Endocrinology is great.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_04: Love that, really love the endocrine system.
1:05:49
SPEAKER_04: And then it's like, oh, also, my daughter is of marriage age.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_04: Do you want to meet her?
1:05:52
SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, I don't think that's a good idea.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_04: So uh like I've I had to win my mom over with my career choice and eventually.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_04: I think when she saw me on TV, she did it.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_04: And my dad is happy.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_04: Once they see you, and they see that you're happy.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_04: Like that was the big thing.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_04: They saw how happy the job made me, my dad, especially, and was like, I got nothing to tell you anymore.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_04: Like, you're you, I'm I'm proud of you.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_04: Do this, you're you're thrilled, uh, I'm thrilled for you.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_04: And then uh he passed before I got the Bulls job and before I started doing Fox and all this stuff.
1:06:22
SPEAKER_04: I think he would have gotten a huge kick out of this stuff.
1:06:24
SPEAKER_04: It's really cool.
1:06:25
SPEAKER_06: It's very fortunate, man.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_06: That's great, man.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_06: So many uh great things going on, and and you're working like crazy.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_06: What about when you're not working?
1:06:33
SPEAKER_06: Are you how do you enjoy your free time?
1:06:36
SPEAKER_06: What do you like to do?
1:06:36
SPEAKER_04: Well, I'm uh again, I've I have a great partner and and we have like our own little like you know chosen family here in the city, and we get to enjoy the summers.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_04: Like I more I do have more time off during the summers.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, you're only calling like one one or two, maybe three baseball games a month on a Saturday, and you know, some of them are nearby.
1:06:52
SPEAKER_04: So I get to enjoy being here more often than not.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_04: And then a few years ago, uh I uh like I said, I started DJing when I was 13, did that all the way until I was 24.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_04: Big house music fan, as you might imagine, being from here.
1:07:03
SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, we all grew up on it in some form or fashion.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_04: And I because my brother, I was exposed to Frankie Knuckles when I was, you know, a very young person.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_04: And how why do you look at Dwayne when you talk about it?
1:07:12
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, well, we were just talking about the I mean it's outsider.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_04: Southsider knows it.
1:07:15
SPEAKER_04: Listen, both Southsiders know what I'm saying.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_04: A little bit of that.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_04: Um but like like you we have an appreciation for the music itself, and that's why I love DJing so much.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_04: So a few years ago, I was feeling like a little bit of creative stagnancy, and I'm like, I would like to go back to doing something musical or or something that that hits me again.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_04: And I was like, let me learn how to DJ with like modern equipment.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_04: Like I grew up on turntables and vinyl and and records, and I eventually had to learn how to use the modern equipment like when CDs became in vogue.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_04: And I I was like, all right, well, let's learn how to do it.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_04: It's easier to do now than it ever has been.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_04: Like your like your mom's DJing like right now, too, in in her kitchen.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_04: So like every anybody can do it, but I wanted to like go back and you got anything out there that we could I have a sound cloud with like mixes and tracks, and like I've learned how to produce over years.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_06: It's not necessarily good, but so what in your downtime you do other work?
1:08:05
SPEAKER_04: I that I've I do like 10 to 15 events during the year.
1:08:08
SPEAKER_04: So the la at least the last three years.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_04: It's been like 10 to 15 events from across the year, mostly concentrated during the summer, and I put out mixes and I do stuff on YouTube, and it's just like something to scratch that part of your brain that needs to be it, you know, scratched.
1:08:22
SPEAKER_04: Like you you need to itch that part of your brain, or you you feel that itch in that part of your brain, and I wanted to make sure I I satisfied it, and just doing this is enough like to feel good about it again.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_04: Man, I feel like I gotta pick something up and do something more impressive when I I just I I think everybody wants to be able to do something, and not everybody has the time, and not everybody has the means and resources.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_04: I was fortunate.
1:08:43
SPEAKER_04: I work for the Bulls, and they have a slew of DJs that work right in front of us in pregame, and I got to watch them and like ask them questions, and they were very like nice about it, and they they didn't like roll their eyes and like shoo me away.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_04: They're like, oh no, come like uh come to a club and watch me do this, and they let me shadow them.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_04: That's how I started broadcasting.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_04: I shadowed broadcasters when I was a teenager, so I could learn like the mechanics of it, or at least what is it supposed to look like?
1:09:09
SPEAKER_04: What does it feel like when this person is on their headset, muting their microphone, but talking to their producer that's not going over the air, but they're communicating and then turning back to their partner and like there's a a rhythm to all of this.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_04: So I did the same thing watching DJs.
1:09:23
SPEAKER_04: I was like, what's the rhythm of this?
1:09:24
SPEAKER_04: What are you looking at?
1:09:25
SPEAKER_04: How are you reading a room?
1:09:27
SPEAKER_04: And I think the lessons from the last three years of getting back into music, they apply to broadcasting in a way, like they apply to reading the room, reading the temperature of like the crowd, and feeling what the pace and the rhythm of the game is so that you can either do something that's gonna detract from it, or not detract, but to distract from a lack of rhythm in the game and give a story or give an anecdote, or the game's really good.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_04: Stop burying your head in your notes just the way the crowd would be really good if you're you know having a fun night at a club.
1:09:58
SPEAKER_04: Stop looking in your music, stop scrolling for stuff, look at the crowd and see what they want.
1:10:02
SPEAKER_04: And I think those are lessons that have kind of become multifaceted lessons for a lot of different disciplines.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_04: I think that's pretty cool.
1:10:10
SPEAKER_06: What are the best clubs in Chicago?
1:10:12
SPEAKER_04: Uh I love Spy Bar.
1:10:13
SPEAKER_04: Uh, I've always enjoyed it.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_04: I got to play there for the very first time earlier this year.
1:10:16
SPEAKER_04: Prism is a great spot.
1:10:17
SPEAKER_04: Radius.
1:10:18
SPEAKER_06: Um I just picture these guys like you know, you mentioned the Rat Pack of Chicago athletes right now.
1:10:23
SPEAKER_06: They're at a club, they got a table, and then they look up and you're you're DJing.
1:10:27
SPEAKER_04: Let's make that that's that's the viral moment that I I I like to strive, I would strive for at some point.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_03: And the guy that just told everybody I was in a hidden slump.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_03: He's like, I heard what you said earlier.
1:10:38
SPEAKER_03: You're like stocked.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_03: And you're terrible.
1:10:41
SPEAKER_04: Let me dance my way over the hidden.
1:10:44
SPEAKER_04: At least with some rhythm coming over to beat my ass.
1:10:46
SPEAKER_04: Like, at least they did it in a in a four by four beat.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_04: That was impressive.
1:10:49
SPEAKER_06: Well, dude, thank you for coming in.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_06: What a pleasure to talk about.
1:10:51
SPEAKER_06: This is phenomenal.
1:10:53
SPEAKER_06: You got so much going on, and we're gonna be looking for you this month.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_06: Very excited about the Bulls.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_06: The Bulls start the season when they got it October.
1:10:59
SPEAKER_04: October 7th is the first preseason game, and then two weeks after that in Toronto will be the first uh regular season.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_06: On the 21st at Toronto, and then the home opener is the 24th.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_06: We got the Wizards.
1:11:10
SPEAKER_06: Um really looking forward to it.
1:11:11
SPEAKER_06: I'm fired up about the Bulls season, but we got the space ball now in our town.
1:11:15
SPEAKER_06: And the Bulls late at night.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_06: Like hockey's coming back.
1:11:18
SPEAKER_04: Have you ever done hockey?
1:11:19
SPEAKER_04: That's the one like major sport I haven't done.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_04: And like I said, it's such a specific skill set.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_04: I've been asked to do it.
1:11:25
SPEAKER_04: Dude, can you give up just chill out on the DJ and get a hockey game in?
1:11:29
SPEAKER_04: What is going on?
1:11:31
SPEAKER_04: It's a rare thing to be able to do four sports really well.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_04: There's only a couple of broadcasters that I know uh that are colleagues and friends that can do all four really well.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_04: And it's just it feels so far out of my comfort zone that I'd be petrified that I would embarrass myself so badly.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_06: Any events that you like, I got I want to do that one time.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_06: I want to do a World Cup game.
1:11:49
SPEAKER_04: I want to do a Yeah, I I would love to any broadcaster that covers the NFL would love to do a Super Bowl, certainly.
1:11:55
SPEAKER_04: Um, the World Series as a baseball guy.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_04: My first professional job was in baseball.
1:12:00
SPEAKER_04: I've been calling baseball since college, and I would love to maybe get a chance at a World Series someday.
1:12:05
SPEAKER_04: And yeah, the NBA final like any just the biggest games you always want to cover.
1:12:08
SPEAKER_04: Stuff that I'm not covering that I would love to cover Wimbledon and like Grand Slam tennis.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_04: I my father and I had a great connection on tennis.
1:12:15
SPEAKER_04: We can help you with that.
1:12:15
SPEAKER_04: He's a huge You want to do Wimbledon?
1:12:18
SPEAKER_04: I would like hook me up.
1:12:19
SPEAKER_04: Do something for me.
1:12:20
SPEAKER_04: Do something.
1:12:21
SPEAKER_04: I like you haven't done enough for me in our one hour of hanging out together.
1:12:25
SPEAKER_04: Make a couple of calls.
1:12:26
SPEAKER_04: That would be great.
1:12:27
SPEAKER_04: But I would love to cover Grand Slam tennis.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_04: I just like that was a sport that we I I have covered college tennis in my career.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_04: I I just enjoy calling it.
1:12:34
SPEAKER_04: It's it's a lot of backing out.
1:12:35
SPEAKER_04: It's it's observing and contextualizing a lot more than it is actually calling point to point to point.
1:12:41
SPEAKER_04: And there's something cool about that.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_04: It's there's there's something cool about being in an atmosphere that like is quiet, that gets loud for a couple of moments, and then the release, the tension and release of tennis happens almost as often as it does in baseball.
1:12:55
SPEAKER_06: Who were the best tennis broadcasters?
1:12:57
SPEAKER_04: I mean, Chris Fowler is one of the greats, I think.
1:13:00
SPEAKER_04: Now he's still, you know, is the main uh Grand Slam tennis announcer.
1:13:04
SPEAKER_04: Um I thought I thought Ian was an excellent tennis announcer.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_04: Dick Enberg, who late Dick Enberg, one of the great all multi-sport announcers everywhere.
1:13:14
SPEAKER_04: His tennis call, I would always go back the way he would cover Sampras and Agassiz, and then in the early days of Federer and uh and Nadal, I I was just like, man, I was captivated.
1:13:23
SPEAKER_04: His voice just kind of fit the atmosphere and the environment.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_04: And that's like I remember waking up like on you know Saturday mornings, Sunday mornings on the weekend while you know Wimbledon was going on or the French Open was taking place, and you're like, this is this feels so cool to just be sitting here watching the competition of two athletes and just hearing the announcer give like little pieces.
1:13:43
SPEAKER_04: Now it wasn't long narrative form, it was just little captions or little surprises that they felt that they were expressing to people.
1:13:50
SPEAKER_04: And I think that's a different art form, and I I would like to try it.
1:13:53
SPEAKER_03: He had level.
1:13:54
SPEAKER_03: Dick Inberg had one of the most like benign brief catchphrases.
1:13:58
SPEAKER_03: Remember, he would say, Oh my.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_04: It's oh my.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_04: That's all he would say.
1:14:01
SPEAKER_04: Oh my.
1:14:02
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it was it was just uh uh he you would feel it from it.
1:14:05
SPEAKER_04: Mike Patrick would just say, Holy cow, you know, that like like Harry Carey used to.
1:14:09
SPEAKER_04: Like it was it was just little things that that the it doesn't even have to be like a a punchy call.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_04: It's just I'm as surprised as you are watching this really cool thing that took place.
1:14:20
SPEAKER_04: And I think that's the essence of why we like sports, just in general.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_04: Uh I think if I think about like why we're so enamored by it, it's Giannis Andeno Kumpo is the same species as we are, and he can do stuff that I will never be able to do in my entire life.
1:14:34
SPEAKER_04: Aaron Judge is the same species as I am, and I will never be able to hit a ball 450 feet.
1:14:39
SPEAKER_04: I won't be able to dunk a basketball, I can't throw a ball 60 yards down the field for a game-winning touchdown.
1:14:45
SPEAKER_04: Like these are the same these people are of the same species who do this incredible and extraordinary thing physically, and we all get to observe cool stuff that other human beings do, and I think that's the essence of why we like this stuff so much.
1:14:56
SPEAKER_03: Although, Adam, unlike Aaron Judge, you might be injured less often.
1:15:00
SPEAKER_04: I I like to think I'm a little healthier.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_04: Not playing more durable.
1:15:04
SPEAKER_04: There you go.
1:15:05
SPEAKER_04: If I can take anything away from this, I am more durable than Aaron Judge.
1:15:08
SPEAKER_04: You can quote me on that.
1:15:10
SPEAKER_03: He's gonna kick my ass.
1:15:11
SPEAKER_03: Me and Carlos Stan.
1:15:12
SPEAKER_03: John Carlo Stan, yeah.
1:15:13
SPEAKER_06: A lot of home runs and a lot of nagging injuries.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_06: Dude, very dynamic.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_06: So impressed with all you're doing, and uh can't wait to see you continue to grow in all these spaces.
1:15:22
SPEAKER_06: And uh, you got a busy month, man.
1:15:24
SPEAKER_06: We'll get you out of here.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_06: Check out Adam Amin on the socials.
1:15:28
SPEAKER_06: Uh what you want to plug your Instagram?
1:15:30
SPEAKER_04: Just at Adam Amin.
1:15:31
SPEAKER_04: So you can find me.
1:15:32
SPEAKER_04: Um I'm I'm on there.
1:15:33
SPEAKER_04: I post stuff on there, music stuff, what I'm doing.
1:15:35
SPEAKER_04: I I post like my prep work on there sometimes, like when I'm preparing for a game or a series.
1:15:40
SPEAKER_04: Like, I like sharing that stuff with with everyone, especially young broadcasters.
1:15:44
SPEAKER_04: Like, I I uh we put up plenty of content over there if you ever want to check it out.
1:15:48
SPEAKER_03: What's your DJ name?
1:15:49
SPEAKER_04: Uh it's just my name.
1:15:50
SPEAKER_04: So you said it.
1:15:51
SPEAKER_04: You're like, you're like, uh, is that the guy?
1:15:53
SPEAKER_04: That's I think part of what got me back into the the business of it and the industry of it was like I think people were like it's a novelty.
1:16:01
SPEAKER_04: It's like, is that the the TV?
1:16:02
SPEAKER_04: Is that the guy that I heard?
1:16:03
SPEAKER_04: I just heard him.
1:16:04
SPEAKER_04: I I my one of my favorite things to do is call the game and then immediately go DJ a set.
1:16:08
SPEAKER_04: And I've done that half a dozen times, whether it's after a Bulls game or a uh a Cubs or White Sox game.
1:16:13
SPEAKER_04: I've done it after a Bears game, like preseason before, like where I'll D I'll I'll call the game at noon or at seven o'clock at night, and then go down the street in Wrigleyville and go to a bar that I'm you know, I I know the owner and some of the DJs there, and I'll DJ there for an hour or two.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_04: And it's like I think people look up and they're like, Are you the weren't you dude?
1:16:30
SPEAKER_04: Why are you here?
1:16:31
SPEAKER_02: I just saw your brother broadcast it again.
1:16:35
SPEAKER_06: We're headed to see the bottom of the 14th all time up.
1:16:40
SPEAKER_06: I gotta go.
1:16:40
SPEAKER_06: I gotta go though.
1:16:41
SPEAKER_06: So you guys enjoy this.
1:16:43
SPEAKER_01: I got potential exactly.
1:16:46
SPEAKER_06: All right, guys, Adam and me and everyone, what a uh what a great conversation.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_06: Thanks for coming in here.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_06: Appreciate it.
1:16:51
SPEAKER_06: Hey, we got some great stuff coming up.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_06: Mark G and Greco is coming back, and we uh would love to have you guys download and subscribe.
1:16:58
SPEAKER_06: Check us out on YouTube.
1:16:59
SPEAKER_06: Dwayne, anything you want to plug?
1:17:01
SPEAKER_03: Uh I think uh man, I wish I had remembered.
1:17:05
SPEAKER_03: I'm doing a show this weekend, but I can't remember where it is.
1:17:08
SPEAKER_03: Last fact, I don't know.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_03: All right, there you have it.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_04: That's how you know you've been doing it this doing this long enough.
1:17:14
SPEAKER_04: Like I've got a show somewhere.
1:17:15
SPEAKER_04: They'll tell me when on Friday, and I'll show up.
1:17:17
SPEAKER_03: Your DJ could be Adam, you know what.
1:17:21
SPEAKER_03: I mean.
1:17:22
SPEAKER_04: Let's do that.
1:17:23
SPEAKER_04: Let's let's I think that'll look good on a marquee somewhere.
1:17:25
SPEAKER_04: Beautiful.
1:17:26
SPEAKER_04: All right, guys, have a great week.
1:17:28
SPEAKER_00: Bye.
1:17:30
SPEAKER_00: Pat McGann Show is brought to you by the Pat McGann Show team.
1:17:34
SPEAKER_00: Producer Paula Thornton.
1:17:35
SPEAKER_00: Showrunner Tom Bambera, audio engineer, video and audio editor, Madeline Curlis, organic content manager, George Mos.
1:17:43
SPEAKER_00: Recorded at Tiege Hanley Studios in Chicago, Illinois.