The Ticket and Me: Part 2 (Or Part 1 of Part 2)

Thanks for being patient.  Life has forced me into the fast lane and out of memory lane for the last couple of months.  But with just a little time on my hands I wanted to continue to remember my time at The Ticket, which turned 23 this year.

After being let go from the station in January of 1996, I was a little lost.  I had tapes and resumes out there, but not many offers, back then there was only one sports station in town and I was narrow minded and arrogant enough to believe that not only did I belong in town, but I only really wanted to be a sports guy. (Side note: if you want to stay employed in broadcasting, best to be able to do a little bit of everything. Over the years I have done news, weather, traffic, and the always difficult to execute "traffic and weather together." I have done promotions, emcee duties, public address announcing.  I have done play-by-play for high school girls softball on the internet, to high level college and minor league sports on ESPN News, ESPN 3, Fox Sports Southwest, etc. In other words, have voice, will travel)

For not the first, or the last time in my career, I got very lucky in March of 1996.  Since The Ticket and KRLD/TSN were owned by the same company, management had made the decision to move the Kate Delaney show to the Texas State Network.  She would still be heard on The Ticket, but now she was being syndicated statewide.  TSN needed a sports anchor for her show and someone to cover games, edit tape, and handle a few morning and evening sports casts for the network. The program director at The Ticket recommended me to the director over at TSN and from there I was off to the races.  A new job with some of the old perks, it was a great deal.

I spent three years at KRLD/TSN.  Fairly early in my tenure KRLD/TSN and The Ticket went their separate ways due to ownership changes.  I was no longer being heard on The Ticket, but I had a great job.  I would come into work about 2:00 PM and prep some afternoon sports updates for TSN.  After doing the updates, I would head out to whatever game happened to be in town that night. During the fall and winter I spent most of my nights at Reunion Arena covering either the Mavericks or the Stars.  I also went to a lot of TCU and SMU basketball games and events like the Texas/OU Classic at the Cotton Bowl.  During the summer, the majority of my nights were spent at The Ballpark in Arlington.  This made sense. KRLD was the radio home of the Rangers at the time and the KRLD/TSN studios were at the Ballpark. I literally walked out our back door into the concourse area behind Greene's Hill in center field.

I loved, LOVED covering the Rangers. The Ballpark was still almost brand new, the team was turning into a winner under Johnny Oates and in fact, would win their first Division title in the fall of 1996. I was privileged to be in the locker room that night.  Summer nights at the ballpark are just about as good as it gets, especially when the hot dogs and sodas are free and you get to sit in an air conditioned booth right above home plate.  The Rangers press box had an empty booth that was only used very sparingly when an extra broadcast space was needed. Almost every night during a Ranger game it was occupied by Mike Rhyner and Greg Williams, the super popular, super baseball power hitting duo of the Hardline.  They allowed whoever was covering the game for The Ticket that night to sit in that booth, and one other, humbled, honored, special guest, me.

Those nights were just spectacular.  I learned baseball from two of the most passionate baseball nuts I could imagine, I was sitting at the equivalent of the cool kids table from junior high, an invitation only space of our very own, to be as loud and obnoxious as we wanted without drawing the scornful glances of the high and mighty scribes down in the writers pressbox. I laughed my ass off pretty much every night. I enjoyed trying to crack up Mike and Greg as well. Every seventh inning stretch I would come up with what I called the "Free Verse Cotton Eyed Joe" wherein I would ad lib lyrics to the Cotton Eyed Joe that were crude and sexually perverse, usually about people I had spotted in the stands. I'll not re-print them here, you can use your imagination.

This was also the birthplace of the "Half-Assed Novelist."  One night I was trying to make Mike laugh so I was doing this old mans voice, regaling Mike with this long winded, verbose story about a little boy that turned out to be John Cangelosi (I think, the details are fuzzy).  Rhyner liked it, he liked it a lot. He told me I should call in on the show and do the character.  Now mind you, at this point in my career The Ticket was the competition. But it was still where I longed to be. I started doing the bit for the Hardline and it seemed to be a hit. This only served to validate my thought that I was wasting away at KRLD and stoked my desire to return to The Ticket. (BTW I was wrong about wasting away, even though I eventually did go back to The Ticket, I should never have taken for granted the good thing I had at KRLD/TSN)

The Half-Assed Novelist was not the only character I did for The Ticket during this time. When down in Port Charlotte, Florida covering the Rangers for spring training, I happened to be there at the same time as The Musers (George Dunham, Craig Miller, Gordon Keith). Of course, I hung out with them most of the time when we were not at the Ballpark and one morning I saw a commercial on television for some New Age Music compilation. One of the artists was a guy named Ottmar Leibert.  I started goofing around with a voice that sounded like one part Colonel Klink, one part Kathleen Turner.  In our minds, Ottmar Leibert became a German industrialist who toured around the United States going to different sporting events. In whatever town he was in, he would develop crushes on the athletes of a certain team in that town and express those feelings of love in rhyme, in third person. A few examples:

"Ottmar is jealous of Mrs. Greg Ellis"
"Ottmar wants to do the splitski for Dirk Nowitzki"
"Ottmar wants to give a bone, to Jerry Jones"

This was, believe it or not, also a marginally successful character and my desire to return to The Ticket grew with every covert appearance. Every time I would hang out with those guys it would just remind me of what I was missing out on.  There was not an opening at the Ticket that would have made sense for me to leave what I had at KRLD at that time, but soon enough, a couple of wheels would begin to turn that would ultimately give me my dream shot...dang this is going to be a long post, better split it up.  I promise part two of part two will come quicker than part one of part two did. Hang with me.