Racing radio broadcasters top the rest
I always wanted to be a sportscaster growing up, and when I went off to Oakland University as a freshman in the fall of 1982 that’s what I was going to be – so I thought.
Growing up in the Detroit area, we had all of the major sports and I loved each and every one of them. And while I rooted hard for my teams to win every game, I found myself becoming an even bigger fan of the men calling the action. Ernie Harwell was the voice of the Tigers on the radio while Bruce Martyn, George Blaha and Bob Reynolds called the action for the Red Wings, Pistons and Lions, respectively.
When I was 10 years old, I wanted to be those guys. I used to sit up in my bedroom and watch whatever game was on that night while broadcasting it into my tape recorder, thinking that one day I’d be in the booth doing it for a living. I didn’t think I had kept any of those recordings, but last Christmas my father surprised me by pulling them out of his drawer. He had saved a couple of games from way back then and played a few minutes to the delight of my wife, mother and sister.
I bring that up because being able to vividly set the scene and describe what’s going on to the listener isn’t always an easy thing to do. That task is made even more difficult when what you’re describing involves 43 hunks of metal painted in different colors traveling upwards of 200 miles an hour.
The men and women who broadcast NASCAR races for the Motor Racing Network and Performance Racing Network have the toughest job in sportscasting, in my opinion. It’s not just because the cars are traveling at blurring speed, it’s the way in which the broadcasts are produced and flow as if it’s one symphonic movement, even though there may be four or five different voices you hear in one trip around the track.
The precision in which the announcers hand off the action is similar to how a relay team passes the baton from one teammate to the next. What makes this task even more challenging is, with no advance script, there’s no guarantee that what you’re watching is the same thing the guy talking before you is describing. In other words, you have to be on your toes and ready at all times – and I mean at all times.
I recall a story one retired broadcaster told me years ago in which he was in the restroom making a pit stop when the guys in the booth threw it down to him for the real thing. Without missing a beat he described the specifics of what generally takes place from “the jack going up” to the car being “down and away” without anyone knowing the difference because the races weren’t being televised at the time.
He obviously couldn’t get away with that in today’s world, but when you’re a radio broadcaster it’s all about painting a picture. A good example of doing that came during Joey Logano’s scary crash at Dover International Speedway last Sunday afternoon.
My wife, daughter and I were driving around Winston-Salem shopping for new furniture and listening to MRN’s coverage. Things seemed to be moving along rather well until the urgent pitch of Mike Bagley’s voice interrupted the proceedings with the one word that immediately makes your ears perk up – trouble!
“Joey Logano is around…spins down to the inside of the race track…over…wheel-barreling now down the back straightaway end-over-end, side-over-side…also collected Reed Sorenson…also Robby Gordon…Martin Truex Jr. is collected as Joey Logano goes for a wild tumble in turn three here at Dover!”
Joe Moore and Barney Hall followed up and succinctly recapped the incident, which, by their account, saw Logano’s car flip 10 times before coming to rest on all four wheels. As we all know, Logano emerged shaken, but, otherwise, in good shape as the reinforced roll cage and superior safety equipment did its job keeping him confined to the driver’s compartment.
Even though I was driving and concentrating on the road, I was able to visualize what was happening as it occurred. When I saw the replay on television later that night, it wasn’t much different than I imagined and that’s a credit to the men behind the microphone.
As for me, my career path obviously didn’t lead to a radio booth behind home plate or along the start-finish line, but I’m doing something I find to be equally enjoyable and that’s promoting Ford’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers and teams on a full-time basis.
Besides, I can still pull out that tape recorder and act like Carl Spackler as he hacks away at the flowers of Bushwood Country Club in the movie Caddyshack and do play-by-play whenever I want.
To learn more about Ford Racing, please log on to www.fordracing.com.
For a chance to win a new 2010 Ford Taurus and a VIP trip to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards Banquet in Las Vegas, please visit www.imdrivingone.com and register now.
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Discuss: Racing radio broadcasters top the rest
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Your story about Ned Jarrett describing a pit-stop while in the john is even more amazing than that. I’ve also heard him tell the story, and he details being able to call it based on the sounds of the pit-stop. The air-wrenches taking off the right-sides and the jack dropping, but the car doesn’t pull away, so Ned knows it’s a 4-tire stop. The same for the left sides and then hearing the engine rev to 7000 right before the final drop of the jack to give Ned a split second preview that the stop was almost over. Great column you wrote!
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