Northwest Passages: Paul Olden, voice of Yankee Stadium

e for for for e e e e e e that's yeah here there are moments when you know you have to do things differently even when you're 140y old newspaper the mission behind Northwest passages has always been to get spoken talking about ourselves our ideas and our community's future spoken is a great book town the idea was how do you use books as a jumping off point to talk about much bigger things what if we get a whole bunch of people in a room who wouldn't normally be in a room together and have them talk about our community when they might not even realize that they're talking about our community our first Northwest passages event nearly 6 years ago set the tone perfectly it was for a book about the reintroduction of wolves at the Yellowstone and let's just say it was a crowd that wouldn't normally hang out together the response was better than we ever could have imagined they asked questions they looked each other in the eyes and they realized they had way more in common than they had different it's exactly what we were trying to do we saw people talk about things they would never talk about which has been the point all along it was also about showing the value of local journalism again how our reporters serve this community reminding people why they love their newspaper for Generations Northwest passages has become one of the most popular event Series in the Pacific Northwest and one of the largest newspaper driven book clubs in the nation more than 30% of our newsrooms payroll is covered by the community journalism fund it's funded local journ journalist and journalism projects that simply wouldn't and couldn't happen without strong financial support from our region newspapers are the lifeblood of local journalism newspapers typically employ more journalists than the rest of the local media Market combined preserving those local journalists is an essential part of keeping democracy healthy in our country our speakers are interviewed live on stage by reporters editors or columnists from the spokesman review giving a firsthand perspective of how our journey conduct the interviews that bring them the news 365 days a year it's true newspapers act as a fourth estate but they also educate unite and Inspire communities by holding up a mirror letting a community truly see itself that's exactly why these events and the community journalism fund have become such an essential part of how journalism will not only survive but also thrive in Eastern Washington and North Idaho what if we could use books to talk about school safety or environmental issues or the return of hate or complicated racial issues or native issues or the importance of free speech or health care or even Modern Family Life what's it like to bring in one of the world's most famous authors to talk about education as empowerment or bring in a famous television travel guide so that we can better understand International politics or maybe it's just a great cowboy story that reminds us just how fun it is to let words take us some place we never never imagined you never leave a Northwest passages event feeling sad or beaten down you feel inspired you leave knowing you can still make a difference you're also helping us redefine what local journalism looks like this is journalism that's all about a community having a discussion with itself and we can't wait to hear what you're going to have to say tonight welcome to Northwest passages my voice is not going to sound like that tonight I got I have one more video I want to play for you so we brought back the black lens working with our community uh and the Williams family in in February and this is the first event we've held for the public that's tied to uh with the black lens and I want to show you a little bit about that [Music] the black lens is important to Spokane um because it's the only black community newspaper that we have what our founder Sandy Williams was able to do is use our news as a way to get the word out and historically that's how black folks in America have been able to be connected is through word initially spoken word but then once we had the ability to read and write and get our voices out that way it is important important that we have this as a way to connect our community across this [Music] region the black lens has a separate Viewpoint from the mainstream because it does give a black lens when you hear stories from Black authors and black writers and you hear their perspective and their voice it's going to sound different and so I think it's important that we do have that black experience and that black voice on issues so that folks from the black community can feel connected and understand why it's important and how it's going to impact them and their Community we want to keep that aspect of education and information um and opportunities for people to really use this as a platform for advertising and promoting their business for people to Ally with the black community and just bring some black joy to Spokan we've always got lots of issues to talk about there's always going to be problems to solve I really see the black lens building off the foundation that Sandy created and any changes that come along the way are going to be changes that are shaped by this community so again this paper can be what Spokane and Spokane's black community needs it to be we're not going to be afraid to talk about the issues and tell [Music] stories I love it so uh in that video uh you saw her family sy's family there uh in all the years that Sandy uh published the black lens her family never once got the Sal printed so we flew them all in so they can see that so it was a great night so so love that you all are here we're here for this we're going to have so much fun today and and and uh if you don't know who I am um um that's hang on a second here can we can we go back to me yeah that's me right there sorry don't don't go off me anymore okay so so so I'm the editor I I'm I also love baseball and we'll talk about what that means later uh but I I love the Royals I mean I love them a lot um uh so let me just explain that a little bit so so like here is me with the most interesting man in the world at Royals game here's me wearing my favorite player by buddy Bianca Lana uh who only him and his wife we like him but that's it uh this is me and my wife this is great uh that's our brick at Royal stadium it's pretty sweet uh this is good parenting um uh I have a brick for all of them too that's my daughter setting next to our brick at Royal stadium and uh I just I then there's my most prized Kansas City Royals possession those of you know don't know I play guitar and I have a Kansas City Royals guitar uh it's a it's a fender Strater and to make it even better better the volume knobs are from a game used baseball that's not right right so so so when oh these are my cuff Lings for tonight yeah somewhere right now so so when I saw this in our paper I'm like oh I love this I so don't like the Yankees um and and so I'm trying to process this and I'm going through things in my childhood and I'm thinking about things um and and and then and then uh we we're so pissed we named the shittiest bar at our Stadium after the incident so so uh uh uh and then I saw this and I'm like oh he seems like a nice guy and then and and and then and then I see these pictures from last night and I'm like oh my God what a nice man and then oh his tongue is out like Michael Jordan and then look at that tongue is out again it's good looks good look at got that down looks great and you know one of my favorite things in the world uh are our high school interns we have 10 this year and this morning Paul spent so much time with them and uh here's a picture of Paul with Chen uh from our Liberty High School student and it was just great hearing him tell stories and they listened to every word and it was just wonderful and and I thought he seems like a nice enough fellow so I mean normally I wouldn't associate with Yankee fans but it's his job so you know uh so so let me show you a little bit about uh uh tonight's guest [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Paul Olden has one of the most iconic voices in Major League Baseball a r fielder number 99 Aaron judge Olden spent time paying his dues around on the bound well McDow had a tough game against Toronto earlier this year so he'll try to bounce back keep it right where it is the Yankees and the Blue Jays next on WPIX taking over from the legendary voice of God Bob Shephard but we have What's called the Bob Shephard style and there's a like a bob Shephard style is a box and just so long as you stay inside that box you can kind of add something here and there but don't go outside the lines olden's time with the Yankees has included numerous memorable moments from World Series Championships to Historic Milestones making him a beloved figure among fans and players alike leading today's conversation we bring up to bat our own set of All Star the spokesman reviews Rob Curley and interim black lens editor April Eberhart please welcome Paul Olden to the Northwest passages stage [Applause] I told him we made a video thank you very much you have U no idea how humble that makes a big star like me feel get that kind of introduction thank you that's a steal from Jack par from 1962 one of his so I don't make that stuff up I just steal from others take credit for them well I want to start with coming to Spokane how did this happen well I was uh following the team on Instagram they're doing a such a great job covering the team on Instagram and I'm always on Instagram with my photography and I came across the Spokan Indians Instagram page and wow they do such a tremendous job not only covering the present team but they go back in history uh Spokan Indians have 125 year history of baseball in this area and so a lot of people lot of famous people have played for the team and gone on to greater things and they uh do a good job of resurrecting the history and bringing that history to the present day audience and so they saw me and and I I started corresponding back and forth with the team and one thing led to another and here I am that's great so when when when you first came here how old were you 26 all right what's what's Spokan look like to a 26y old man from uh Los Angeles well very small very small and I had never lived in a place where there was snow so I was kind of uh looking forward to my first winter uh not too many people can say that looking forward to my first winter snowfall here uh but I came up from Los Angeles um drove my car packed up my car and drove all the way from LA to here ran out of gas someplace in Oregon uh and I was getting low on on gas uh and there was a guy there was a TV show uh called the real people I don't many of you might remember that and they had a guy black guy on there named Byron Allen uh who is a multi-billionaire now by the way uh but I kind of look like him or some people thought at this bar I stopped in to ask where was the nearest gas station and some back woods toown in Oregon and aren't you Byron Allen I said no I just need some gas I'm not Byron Allen uh it was flattering uh because he was on TV and was making a name for himself at the time and I hadn't done much uh I was on radio in Los Angeles so um finally got here found an apartment near the ballpark on Havana and and started the my baseball career and then uh during the offseason the first offseason I um wound my way to kxo TV uh and started my television broadcasting doing sports and fill in news or occasional weather and the noon show and all that sort of thing whatever they needed because I I always kind of prided myself on being versatile uh so I could do anything and they were happy to have someone who had the the um desire to do some of the work that maybe some others didn't so did you did you say you did the weather I I I think I did the weather once in the morning I wasn't very good at it yeah I wasn't I wasn't Tim Adams right is Tim here tonight Tim said he was throwing it oh hey hey how are you Tim good to see you yeah I was not in his League he was he way way above me in terms of skill in front of the camera and gesturing to a blank screen as all the weather people do uh but uh but I you know when Tim was not available I think I filled it once yeah so so how did you apply to become the announcer of Spokan Indians or the well buddy M was a broadcaster in Phoenix for the Triple 18 team there the Giants Ken davanis I'd known him for many years and he would always tell me uh call me up and say okay Spokan hasn't opening Portland has an opening Vancouver has an opening and I would hurly send my tapes uh so hurly once that I when I sent the tape to Spokane I had the Portland General manager's name on it and the Portland General Manager got the Spokan General manager's name on the correspondence I sent to him he didn't open the package but the Larry kintop here in Spokane did because he was curious as to who would make a screw-up like that uh listened to my tape and saw my picture and my resume and what I had accomplished I had an on the air audition with the white sock when I was 21 um uh the white socks had a story in the LA time saying they were looking for a qualified black announcer it's in a little blurb it wasn't a big story it just a bottom of a note section so I I kind of reasoned I didn't know of any other black baseball announcers uh that I was aware of of so I figured well I'll go ahead and send the tape and through a series of uh events in Los Angeles unbeknown to me uh he was good friends with the USC University of Southern California baseball coach Rod dado and so he would call Rod and tell Rod ask ask that Olden kid these these questions but don't make it obvious that it's coming from me and Rod would call me into his office and he would sit down tiger because he called everybody tiger uh I don't know if he didn't know know anybody's name or but everybody was Tiger to him sit down tiger what do you think about this what do you think about that and say okay and answer the question then I'd leave his office wondering why why was he asking those kind of questions and as it turns out he was the the kind of like the the middleman between the white socks that bill veck was the owner at the time and uh getting that job and so I got it on the a audition with the white socks when I was 21 I worked with Harry Cary when he was still broadcasting with the white socks before he made his name with the Cubs he'd already been fired by St Louis um uh he and Jack Buck didn't get along uh so they they got rid of Harry Cary and he wound up in Chicago so I worked with him and a guy named Lauren Brown who was the quintessential number two announcer not a great star not a bad announcer just was good as an accent to the big star like Harry Cary and so I did a couple Innings to play byplay and I thought well this is it at age 21 I'm going to get in the major leagues and I didn't hear from anybody for five years sent out tapes and you know hey I was with the white socks I did two innings you know didn't impress many teams but then so at age 26 Spokane finally hired me so so were there any you weren't calling the the were they still the Dodgers in 1982 83 M were the Indians still with the Dodgers oh no the Indians were the first season they were affiliated with the m uh with the angels the angels and then the second season and third season they were affiliated with the Mariners so was there anybody on the teams that you called here in Spokan that we would know uh well yeah um well Gary Pettis is the still the third base coach for the Astros and played for the angels for many years uh I heard from Jerry naron today a former catcher with the Mariners uh were Facebook friends and I told him I was going to be in Spokane um uh Dan fova was on that first team uh in Spokan in 1980 and he's a coach with the Astros as well so both Gary and Dan are on that team uh there aren't many left who uh I think uh maybe Ron Washington who's the manager of the Angels now was around in 1980 uh with the Spokan for a little while but there aren't many of them aren't many of us left from that team doing anything in in Major League Baseball now so you were on that move from Spokane to Vegas right the team moved to Vegas without me I they didn't they didn't want me to go tell you they well they told me they said we're moving to L Vegas and we don't want you to come with us and I didn't want and I didn't want to go uh there were a few issues with management that I had at the time uh but a year later the issues that I had uh had issues with with the team uh the owner Larry said uh you know you were right uh I was wrong one guy can't do all everything and they had me you know they had me doing everything here PR man ning it's a play by play uh coming into the office at 9:00 in the morning even though we had a 7 o'clock night game uh and I said one guy can't do this and he didn't believe me until he went to Las Vegas and the announcer there said one guy can't do this I'm not going to do this uh and so they he called me up I was at my parents house Thanksgiving week and he called me there in LA and said hey we want you to come back it doesn't snow in Las Vegas I said okay so I went to Las Vegas uh until 1988 when I went to Cleveland so as a as a baseball announcer I've heard that baseball announcers who really love baseball uh they call baseball and anything they do in the offseason is just to pass the time is baseball is always number one with true baseball announcers and football and basketball are always secondary because baseball announcing was was the job to have in radio when radio was King because not all the all the teams didn't televise their games even when I was growing up in La the Dodgers showed their game games in San Francisco if they were in the pennant race with the Reds they might have showed a couple of games in Cincinnati but maybe maybe 12 games were on TV the whole season uh so radio was King and that's one of the reasons Vin Skully was so popular because he was so good on radio and describing baseball and so that was a great incubator for me to learn how to broadcast baseball by listening to him listening to Dick emberg who was in the Hall of Fame as well with Skully do football and basketball and baseball and that's where I got that kind of feel for being versatile and and Vince Scully was versatile too he did football um he did golf uh he did uh game shows talk shows uh so you want to be versatile and whatever you do and be able to do it at a high level and that was kind of like what I worked towards to be good at a lot of things instead of just good at one thing but baseball was always the first sport if I had a chance if they said which one would you choose baseball football basketball it's always baseball I think you can ask Joe Buck that um you can ask any announcer who cut his teeth on baseball that that's always number one so let's see I April it's it's this is a great segue to what you were talking about earlier today testing okay thank you um your voice is magical it is um a good narration um when we think of the black press and the history of the black press um at the turn of the century um there was a time when black Americans could die for reading and writing so our literacy was really spoken um until we could read and write um my first question I'm going to well some of the great orators of course come from the black churches yes uh my father was a minister for a while and later in life he became a minister wasn't a fire and brimstone type of preacher but still he was a man who made his living on on the weekends on Sunday as a preacher and speaking the word of God and and and getting across the message that way in a very important way but but you know where we go whether it's the black church or blues music and the fields songs that the slaves had to sing and that was another way of communicating of course exactly that uh they tried kind of slip past their masters yes so can you describe the different um the power of the different modes of communication and how literacy has now transcended into all the modes of Journalism and writing and communication because exactly what you said um all we had was our voice and a lot of times there was coded language um but we were a literate Society amongst um a larger society and now you get to do it for fun and for profession um so I think although I don't use coded language too much anymore I try not to try and get too slick trying to slip things past people but every once in a while I might uh take a take a chance because it's always easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission I always learn yeah yeah well now we don't have to use coded languages yeah well in m in music though that's still in in our music especially rap music and and hitop hip hop uh has become the most popular genre in music Worldwide uh and it always seems if there's that desire to copy whatever we do and turn it into something bigger and bigger but it always starts with with our desire to communicate to our people in our language that others may not understand but we certainly understand it right the nuances of the experiences we have in the storytelling being exposed to your father as a child preaching do you think that left a stamp on you and do you think that seed the seed of for what you're doing now well I I think I think it it helped he had a big influence on me in that regard he he was also a classical violinist and I played classical piano for a while but then went on to guitar and and tempany and percussion in school uh so that was always a part of growing up music and and the spoken word in our household uh that was very very important my um niece has been a member of to Toast Masters for many years has although she's not a professional comedian she does a lot of standup comedian comedy anyway because she just likes the challenge of going up on stage and kind of communicate and get laughs um my grand nephew is a rapper uh and writer and producer my nephew his father also was a was a Christian rapper uh doesn't do as much as he used to to now but he was for a while producing quite a number of uh Christian rap music trying to get the message across to the that age audience that maybe would not listen to an older preacher or or go to church but would listen to that type of music and get the message in that regard yes so storytelling has been our strength as a as a a people um but I heard you like to take pictures also I heard you're a photographer yeah yeah that's another way of Comm communicating especially these days do you get the chance to go go into communities and get people who don't necessarily have their picture taken or don't trust photographers or the media in general to have a way of seeing someone who looks like them uh put an honest U uh representation of who they are and what they're about out into the media yeah which is why the black lens is so important because it is a community-based um um newspaper and a lot of times it's the mirror that we see ourselves through and that the larger Community can see us through but because we're producing it um it it feels um authentic and genuine and doesn't feel um as though there's a spin on it um Gordon Parks when you were speaking to the students earlier today I thought of Gordon Parks he was a a modern day Grio and uh the power of Storytelling through oral and through Visual because again we could uh we couldn't read at a point in time in in in our Collective history but the power of Storytelling what is one of your favorite photos that you've taken um and why what was the story behind that wow I've taken so many well I I I have bounced around from genre to genre in the last few years from Aviation to pets to architecture uh to sports um I think one of the fun pictures I took was at the Super Bowl I forgot what year it was but when Joe Montana uh whether Steve Young uh got the so-called monkey off of his back and won a Super Bowl uh and he was on the sidelines in the final moments of the game uh taking pictures and I was able to snap a picture of him reaching pretending he was taking the monkey off of his back and so and I was working I was doing the PA but there was during a lull uh in the action and I was able to get that shot from way up there um but I I I I you know been trying to specialize in Port lature as well and I've been taking a lot of pictures of my own family uh because uh unfortunately and somebody asked me about this the other day and it was underscored uh kind of painfully that I don't have any pictures of me my father my mother and my sister all four of us together I don't I those pictures may be existing somewhere but I don't have access to them and my sister doesn't have them uh and my parents are are deceased now uh so I'm making sure that the whole family and my my family's it's getting bigger and bigger with my my grand niece having three kids now uh and my niece is not married yet uh but my my nephew that's his daughter and my grand nephew is getting married next year I'm sure he's going to have kids so I'm making sure that I have a lot of photos of the family for them to pass along to the generations because I I don't have a lot of photos of my family yeah your social media uh is uh interesting I would like to show so you've got let's see here uh you've got your normal Instagram this one yeah there you go yeah and then there's this one yeah the pets of the the pet photography yeah I grabbed a couple of those that was on a subway uh that was a in fact that was after the kentu the day of the Kentucky Derby and I bet the race online and lost and so I was on the train going to someplace and this guy was you carrying his dog in his bag and I thought the dog had the of forlorn look on his face that I had when I I lost $50 on that horse race so I I think the caption is well even though I lost the race at least I have my [Laughter] bottle um that's the the um pet a family pet of a close friend of mine um uh this dog India uh is not doing very well these days and that's another reason to take I'll have this photo if and when he passes away um because they don't have a lot of photos of their dogs he he's told me that so this is a cherished photo of that family uh and it's important to have not only humans but your pets because their family as well and to have nice memories of of uh when they were with you and loving uh the whole family so yeah India is not long for this Earth but that's a good picture I don't know where that one was from I I I don't remember exact April made me grab this one she said grab the cute dog the shihu oh yeah Shih Tzu yeah but I I don't remember the circumstances of me taking that one so and then I saw this other long hair uh Miles Kennedy from Miles Kennedy Spokan Miles Kennedy although today I was talking to the high school kids uh and there's a rock band named Alter Bridge Big Time Rock Band um and Miles Kennedy is the lead singer and grew up and Spokan he said he remembered me on TV from the 1980s when he was like 12 years old but anyway I asked the kids today anybody a big Alter Bridge fan and blank stairs they never heard of the band uh so but yeah miles is and I when I came up here in 2017 specifically to to see the final concert on their concert tour here in Spokane because he lives on the South Hill um uh I'm standing at the baggage carousel and I turn around and there he is with his wife waiting for there but they had just gotten in from someplace and so I had a few pictures taken we did a few pictures together and then they played at the U at the U Knitting Factory right Knitting Factory Knitting Factory uh a couple nights later so yeah that I like I have a lot of rock and roll uh photos of guitar players on in my collection and and drummers well actually one drummer Neil Pier the former drummer for Rush the late drummer I have a lot of pictures of him gone about six of their concerts and taking hundreds of pictures and hopefully one comes out because you know sometimes the lighting is not very good and I'm not exactly in the front row so so yeah that's that's one of my favorites of miles so so April and I both want to ask you about growing up in La so my take is as a baseball fan did you have any connection to the Dodgers when you were young uh well relatively young I mean I sold programs there when in high school that my high school years I sold programs and then would practice my announcing after I turned in my money on the third inning they let us stay uh for the game so yeah yeah and of course since the Dodgers uh Player Development team was here in Spokane for many years many of the players that I grew up watching and rooting for in La played in Spokane before they got to Los Angeles so I knew all about the place called Spokan I didn't know anything about the city until I moved here but I knew it existed because my favorite Dodger players uh played and spoke hands so it must be good and did at any point did you get to do anything with the players that was interesting uh well we hung out play catch oh yeah I play catch with Don Sutton uh one of the Hall of Fame pitchers who won over 300 games uh was a a longtime pitcher with the Dodgers and a friend of mine who I sold programs with wanted to be a pitcher and so he was pretty gregarious guy so he would talk to anybody and wound up talking to Don Sutton and saying hey can you teach me how to throw a curb ball and Don said sure So be one day before a Dodger game after we had showed up to go to work we went down to the Dodgers Bullpen and you know I didn't have any catcher gear but I got a glove and Don showed my friend how to show throw curve balls and I'm kind of catching him that way and kind of protecting myself but that was before apparently uh Insurance liability concern existed on professional sport teams part and because no one stopped us and no one said a thing about and some people saw us like officials for the Dodgers or or people in charge of the ushers and they saw us down there and said okay have a good time didn't say anything so that was a big and then course I got to know Don pretty well because he later became a broadcaster uh and that was always a thrill and he won 300 games but it took him like 23 years to do that that but still uh he won 300 games and that got him into the Hall of Fame and some people have criticized him uh saying well you know it took him long enough to who can't win 300 games if you're around for 23 years and so I would tell him people are saying that you're Hall of Fame induction is not legitimate well you tell them to go themselves I I certainly will so he was very proud that he won 300 games one way or the other to get into the Hall of Fame and any criticism of that was not legitimate which I and I was on his side so the only time I hear him cuss is when he's telling baseball stories makes me giggle every time time I curse your questions were different on on growing up in La I just wanted to know about playing catch with Don suon so your career you've covered a lot of ground and been a lot of places um and you've had a quite a run actually it's pretty remarkable um can you talk about grow growing up in La during the height of the Civil Rights Movement you saw some very uh key things that are are marked in history yeah yeah fortunately I didn't get hurt with any of those things although during the 65 Watts Riots when I was 11 years old our our house was in the perimeter of the U National Guard Patrol so late at night and this is when the fact when Sandy kofax pitched his perfect game with the Dodgers I was in my father's office at home listening on the radio looking out the window and there are National Guard trucks going by with you know uh armed Guardsmen and the and their Jeep vehicles uh so I I really wasn't too involved in what was going on that caused the riots back then at that age at 11 but I was also there during the Rodney King riots uh which was a whole different story I was with the ESN and flying in and out of LA and flying back into LA and seeing the town on fire uh well not I shouldn't say seeing parts of the town on fire I don't want to exaggerate that but that was that was a whole different thing and and the the night that um the verdict came down uh the SEI Valley verdict I was driving from a a clinic because I I had gone to one of those clinics where you get a whole comprehensive test and they gave me this big binder of information and I was driving home listening to the radio and they're saying something's happening over on SLO and there's a a truck uh driver had gotten hit in the head and the whole seems to be getting out of control based on this verdict so that was kind of a scary time uh to live in Los Angeles and especially because I had to go to the airport I had to drive from my house to the airport uh and maneuver around any possible trouble spots uh so that was uh that was interest that was an interesting time so you were 11 when you saw the Watts right yeah how did that shape your idea is around around race and identity at a young age didn't have didn't have that that the in' 65 that didn't have much effect at all you know I'm still 11year old kid yeah my focus was on baseball and race relations but later on of course with the Rodney King verdict that was a whole different story and then I I I wasn't in La for the OJ Simpson trial but of course that was covered uh gavel to gav on television and being from Los Angeles I was in New York at the time of that and the funny thing about that that I was doing sports for WF radio uh in 1994 and we started getting these calls from people on Wall Street uh because they were in contact with people in Los Angeles and they were they were being told by their people in law OJ Simpson just got arrested and so they would call into our Newsroom and say hey my buddies in La say OJ Simpson just got arrested and nothing was on TV nothing was on the wires at that time and so we thought the first couple of calls were pranks and we started we kept getting all these calls from people saying OJ Simpson's been arrested and finally it broke on television and then we started doing uh updates on on the uh beginning of the trial of the century uh which eventually became uh so that was that was that was kind of hard to cover because you know you're away from LA but you know all the names of the streets and you know exactly the neighborhoods they're talking about uh uh but you know OJ Simpson was a guy that was in college at USC when I was growing up so and I hung out at USC quite a bit so I saw him in person a lot uh went to some of his big games uh at the Coliseum so it was almost like somebody I knew because I I grown up following USC so closely uh but it didn't have that much of an effect on on my my view of race relations uh just kind of opened your eyes to the legal system uh and if you have enough money to get the best lawyers magical things can happen so this morning uh when we were with the interns April and I got to hear the greatest uh question and answer ever because they were they wanted to know so when you're a radio announcer you don't have scripts but you must have scripts when you're a PA announcer and are the scripts ever wrong do you rewrite them and then it was it was great to hear him talk about re writing scripts in real time while games are happening yeah yeah so there couple of times this season where our marketing department has neglected to put a whole paragraph of a like a charitable uh gift like we had one company that gave $100,000 to a Yankee's charity but they forgot to write the script so so I'm actually reading the script at the beginning and they're don't they're dictating the whole paragraph to me the first time it happened I scribbled it so badly that I couldn't couldn't read it and I wound up saying something really stupid uh that didn't make any sense but it sounded it sounded smooth but it didn't make any had nothing to do with what they wanted me to say um and we all kind of got upset about how they waited until 20 seconds before I was supposed to start instead of 20 minutes earlier where they could have done that and realized that they left something out but the second time it happened I I told them okay I'm going to write this I'm going to write it slow so bear with me and they're writing okay you ready no you ready now no and finishing ready now no and I finally wrote it out where I could read it and I said okay I'm ready now uh part of it I look back on the script didn't make a lot of sense but I guess they they hurly dictated it and what they dictated to me when in retrospect well that doesn't match up but I I made it sound like it made sense but uh I made sure I wasn't rushed into doing something that I I wasn't prepared to do I have been practicing taking notes though legibly the last couple of weeks in case that happens again which is just my but one of our great Goofs on the part of our marketing department um uh was when they in inadvertently wrote I'm supposed to say and now ladies and gentlemen you please rise and take your caps off for the national anthem and they actually wrote will you please rise and drop your pants and that was in the script that was in the script distributed to 100 people in the Press Box and and the all the television partners because they have to time out all the all the pregame ceremonies and they didn't realize that uh that was in there um uh sometimes they copy and paste stuff that they don't look back on uh so I luckily we caught it I caught it first and then I showed my boss and then we we took it around like little kids and in the Press Box or look what they wrote look what they wrote okay I'm going to hand you the script and just read it the way it's written don't don't look at it beforehand and so they ladies and gentlemen will you please stand and drop your pants so we got a laugh we got a good laugh out of that um it was fun but generally they do a good job it's it's a tough job because sometimes we have six or seven ceremonies before a game um and some of the ceremonies I've had like to read for five minutes straight because there's so much material and backstory that are included in whatever we're doing before the game for someone uh but in general it's it's a it's a pretty nice job April um sounds like you've been a baseball Enthusiast your whole life yeah I would I wanted to play but I wasn't good enough and I figured that out at age 15 so what made you know that this was did you know early on that this was your this was going to be your career uh I wanted it to be I didn't know I was going to be as as as long and and fruitful as it's been but when you're 15 you know you kind of and especially I've learned that most 15y olds don't know what they want to do with their lives uh when I've talked to other young people like today when I spoke to the high school students I do you know what you want to do no really uh but so knowing what you wanted to do at age 15 was kind of unusual and I I really worked at it and I didn't have a backup plan there was no you don't really have a backup plan if you have something that you're really passionate about you just go ahead and do it uh and let the chips fall where they may eventually and something will work out you always believe something will work out uh and so I figured something will work out I either be a sports caster or a newscaster or a disc jockey or something like that but it was always going to be in broadcasting um how how does uh it feel sometimes to be the only one um you mentioned earlier that they were looking for a black um bradc a qualified black broadcaster um I imagine that there are plenty of spaces where you might have been the only one well in the Spokane where I was the only you know black announcer in the Pacific coast League uh for many years um uh how did it stretch and challenge you sounds like no matter what if it's baseball you're in yeah yeah no I didn't have I didn't have too many incidents or situations that I felt uncomfortable because I was black uh I guess I was lucky uh in that regard but um uh we traveled to a lot of different cities uh you know the Pacific coast League was made up of Spokane Tacoma Washington Portland um s uh Phoenix Tucson uh uh and Albuquerque and the great city that was in our league for the first couple of years I was in the league was Hawaii so we would travel to Hawaii every year uh and do have an eight game series so we were there for a whole week in Hawaii and uh but I I didn't have too many incidents uh either I ignore them or um oh I know I know one yeah yeah yeah one was in Las Vegas uh one of our sales it was raining uh this is not a good story uh but it was raining uh uh and the game got cancelled uh and I you know went into Larry kab's office and was saying goodbye to people because his wife was a neighbor of mine where where I lived um here in Spokan and then she moved to Las Vegas with him um and the salesman came into the office and he said U uh this is very bad this is very what he said he says oh it's raining he's it's raining pitch fors and babies out there and I said what and his wife who was very close to me went back into the office and said you got to fire this guy um and so he was brought in I don't know if he was I don't think he was fired I think he was suspended for a couple of weeks uh but that's that's the worst one in in the eight years I was in the Pacific o league and that's bad enough uh for him to feel like that was something he could say with me in the room uh which is always you know bad but that was that was the worst one that was the worst one but but otherwise there weren't too many I didn't have too many problems so April and I have like about 10 more questions but I'm being told that we need to go to the the audience Q&A but we can't until we have a question on your memorable calls and and I you made the call on Dan Marino's fake spike and if you look on the NFL's website for the top 100 plays of all time the person describing that play is you yeah yeah yeah which number was that 34 or something like that 38 of the top 100 plays of all time so let's hear you call the Jets cuz you were the you were the radio guy for the Jets yeah and I'll tell you the back story on the call you want go before or after the call after okay all right the clock continues to move 31 30 seconds to go Marino is saying I'm going to spike it Marino back and he looks to the right side throws touch out INR it was a fake Marita was faking there are people in New York who are still pissed off about this oh yeah yeah yeah well I I I said after after I said he faked it I said the the Jets were standing uh like a house by the side of the road um and the former Detroit Tigers announcer uh Ernie Harwell that was one of his favorite things to say when something like the ball player takes ball four takes a strike three call and he was standing like a house by the side of the road and so I said I'm going to use that line because the Jets were standing around like a house by the side of the road while Marino faked and threw the touchdown pass and they were all kind of caught flat-footed uh so again stealing from the best remember that steal you got to steal it's not stealing if you steal from the best and what radio station was that because didn't they have like a just have a big anniversary and your call kept getting replayed on the radio station wfan's anniversary this last year and and they got they played a lot of significant calls from their history as a Sports Talk one of the sports first Sports Talk radio stations in the country uh and that was on a continuous loop I guess uh and one of my other favorite calls was I don't know if you have it there the U Wade bogs 3000th base hit I don't have that one yet okay okay that happened when I was in Tampa Bay uh and again uh it was something that I you they say you're not supposed to rehearse the these things but I I wrote out what I was going to say because I knew it was eventually it was going to happen I didn't know I was going to be on TV at the time because we bounce back and forth between TV and radio and it just so happens I was on TV in the ending that he did it um uh it's there someplace Paul Wade Boog 3000th hit but but I got I got this one I can't wait to this one a short cut oh that's that's that's kxi during the uh during the afro years oh turning to basketball Seattle SuperSonics take on the Portland Trailblazers at the Spokan Coliseum tonight 8:00 p.m. tip off time final preseason of the preseason game of the year for Seattle we caught up to coach Lenny Wilkins and star guard Gus Williams at the airport this afternoon to ask about the return of Gus to the Sonic fold after sitting out last season with contract problems first Lenny Wilkins well Gus gives us a dimension that we didn't have last year that explosiveness glasses the ey glasses I was wearing are are the same type of egg glasses that the great tennis star Arthur Ash was wearing and I was a big fan of his I've read all of his books and I kind of patterned my look after Arthur Ash so I had the glasses and then the hairstyle was after Bryant Gumble who just retired from uh HBO but he he got his big break in Los Angeles in the 1972 when I was graduating from high school and he had this kind of flat afro but he had a mullet in the back and and we all started copying that hairstyle and I told him that I I ran into him on the street in New York earlier this year uh that was one of the pictures that was shown uh at the beginning in the Montage and I told him that I said you know my hair I model my hairstyle after you and he and his hair is thinning now more more so than mine uh and so I I was glad I was glad I had a chance to uh to have that conversation with him cuz he's he's battled cancer for the last 10 years he's kept it very quiet uh but he's I don't know how much longer he's going to be around because he's retiring now from HBO uh but I think he's in remission this time this uh with this latest bout of cancer uh but it was again a chance for me to meet one of my heroes on the street and I had met him once before uh many years ago in the Dodger Stadium bathroom and he and he he had just done his six o'clock live uh broadcast from Dodger Stadium and he was in there he was taking his makeup off and he saw me and he saids see my my color comes off uh so so he was all he was a lot of fun to get to know he was uh he was one of those guys that uh you know young Sports casters wanted to be like uh because he could write he he wrote black Sports magazine in New York before he went to LA and then was on TV in Los Angeles uh and he was a big hockey player he played hockey in college at a a school in bats College in Louisiana so he was a season ticket holder for the Kings games the Kings hockey games in LA and I was always there with my buddy Ted because we practice play byplay all the sports Lakers Kings Rams Dodgers UCLA USC whatever we were always there with our tape recorders uh practicing the play byplay so we would we would run down and have Bryant on our in between uh the periods pretend uh interview show and he was always Cooperative because we we took it very seriously so we weren't goofing around we we really asked legitimate questions we were very serious about even our practice play byplay uh to the point where we almost got into several fights with people who would come over to our microphones and yell into our microphones and we would just drop the microphones be ready to fight because we took it very seriously and we weren't playing around it wasn't something that was a a goof it was our career year we were preparing for speaking of serious you you had to replace what New Yorkers called the voice of God had to follow yeah had the follow yeah yeah no one replaces him no one replaces follow you're right so so so what was it like to have to replace uh follow that was that was good it was fun because I I got to know Bob Shephard who was um U known as the voice of God he did the public address announcing at at the Yankee stadium for 57 years and his last game was when when he was 96 years old in September of 2007 uh and then quick question how old are you uh I'm 70 now okay so you got 26 more years uh I'm not going to last 57 that's for sure I'm I'm in my 16th year uh and maybe I'll do 20 but certainly not 57 uh but I got to know Bob uh my first time around with the Yankees when I was doing the games on TV so he had a he had his own special table in the media restaurant uh in the corner kind of like where where everybody would go to praise him and sit down and dine with him it was the same table uh so I got a chance to eat with him quite often so I got to know him so it helped following someone that you already knew you didn't you didn't you knew they were the Pinnacle of of their their field but you didn't really put them on a on a pedestal because they were palace with you you were palace with them you was like Oh no I got to replace Bob shephard I got to follow Bob Shephard but um so it helped that I knew him that really really ease the transition April any questions before we we take over the audience what advice would you give high school students who are confused uh about what they want to do learn how to write and and don't take no for an answer and now it's easier to do your own thing because you can start your own YouTube channel and build an audience and build a reputation a lot of people have gotten hired by TV networks and local stations based on their YouTube and and um I guess Tik Tok presence as an influencer or someone with a point of view if you have a point of view that can um generate an audience someone's going to be watching and paying attention and be willing to pay you money well let's bring the house lights up and uh let's go to the audience Q&A so all right I was curious as you said earlier about the a script for baseball I've never even thought about a script from baseball announcer I I thought you were just describing what was happening you oh the script I was talking about with the with the Wade bogs uh hit um uh I I script it out what I was going to say if he got the hit and it was just like a fill-in the blanks thing so when I knew the 3,000th hit was coming and I wanted to do something different because I had gone on YouTube and listened to a lot of announcers describe uh the 3,000th hit for a lot of H future Hall of Famers and for the most part they all said and there it is so I said okay I'm not gonna say and there it is I don't know what I'm gonna say but I will not be saying and there it is I will not be saying that uh and so I I thought well maybe I can just write something and fill in the blank if it's a single or a double or a triple or home run so I said the hit that makes history is and so that was what I was waiting to say so so he hit a home run and no one ever had hit a home run for their 3,000th hit before so uh I let the crowd go and and then uh it's on it's on it's on there there's a shorty there's a short version of it on there like a minute and a half version of Wade box 3,000 hit uh um uh and and so I said so I let the crowd cheer because I learned from Vin Scully to let the crowd come in and don't jump in on the big moment right away with stats or some silly words and so after the crowd died down a little bit I said and the hit that makes history is a home run and then we followed him around the bases and uh some people ran on the field and tried to tackle him uh but and this is in his hometown of of Tampa Bay uh but fortunately the um the uh security people grabbed those two before we got to home play because he knelt down and kissed home plate and then pointed to Heaven because his his mother had passed uh the previous year here all right so is it I'm on the MLB side is that going to be the right one yeah that's it all right here we go and there's a drive deep right field oh is that the 2 one good the foul go the hit that makes history is a TW run home run B near in and kissing home plate B knew it as soon as he hit it Billy Hatcher the first to greet him and look at him celebrate the security guys getting set to tackle the guy who was uh yeah we should see that trying to intercede on the big moment [Applause] there and comes out to acknowledge the plot of the crowd I didn't mention those people okay just like when Henry Henry Aaron hit his historic home run there were two guys who ran on the field and kind of escorted him between second and third and they were they were clearly in the shot but they peeled off and let him have his moment um but these guys for some reason decided they thought that was a good idea to do that then uh obviously it wasn't so that's what I meant by scripting out something for baseball announcing I love that you did that though I mean your explanation of and there it is like that was absolutely wonderful to not do it that way there it is everybody I mean I couldn't believe how many guys that said it and I said no you got to have something different uh because and again I learned from Vince Skully when when Aaron hit the Home Run um Vin scl had like a minute 14 second almost salil Soliloquy to Henry Aaron and the historic nature of the home run the racial nature the athletic uh meaning of it and all all was off the top of his head as one of the great uh speeches really in in baseball history um and the Atlanta announcer U who's also in the Hall of Fame uh just said and Henry Aaron hits the Home Run didn't have any special thing um uh but you know not many people are like Vince Scully anyway so fortunately I got to know him pretty well um he just passed a few years ago uh but again one of one of the funny stories with him real quick um this is in 1974 1975 and I was a young reporter but I was covering the Dodgers quite a bit and again uh it was Vin Scully but to us it was just a colleague and so we would dine together in the Dodgers restaurant and one day he came in and sat down and he was all excited all pumped up he said what's what's going on he says now I know what the players are all excited about he said what well I test drove a Cadillac today and they it was really a nice ride and he was all excited about test driving a Cadillac cuz as we would always say the Home Run hitters of the Cadillac hitters and the and the singles hitters of the Ford drivers and all that sort uh but it was it was fun to get to know him and I uh when I came up here to Spokan I had my friends in Los Angeles tape Dodger games for me and then send the tapes to me so I could listen to him do play byplay uh and again try to steal some of his pet phrases uh a lot of announcers did that uh a fellow who used to broadcast with the angels in town when when Vin was still on the air uh a guy named Al Conan was a friend of mine and I was listening to a spring training game of his and he said a couple of phrases word for word that Vin Scully would say and I called him up and I said you can't do that you cannot copy word for word what he you know you got to change something but you cannot say the same phrase and his voice pacing was the same as skul and the same the same phrases I said you just can't do that and he stopped doing it he he understood what I meant uh those of us who grew up copying Ben Scully and Dick emberg uh we knew we were smart enough most times to know not to say the same phrase the same exact way as they did because we would just be copycats but you learn how to take from the best and then fashion your own style out of it um but you know you could always tell mostly where baseball announcers came from because they grew up listening to their Heroes and they sounded like their Heroes no matter what Market you were in whether was St Louis or Chicago or Los Angeles or New York and even Vince Scully when he started off he started off with working with red Barber who was from Alabama uh and you know red you know spoke like a true Southerner and dropped a lot of ing endings and it was walking and talking and stuff stuff like that and then Scully said I started saying and he's walking and he's talking and he said um red Barber pulled him aside and said you you can't talk like me you're you're from New York you know you you don't normally say walking and talking and all that sort of thing and so he stopped saying phrases like that in that manner yes Paul welcome back to Spokan um the Red Sox Yankees rivalry is so intense tell me about your most memorable moments when the Red Sox and their stand are in Yankee Stadium when you've been calling the game well I don't I don't have that many memories of of uh I can I can know I know when I was with Tampa Bay we had a lot of fights with the Red Sox uh uh know Pedro Martinez like to throw at a lot of our hitters for some reason and we had quite a number of fights uh and the Yankees were always killing us in Tampa Bay uh but but since I don't travel most of the incidents between the Yankees and the Red Sox happened at finway Park I wasn't there like when Don Zimmer got you know thrown to the ground when Alex Rodriguez pushed one of the players and knocked the ball out of his glove he's Crossing first base uh but yeah I don't have too many nothing much has happened at Yankee Stadium between those two teams uh other than when the Red Sox came from three games down and beat the Yankees and broke our hearts and then won and W went on to win the World Series I think that was 2004 wasn't it yeah yeah my friend you keep talking you should really write a book I know you know the stories that you people have said that and I thought about it and I'm giving it more thought than ever yeah because you when you were talking to the interns you said nobody's writing you know I would read about all of the sports casters of the time in the 70s everybody wrote books Nobody Does that anymore I really think it's time for it to return yeah okay well thank you thank you a I might have to get a Like a Ghost Rider like like Mary Kon or someone to hey Mar how are you to write for me because she's she's very accomplished as a writer you got to have her on it's no we have I think you could write a book of poetry for me for the Mariners fan when you said Ford hit I'd settle for that oh yeah yeah yeah we we could use a Ford hit every now and then I love uh going to the kingdom when it was still there I thought it was I know it was it was just a big concrete slob of a block of of Stadium but I always had a good time in Seattle um the one time that I remember the most was when we in 1980 when Mount St Helens exploded on May 18th it was a Sunday morning and we were in Vancouver BC finishing up a road trip and we were affiliated with Mariners so we weren't allowed to come back to spok ham because all the ash had blown over here and shut down the town and shut down the airport so we were in uh Seattle and Mariners invited us to a game that night uh Monday night uh and my uh our team trainer also was in charge of doing the wash for the uniforms and wash the uniforms at the Kingdome and I had a rental car and I I said well I'll take the uniforms back to the hotel but I'm going to make a couple of stops along the way says okay and I had a hatch it was a hatchback car where you see- through big yellow and and blue bags of of of uniforms in the car so I made a few stops in town and and then uh got out to Tacoma where we were staying and there was a bar named my place right up the street from the hotel and so I went in to have some popcorn and listen to some music among other things and uh shoot pool uh and I came out and the hatchback of the car was wide open and our Hotel was nearby so I thought some of the guys had was playing a joke on me uh and it turns out the uniforms have been stolen and that was my first year so uh I thought I was going to get fired right then because I had to call the boss and say guess what the uniforms were stolen and one of our players Randy Stein who was a jokester called me up in my hotel room and said we got the uniforms we're gonna get you next yeah so because he already knew CU he had seen me on edge in the in the lobby and then decided he was going to add to it uh later on So eventually we we stayed in Seattle a few more days and then continued our road trip in Utah and had to wear the Utah road uniforms as they were wore their home uniforms and the uniforms for us turned up in a Tacoma schoolyard uh four days later so that was my most memorable Seattle story I've got two questions left here at Rick you're oh no maybe four then all right one two three four okay oh me so you knew from a very young age that you were going to that was what you were destined for was baseball yes how has your relationship to baseball changed from the time you were 11 years old as you've gone through all of the different iterations of your career how is your relationship with well it's changed for the better because I've you know known so many people over the years now um and I still do a lot of work with the Yankees we do a lot of corporate q&as like this with former players and I interact with a lot of our former players during Fantasy camps in January and November where people pay money to dress up as a Yankees player and play actual games against the former players uh and then they have lots of stories to tell do you love the same way oh yeah yeah yeah being involved in baseball I'm so lucky to have that dream at such an early age and still at age 70 still be involved in the Major Leagues with baseball it's not many people I've found I've realized have been with the game that long and some people get disillusioned by it maybe because of money or something or they not getting the jobs or positions that they want and you can understand that uh there you know like anything there's lots of politics involved in baseball uh so but no I my relationship with the game is still very strong thank you hi um so I'm I'm I'm super excited to be here for one I'm like giddy right now I'm sorry so my biggest thing as you know somebody who's young and trying to figure themselves out like I'm 23 so I'm starting to kind of you know and I've wanted to be in forensics and I going I'm about to start mortician school my biggest thing is impostor Syndrome have you ever heard of that where you you're you're completely capable but you just don't feel like you you just don't feel like you belong here you feel like you got your you're lucky stuff like that so have you ever struggled with that and if you did especially being you know a person of color like you know I feel like I mean that's that's the society right now anyway too it's just we there's a lot of Doubt um but I'm sure growing up you had a lot of doubt in yourself and maybe people doubted you because that's a nothing's impossible but that's a pretty big goal you know so how did you kind of overcome any feelings of self-doubt out and feeling like you didn't belong or you know how did you pretty much make your impression like I belong here yeah I I was pretty confident I I I didn't have a lot of self-doubt and and I didn't and I didn't get a lot of push back from uh people there I can only remember in fact two people who said maybe you shouldn't do this uh one was a high school counselor uh uh who big well you when you say you want to be a major league baseball announcer 16 17 years old uh and in fact this counselor had said he he wanted to be an announcer too and he had failed uh and so maybe he was projecting his failure on me uh and then there was another one with the guy named Bill white who was broadcasting with the Yankees black man was the first black play-by-play announcer uh in Major League Baseball on a regular basis and I gotten a hold of him somehow and he said well unless you know somebody you're probably not going to get hired if you don't have connction you're probably not going to get hired so I thanked him for at least talking to me but I I didn't really believe that I thought uh maybe erroneously but I thought great talent no matter what is going to overcome everything uh and luckily I was able to get uh some pretty good jobs it took me a while I mean I was eight years in the minor leagues of baseball before I got my first major league job with the uh Cleveland Indians uh and from that point on every everything has kind of fallen into place and I haven't had too many struggles uh when the contract came to an end in in Tampa Bay after the 2004 season that was kind of a disappointment but um uh but I brought me back to Los Angeles I was with my family for five years before I I left again and went to school and did very well in college I started I went to school at age 55 at Valley College in Los Angeles and joined the newspaper staff and wrote and was the photo editor and that was a lot of fun uh and I'm still in touch though this was 2005 2006 I'm still in touch with a number of the students who were part of our staff and who have gone on to journalism jobs or other jobs but we still stay in touch you know on Facebook so uh that was a beneficial time but I I pretty much had uh no really teams of self-doubt uh and maybe like I said it was very humbling to get a job in the majors and to be able to keep at that level for as many years as I have uh I I guess I was doing something right or somebody liked me at enough places and I you know I had some in had some issues in some places where it was good that I left and they were happy to see me leave but it didn't destroy my reputation to the point where I couldn't get hired someplace else you have a question here you go so the gods of baseball allowed me to be at the Spokane Indians ballpark as the uh clubhouse manager on the visitor side ah from 68 to 71 uhhuh so I had the I was blessed to meet a lot of players oh wow um and see the The Good the Bad and the Ugly of every human being that puts on a baseball uniform yeah mostly great I have three guys that just stick in my mind in that short time that I thought we really great human beings mostly because of the way they treated me probably yeah but I'm wondering so and those three for me are Chuck Tanner oh yeah great manager you see the guy and he I I met Chuck Tanner one time and then I saw him like five years later and he came up to me hey grab great to see you again oh my God how you been that was the type of guy he was he was he was a hugger he was a very friendly guy friendly guy and he managed a bunch of uh kind of a variety of guys because he was the manager for the Hawaii Islanders which were sort of independent so they take all kinds of guys from different teams a second guy was tug mcra oh yeah who was kind of out there at the time but he was very friendly towards me and the last one was uh Bobby bonds Barry's father Yes and Bobby would uh whenever the Phoenix Giants at that time came to town he would have me come out and play catch with him oh wow and uh just uh you know they treated me very very well as did a lot of the other players and some not so well so I'm my question is really you've had a long time to be around a lot of amazing players and people yeah and I'm curious if you have a handful or a few that you think are really special to you well let's see the well Don Sutton you know since I grew up watching him pitch and then got to know him as a person and a broadcaster and he was always friendly towards me um and the last time I saw him was a couple of years but he started having a lot of health problems in the latter stages of his life uh but the last time I saw him was in spring training I think in 2016 uh because the Braves came in to Tampa uh to do a broadcast and I saw him in the elevator and we reminisced for a while that was the last time I saw him um let's see who else off the top of my head I can't think of a lot of guys that that really because I I was kind of detached I always believe in being detached from the players because you know you had to go on the air and criticize them sometimes and some guys didn't like that one time I I think it was Dave hend the late Dave Henderson who played here in Spokane and then went on to a great career with Boston and Oakland and then came back a few years later as a broadcaster with Seattle uh was just beloved by everybody uh but once I I I was doing a game and Spokan and he was the outfielder and I said something like uh and he went back on that ball kind of tentative and he made the catch and then the next day he comes up to me and says my wife was listening to the game and she said you said I was tentative I don't know what that means but I don't think I was tentative uh I've had other guys threatened uh once I was calling a game and I the guy was pitching a no hitter and he lost it late in the game and one of his teammates on the bus said his wife again his wife said Paul said that he was pitching a no hitter and he lost it and there's like this supposed Jinx that you're not supposed to mention the guy pitching a no hitter but I have to report what's going on to the audience and so he said the next if you ever do that again I'm going to break your arm and he was serious he was he was very serious I've had managers threatened to Walter all and threatened to break my tape record his tape my tape recorder over my head cuz I had asked him a tough question uh he had threatened a rider before the game uh at Dodgers stadium and the Dodgers lost the game but his office after the game was like the seventh game of the World Series every reporter in town heard what happened and wanted to get a a comment and of course we're in the office with him and nobody asked the question you know did you threaten the guy before that everybody was afraid what about what about that third inning uh a bunt did you call that and and I finally said okay I'm gonna ask the question and I did and he was sitting in his chair and you could see him his knuckles turned white as he gripped the chair a little harder and said uh you're never here for all our games I'm not going to answer that question what I did before the game was none of your business and and so the Dodgers PR guy signal for me to come out and come on so we went to one of the underground offices at at Dodger Stadium and he said' just wait here and like 20 minutes later he came back and said Walt wants to see you and it was me and and um uh Jerry Crow from the Los Angeles time we were the only two in the room and he sat down with us and we asked the question I said I I wasn't trying to be mean or or you know off color or anything but it's something that everybody's talking about and we just wanted to get your side of the story and he calmly explained what what happened and he apologized for getting upset with me um and I was like 2122 but you know I learned to be not get intimidated by uh especially athletes uh because that's part of their game to intimidate and and kind of weed out the weak ones uh and I was I vowed I wasn't gonna be one of those right last question to Mr Rick lucens uh and before I uh I asked Paul to uh tell one of my favorite stories that he's told me in the past about a a baseball luminary I just want to open the curtain up a little bit and maybe embarrass him a little bit um I worked with Paul in 1983 when I came to Spokan it was just for a year and by the time he left I had a friend but a friend doesn't tell this story I'm going to tell him uh it's really Qui it's really quick he he talked about the Arthur Ash glasses and the Bryant Gumble hair yeah okay Paul was the weekend Sports Anchor at kxly and I'm sitting there in the studio one night and he pulls the camera operator aside in the break before Sports and he goes listen here's how I want you to frame this I I and and if you look at the left side of the screen I want that almost touching the frame of my glasses and I want the top of the screen almost touching the top of my Bryant Gumble hair and they like everybody's like well that's a little tight Paul and and sure enough they get the shot and he and he knows enough that he's he he tells him not to set the shot until just seconds before we hit the air yeah because the director is going to say camera to loosen up and sure enough Paul got that it was we saw much more of Paul's face than we really needed to see yeah but he was he was a maven to style which I learned over that year I got to spend with him well I was copying another I I I wanted that 60 Minutes framing you know how they frame the oh yeah the guilty parties real tight on 60 Minutes uh but but ABC Sports cast named dick shap remember dick shap on ABC and he would always do a feature story on the weekend news he wouldn't do hard scores and all that but he would do a feature story and they always framed him tight like that and I and I copied I copied his writing style and the feature stories that he did and I when I did my feature stories in his style and I said well I have to be framed on camera just like him as well so uh again steal from the best so so I what the story I'm going to ask you to tell and I I'm I'm pretty sure you'll remember it and we've all heard like the the Tommy L sorta story and we read about that in the paper and that was great but Paul told me a story over the phone one day uh and he was fairly new to doing this the Barbaro Garb bat story oh no that's that's a great story too bring me the bat of Barbaro garbet um uh no uh Paul was on the air with uh on television with a baseball luminary and he was young still and people had warned him about this guy that was doing the game with him saying don't let him push you around don't let him bully you and he got into it with this guy on television but during the break before they came back and that guy was Mr October Reggie Jackson oh yeah you know the story uh I don't remember it specifically but I can understand he was referencing things that weren't on the camera I like yeah we we Reggie and I worked together in 1993 the former great you Slugger for the Yankees uh yeah raie Jackson and and Mr October and big ego guy uh and he was working doing television in Los Angeles doing the Angels games as the color announcer for uh with working with Joe Tori who was the manager um uh of the Yankees during the glory years and then now a Hall of Fame manager but earlier in his career he was not a very good manager so he had been fired by some team and was doing TV in Los Angeles but then the Cardinals hired him at the All-Star break in 1993 and so the TV station said Paul this finished the the rest of the season with Reggie and so I we did games together but Reggie was always difficult to work with because he would he kept referring to things that wasn't on camera and I kept telling him and the boss at Channel 5 said you're in charge you're in charge of him don't let him do anything you don't want him to do and so I took that to heart and I was bossing him around and saying you know you can't talk about things that we're not showing on camera that's not good and whenever Reggie had his girlfriends in the booth visiting him he was the an an angel was the easiest to work with but then he had his buddies from Arizona State where he went to school uh that he still kept in touch with and when they came to visit he was just totally out of control so it was not something that uh that I remember fondly working with him but it's one of those things so I can understand how I might would get into an argument with him during a commercial break uh it was one of those one of those relationships and the funny thing about him is that he can recite and he's done this for me and I didn't believe in a verse he can recite word for word the sort of tape which was a I got into an incident with Tommy Lort he used to manage here in Spokane uh on Mother's Day of 1978 it was like a 90 degree day in Los Angeles and after the the Dodgers blew the game in the ninth inning and the game went 15 Innings and they lost and so we all go down to the clubhouse to get our postgame interview information tapes and stories and of course we were also in a hurry to get out of there because we wanted to get home for Mother's Day where for their family and so again no one was asking about Dave Kingman who had three home runs in the game and won the game and so I said okay so I innocently I thought asked what what is your opinion of kingman's performance and then he paused and what's my opinion of kingman's performance what do you think it's my opinion of King how can you and then it was exploitive you know this that the other for the next minute and a half and I would interject a couple of things how can you ask me a question like that it wasn't it wasn't a great question I said well it wasn't a very good question and then he says God damn it how many Hour Eyes did he drive in five runs and I said six but you could tell towards the end he was kind of playing it up because one of one of the writers the guyy named Joe Hendrickson who covered for the pass that in the Star News got up to leave and he's cursing at me see you later Joe and it came it got right back into the character and finished cursing and screaming and so I was working for a sports cast in in Los Angeles at KAC who kind of modeled his career after gossip columnist and would have a he was well connected in town so he would have a lot of inside information on teams and players and coaches and and Executives that nobody else had and he would blindly say is it true that so and so and such and such was seen last night at the Brown Derby and he had trouble walking when he left to go to his car and he had a clicker and and of course he would not answer his own question and he just said Is it true it all these blind items so I gave him the the tape and and he had his engineer put all the bleeps in it and he played it on his show that day uh and he was a very popular sports caster in town Jim Healey who was born in Spokane and uh lived his final years out in cordelane uh but he was from Spokane um and he played the tape on his show that night and again this was 1978 this before television got really big and and and all the stations in town in Los Angeles had their own sports shows you know 15 minute 10-minute Sports wrap-up shows every night but his show was the must listen for all the big time players in Los Angeles doctors lawyers uh agents uh movie stars they all listened to his show it was he had that kind of impact so he played the tape that night of all the bleeps and and and what's your opinion of kingman's performance performance and that became a cause celeb for the next uh two months because one of his one of U lorta Pals was the general manager of the Angels Buzzy basy and Buzzy said I gotta have a copy of that tape I gotta have a copy of that and so he got a copy of the tape and then he started making copies for everybody else in baseball so it got around the country real quick uh and so that happened in 1978 and and to this day people in New York still bring that up what's your opinion of kingman's performance or somebody somebody will write on Instagram or or Facebook yeah hey ask Paul what is your opinion of kingman's performance yeah so I still hear about it 40 something years later um one time uh the Associated Press uh must have had an intern working because Dave Kingman also hit three home runs against the Mets one day uh and this intern mixed up the games and so they wrote uh a whole story and and said in July of 1979 Dave Kingman hit three home runs against the Dodgers and it was against the Mets um and so I I saw the story because it was on the wires and it was in some papers and we called Associated president said you got the wrong date you got the wrong game and you got to kill that story and they actually had to put out on their wires kill that story it's the wrong story uh so I guess they had a summer intern thinking that he had the right game because you know not that many people hit three home runs in a game so he figured it was he or she figured that was must have been the Lort game but it wasn't you so and then when Lort died the LA Times had their top 10 Tommy Lort moments in his career and that was the number three moment on on Tommy Lor's career so got to try harder next time well we have a couple of small surprises for everybody uh let me see here you look under your seats you all have new cars okay so so if you if you remember I showed you these we reprinted them so everybody here gets a copy it's going to be fun and then and then we ran this uh this full page on you and and uh we we I printed it out on poster board for everybody and and Paul agreed to sign it and there was actual a typo in the print version and I fixed it because we called you a play by leg guy no it's still it's yeah no this still there no this is the original one that says play by L the one you got doesn't say play by L I fixed it yeah I narrate those things you can't recognize my voice those movies so let's all thank Paul and April all right thank you yeah thank you all right so we've set up a table over there and Paul will will sign the cards uh and the posters for everybody was it good it's great I was a little nervous