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Former American Press sportswriter Carl Dubois blogs about the games people play, in and out of sports, and the people you meet between and outside the lines. Carl is an award-winning reporter and columnist living in the Willamette Valley in northwest Oregon, near Portland. He is sports editor of the News-Register newspaper in McMinnville, Ore.

Radio Man

Posted October 9, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Filed Under People, Sports | 3 Comments

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BATON ROUGE — So, as I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted …

This is my first piece for the American Press since December 1997, when I left for The Times in Shreveport, then for The Advocate in Baton Rouge. In September I resigned from the latter for health reasons — it being unhealthy to remain where your gut tells you your health is not considered important — so I’m a free agent and a freelance blogger.

As you and I work our way through Carl Dublog No. 1 and subsequent weekly posts, some will remember my work at the American Press (1983-97), and others will not.

Some posts will be about sports. Others will not. Almost all in some way will be about the games we all play, on and off our chosen fields of endeavor, and the people we meet.

The previous sentence came from a mind freshly aware that the places where we find ourselves often do the choosing for us. That’s part of the context for this story, which has echoes from my American Press past, with chords that sound a familiar melody that’s spanning the past, the transitional present and an uncertain future.

This story is about Radio Man and his pregame show for a listening audience of two.

The setup

My first freelance sports assignment after quitting The Advocate was to cover a high school football game for a small weekly newspaper. The pay was less money than I would have made simply by driving to that weekend’s LSU football game in Auburn, Ala., where I would have gone that day if I’d still been the LSU beat writer.

It was my first high school game in years. I knew nothing about either team. But when I got the offer, something told me to say yes.

It felt as if some force were drawing me to that game for reasons unknown to me.

Part of the American Press accompanied me. In my grasp was an accounting journal, a type of bound ledger introduced to me 25 years ago before my first Press assignment.

This journal, designed for dollars and cents and debits and credits, is perfect for the system of play-by-play and stat-keeping the Press teaches its sportswriters. It’s a format I’ve not encountered anywhere else, and it’s a model of efficiency and thoroughness.

Sitting next to me now, it’s a record of my encounter with Radio Man.

The meeting

He introduced himself — that’s one way to say it — as I walked toward the press-box side of the stadium two hours before kickoff. Out of the corner of my vision-corrected eye, he seemed a young approximation of Barack Obama, slim and sharply dressed, perhaps an eager twentysomething member of the school’s faculty or staff.

My plan was to arrive early and avoid the ticket gate. The only cards I had identifying me as a sportswriter were obsolete, so I wondered what I’d do if someone intent on collecting $5 asked me to prove I was a reporter.

The young man spied me and cut me off a few steps from the bleachers.

“Radio Man,” he said, making a beeline for me.

He had to be referring to himself, I thought. I’m not a radio guy, and I don’t have any equipment with me that remotely resembles radio gear.

Pulling better focus with the contact lenses with which I have a love-hate relationship, I could see he was probably a student. Kickoff was at 7 p.m., but at barely 5 o’clock there was a clear sense of urgency about him.

“Do you have some money?” he asked me. “I need headphones for the pregame show.”

It seemed an odd request, but being a visitor I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a friend in the press box if I had to fight for a seat. I opened my wallet and gave him all my $1 bills.

“I could take that twenty and bring you back the change,” he said.

Hmm. No, I replied, that’s all I can give you.

He headed off — to Wal-Mart, he said — presumably to buy some cheap headphones.

Up the steps

Smooth jazz poured from the loudspeakers. There were maybe 20 of us to hear it.

Mr. Parker, the stadium announcer who would reveal himself to be a deeply spiritual man, was in charge of the music. I liked him already.

Soon after we learned each other’s identity, Mr. Parker waxed philosophical.

“My father used to tell me, ‘Your name is the most important thing you’ll ever have,’ and he was ahead of his time,” Mr. Parker said. “Fax? They can fax your name to Hong Kong, and it will be there in a split second.”

As I let this sink in, I surveyed the remaining damage from Hurricane Gustav, which had delayed the home team’s season opener for two weeks. Mr. Parker told me he was lucky, that he came out OK, purely by the grace of God.

He asked me questions, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted to know about my post-Gustav situation or about my faith.

“All I know,” I said, “is that I’m not the one in control.”

He smiled approvingly, and he hooked his right hand in mine, the kind of soulful handshake in which his first three fingers curled around mine, with his pulling part of me closer to him and mine pulling part of him closer to me.

As Mr. Parker caught up on this person’s house and that person’s tree and this neighbor’s fence, he reminded all of us about our place in the cosmic scheme.

“Man has no say,” he assured us.

When a Bic is a mic

Radio Man returned to the press box with a small shopping bag and a hand-held radio in clear-blue-plastic casing no larger than the palm of his hand. He pulled from the bag two pairs of earbuds and tried each on for size.

He asked me to let him know when it was 6 o’clock. At the appointed time, I did.

“Stay tuned for the pregame show,” he barked into a writing pen he gripped as if it were a microphone, “coming up at 6:45, live from Boutte Stadium!”

Now that I had my bearings and my seat in the press box, it all clicked into place. There was no radio equipment. There was no radio crew. There was only Radio Man and his hyperactive imagination.

His Bic was his mic.

“Let me know when it’s 6:30,” he said, pushing his chair closer to mine.

“You’ll be my timekeeper tonight.”

It was not a request, but it was not a command. It was something I have no words for.

Radio Man took note of the advertising signs on the fence surrounding the playing field. He knew what each one said, but he needed help with spelling as he wrote their contents on pieces of paper in front of him.

“How do you spell re?” he asked me.

“Re?”

“Like re-elect,” Radio Man explained.

He was scripting his commercials. He read the first aloud.

“Re-elect Mayor Leroy Sullivan … Mayor.”

Then an ad for the local newspaper.

“The Chief … in Donaldonsville.”

Then this ad and that ad, until he ran out of sheets of paper.

Then I told him it was 6:30. He gripped his pen and reminded his “listeners” there were 15 minutes until his pregame show. He cited a name, apparently of a local radio man, and said he was off on another assignment.

Then this self-appointed Radio Man held up all five fingers of his right hand, folding in one at a time as he explained what he needed me to do at five seconds before 6:45.

“Count it down for me like this,” he said. “Don’t say it. Just do it like this.”

I nodded.

For the next 10 minutes, once each minute, he asked me what time it was. At the designated time, I gave him the five-fingered countdown.

Pregame show

He was on the air, such that it was on this thick-with-humidity Friday night.

“It’s showtime in Donaldsonville!” he exploded, the “Monday Night Football” theme playing on the stadium loudspeakers as he went through the intro to his pregame show.

Radio Man struggled with the name of the visiting team — Avoyelles became something like “Avoy-jess” and then something in between the two — but he knew his way around the pronunciation of the home team.

“Here come the Donaldsonville Tigers!”

He read his ads. He repeated the call letters of the local radio station. He provided the teams’ won-lost records. Then, he was done.

Radio Man didn’t call the game. He disappeared into the night, and later I found him wandering the sideline, near the cheerleaders, near the team, near the action.

Five ledger sheets full of play-by-play later, Donaldsonville won 42-7. As I stood to gather my things before heading to the field for postgame interviews, I noticed one pair of earbuds at the seat next to mine.

The next day, someone asked, “How was the game?”

Postscript

Truth be told, I’d seen many games like it. There was nothing remarkable enough about the plays on the field to make them memorable less than a month later.

Then I realized something I’d learned during my early American Press days, something easy to forget in the insulated comfort of SEC press boxes. High school football is always at its best when it’s about the people you meet rather than the plays you see.

Did you see the movie “Radio” with Cuba Gooding Jr.? Every high school football team has its version of Radio or a younger equivalent, and during the game I covered last month Mr. Parker gave me some details about my press box companion, Radio Man.

“He’s kind of a special-ed student,” Mr. Parker said.

Student? I felt like I was the one who learned something on this night. But just as with the elusive frequency of Radio Man’s imaginary station, what exactly I learned keeps swimming around in my mind, looking for resolution and looking for a home.

All I know is that I’m not the one in control, and what I found that night seemed more special than anything I would have encountered had I gone to the big game in Auburn.

I found the world inside Radio Man’s imagination.

I knew I was where I was supposed to be, for reasons I still can’t nail down, and I knew I had to tell someone the story.

Thanks for listening out there in Radioland.

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