Sitting within the Chicago Cubs radio sales space final week with Pat Hughes as he munched on popcorn throughout his one-inning break, our dialog turned to the baseball grind.
Announcers, like gamers and coaches, are working virtually each recreation throughout the 162-game season, taking lengthy flights on getaway day, arriving in new cities in the course of the evening and reporting to the ballpark the subsequent day a number of hours earlier than the sport.
Lack of sleep is a given for six months of the yr, and a few days are tougher to get by means of than others.
Yet within the 27 years I’ve recognized Hughes since his arrival at WGN-AM 720 in 1996, I couldn’t recall seeing him in a nasty temper on the ballpark.
Was I mistaken, or was Hughes simply in a position to disguise a nasty day higher than the remainder of us?
“I try to check reality at the door,” he stated. “Because this is sort of a fantasy world. It’s a terrific type of escapism. I do know it’s for me, and it was for Harry (Caray) and I do know it was for (Ron) Santo and for lots of people within the recreation.
“When I get right here, I’m glad to be right here, and I’ve had so many good companions. Santo and I laughed every single day. (Ron) Coomer is great. Al McGuire in basketball, and (Bob) Uecker in Milwaukee. Harry Caray was good to me.
“So I’ve had so many fun people to be around, and this place, this ballpark is a fun place to work. It’s magic. So why be in a bad mood ever?”
Hughes’ method to work — and although many consider describing a baseball recreation is a dream job, it’s nonetheless a variety of work — has helped him develop into one of many premier broadcasters of our time. As he accepted the Ford C. Frick Award on Saturday from the Baseball Hall of Fame for excellence in broadcasting, Cubs followers throughout the nation nodded in unison at an honor lengthy overdue.
In his acceptance speech Saturday on the ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y., Hughes described his first expertise as a play-by-play man, sitting on the bench of his faculty basketball workforce pretending to name the motion.
“The first listening audience consisted of the other benchwarmers on my team,” he stated. “Sort of an inglorious beginning.”
That inglorious starting led to a profession each younger broadcaster goals of — calling eight no-hitters, Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout epic and the Cubs’ clinching win in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. Hughes thanked his household, the Ricketts household, Cubs president of enterprise operations Crane Kenney and everybody from well-known accomplice Bob Uecker to Cubs radio engineers equivalent to Matt Boltz.
He thanked McGuire, the previous Marquette coach who Hughes stated taught him the best way to hitchhike, and Santo, who“clicked immediately” with Hughes when he got here to Chicago in 1996. That led into the legendary story of how Santo’s toupee briefly caught hearth after touching an overhead heater at Shea Stadium.
Santo requested afterward the way it regarded. “I lied,” Hughes stated, telling Santo: “I didn’t think it looked that bad to me.” He then in contrast Santo’s singed hairpiece to a divot within the grass by golfer Phil Mickelson.
Hughes additionally lauded present accomplice Ron Coomer, saying: “As long as I’m doing radio play-by-play for the Cubs, I want to have Ron Coomer next to me.” He saved his remaining tribute to Cubs followers who listened to his broadcasts through the years.
“What an extraordinary group of people you are,” Hughes stated, including Cubs followers “make me feel like I’m part of your family.”
Hughes ended his speech with the hope that in the future he’ll be capable to repeat his most well-known name: “The Chicago Cubs win the World Series!”
The championship season apart, Hughes has watched and described extra dangerous baseball than contending groups over his 27 years in Chicago. But he by no means let the Cubs’ play have an effect on his method to calling a recreation.
Hughes nonetheless does his pregame homework, treats each recreation with the identical degree of significance and clearly enjoys the byplay with Coomer. The two can generally go off on tangents, equivalent to a dialogue this season of the Bob Dylan’s traditional “Tangled up in Blue.” Listeners can keep knowledgeable whereas the dialogue veers elsewhere, like sitting down at a dinner desk with family and friends.
When we sat collectively within the radio sales space final week, Hughes admitted he was a bit of overwhelmed when he got here to Chicago. He recalled a second in 1996, his first season broadcasting the Cubs, when the magnitude of the place actually hit him.
“It was a Cubs-Cardinals game, early in the season, and Harry joined Ronnie and me in the booth,” he stated. “The three of us are working, and I come again from a business and say, ‘Along with Cubs legend Ron Santo and Hall of Famer Harry Caray, it’s Pat Hughes at Wrigley Field.’
“And then I froze. I thought, ‘What did I just say? How did I get here? And maybe most importantly, how hard do I have to work to stay here? Because I like it here.’ ”
Things labored out effectively. Nearly three many years later, Hughes nonetheless likes it right here. And the great half is he’ll be right here for the foreseeable future.
At 68, Hughes is aware of he’s within the again finish of his profession, just like the high-leverage innings on the finish of a recreation. But he has not slowed down and has no intentions of leaving the sales space anytime quickly.
Many Cubs followers recall that Caray noticeably slipped in his later years on the job for WGN-Ch. 9. He had suffered a stroke in 1987, and by the mid-90s was criticized within the papers for rambling or mispronouncing gamers’ names. But Caray continued broadcasting till he died in 1998 at age 78. In what can be his remaining print interview, he instructed me the Cubs supplied him the job so long as he needed.
“I said, ‘It’s my job as long as I’m capable of doing it. If I’m not doing the job, I want you to take me off it,’ ” Caray stated of the dialog. “But this ‘mispronouncing names’ (stuff) is such a crock. I really do it intentionally at times, just to see somebody mention it in his column.”
Caray was a legend by the point he got here to Chicago to broadcast Sox video games within the early Nineteen Seventies, and his reputation exploded after transferring to the WGN superstation, aided by the Cubs’ 1984 season. Hughes made his legend on the North Side, the place he’ll at all times be related to the Santo years and the 2016 championship.
After a protracted, celebratory weekend in New York, Hughes shall be again at work this week when the Cubs tackle the White Sox on the South Side.
The voice would be the similar. The preparation hasn’t modified. It’s one other day of bringing you a baseball recreation.
Check actuality on the door. And get pleasure from.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com