The Press Box - Charley Steiner on Calling Baseball, Memories of ESPN, Press Room Scuffles, and More

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Bryan is joined by Dodgers play-by-play announcer Charley Steiner to discuss his time working in media. They begin by reflecting on his start with the Yankees and receiving his “Yankee tattoo,” calling the Aaron Boone home run, and comparing his time with the Yankees to his time with the Dodgers. Later, they highlight key moments from Steiner’s career, from a Wimbledon press room scuffle to calling the Dodgers' 2020 World Series championship, and all the moments in between. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Charley Steiner Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mac Jones is ripped. Matt Patricia's calling plays. The Celtics are title favorites. And The Ringer has a new Boston show. I'm Brian Barrett, host of Off the Pike, the show covering all things Boston sports. I'll have shows multiple times a week covering your favorite teams and with your favorite ringer and local guests. Plus, maybe Bill will stop by to rant about the socks. Follow off the pike with me, Brian Barrett, now on Spotify.

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica, So I have an uncle who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His name is Carl. It's one of my favorite people on planet Earth. And he is a huge Los Angeles Dodgers fan. During the summer, I get texts from Uncle Carl.

They go like this. Hey, Kurto, did you see that Dustin May has a no-hitter through five? When I get those texts, I pop in my earbuds, I open my serious app, and I smile. because this moment of uncle-nephew bonding is going to be narrated by Charlie Steiner, the Dodgers play-by-play announcer. Here's a fact I hadn't really processed until this week. Charlie Steiner's career calling Dodgers games is now longer than his career hosting Sports Center at ESPN.

And this isn't Steiner's second career in the business. It's more like his third or his fourth. So this week, Steiner and I sat in his dining room in Los Angeles and we worked backwards. We talked about sharing a press box with the late Vince Scully, about how Steiner got hired by George Steinbrenner to call Yankees games, about how a Connecticut liquor store owner of all people helped Steiner get on at ESPN, and about the time Steiner and a British reporter got into a scuffle at Wimbledon.

Consider this a command from my uncle Carl, pop in your earbuds. Here's Charlie Steiner. All right, Charlie, you've been calling baseball, full-time for 20 years, which is a longer period than you spent doing sports center? I've been with the Dodgers now 18 years. I was at ESPN for 14 years and three years with the Yankees. So I'm now actually longer in L.A. with the Dodgers than I was at ESPN and the Yankees combined, which upon reflection is at once neat and frightening. What do you like about calling a baseball game versus doing sports center or studio show?

I grew up a baseball fan. The first time I heard a Brooklyn Dodger game, I was five or six years old, and I was attracted like so many millions of fans to the voice of Ben Scully. So I was a Brooklyn Dodger fan. And by the time I was seven, I was calling Brooklyn. Dodger games in my basement to an audience of two, my mom and my dad, and they had their four fingers inside their respective ears. But it didn't matter.

I was immediately drawn to it. And the crazy thing about the journey is 65 years later, I'm calling the World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers from my living room. at the moment that the Dodgers won it, I had this enormous flashback as a child. Fast forward 65 years later. And that was, if there's an aha moment, that was it. So baseball was always my childhood dream, aspiration, love. and so when I'm calling a game now in those kinds of moments,

I can go back to those thrilling days of yesteryear and just become a kid again. 2002, you were offered jobs with both the Yankees and the Giants. Is that correct? Yes. At the end of 2001, I had been doing ESPN radio, and then

So I was doing all the big games in August up until September 11th. And then September 11th happened. Immediately after we went back to play again on September the 17th, I did the first game back, the Phillies and the Braves the next few days. I did the Mets game back when Piazza hit the home run. the following week, I was doing the Yankees field reporting from the Yankee game, their first game back. And then after that, I was calling Barry Bond's final 13 games, home run 68 through 73.

So I was all over the place. Prior to 9-11, I was at Yankee Stadium sitting in Brian Cashman's office. It was a Sunday night game. It was three, four o'clock in the afternoon. We're just chatting. And George walks in to the office. And I'd known George from the time I worked in Cleveland back in the late, mid to late 70s. And George was saying, oh, I heard you on television the other day and we're, you know, just chatting aimlessly.

And he says to Cashman, I need to talk to you. And okay, so it's time for me to leave. So George leaves the office and I say to Brian because 2002 would be the first year for the Yes network. I say, you know, if something is available with this new, they didn't even have a name yet with this new network. Yeah, I could be interested. So an hour or so goes by. I come back to my, you know, the broadcast booth and Cashman walks in. And he said, I've got good news and bad news.

Okay. I wasn't expecting any. The bad news is I told George you might be interested in coming to work for the Yankees. And he told me to stay the fuck out of his business, build me a winner. You have nothing to do with broadcasting. The good news was he said, he wants to hire you. And so that was how it came to pass. all the while

I'm doing those games up to and post 9-11 and the Bond's home runs the Giants call and say would you be interested

in coming out and working with John Miller? Wow, cool. My father was in ill health at the time and I haven't grown up in New York and the offers were identical. Truth be told,

I was always a Dodger fan. And so I decide to go to work for the Yankees. So my dad could hear me in his last few years, which he did. And that was how the Yankee part of the story came about. I suspect if my dad was not in ill health, I might well have gone to the Giants and worked with John for 20 years, which would have been very cool too. What was that experience like for your dad? Oh, it was wonderful. You know, he had to put up with my nonsense in the basement with the TV sound down.

It was an old black and white TV. And that was very cool. And then when I came out here, my mom at that point was in her 90s, she was able to last couple of years of her life. She could hear me do what I was doing in their basement all those years ago. So I've had an incredibly serendipitous journey every step of the way. Start with the Yankees 2002. 2003 you call Aaron Boone's home run that wins the ALCS. His first ad bat of the game, there's a fly ball deep to left.

It's on his way. What do you remember about that call? I remember there are so many things about that call. And I guess that's the one of all that I've thankfully had some part. of the one I suspect that I remember best and probably has the strongest legs. The Yankees and the Red Sox were a great rivalry. Goes without saying. This was the 26th game of the season that came down to the final pitch of the year

in the last half of the 11th inning. and John Sterling and I, he was the guy, he was the voice, I was the new guy, and I was the new guy, and I don't know, I did three or four innings during a regular game, and he would do the last three. And then when it came to extra innings, he would do the 10th, I would do the 11th, he would do the 12th. And so on. before there was a, you know, a zombie runner at second base. So it's a tie score. It is an absolutely thrilling game between two of the great rivals at that time,

one of the greatest rivalries in the game. And now it's the bottom of the 11th. And in the postseason, they always add, I think, another 30 seconds of commercial time between innings. The local radio station, WCBS, opted to add like 45 seconds. So now I'm looking at my watch. I'm looking at Aaron Boone in the on-deck circle. We're still in commercial. And I'm thinking two words, Heidi Bowl. So now John comes out of the commercial break and then he says whatever he said. And I have. had no time, zero time to set it up.

And I think I said, first pitch, 11th inning, and then the call. And I knew, I mean, the crowd went crazy. It was an instant. It was like turning on your radio full blast and you didn't expect it to be full blast. And the crowd is just going crazy. And I'm in the middle of this call. and I remember Boone going from second to third and I was screaming out Aaron, boom. And then he crosses the plate and I finish up the call for whatever it was.

And I knew I got it pretty good because in those moments you really don't want to fuck it up. And underneath the desk in the booth. I just kind of clenched my fist and said to myself, yeah, I didn't fuck it up. And just the hysteria of the moment at Yankee Stadium and just the moment itself was one of those I suspect that I'll always remember fondly. You called this my Yankee tattoo? I guess it was. What's fascinating is to this day, I gather they play that call pretty much before every single game at Yankee Stadium. You know, in our business, you're just there in the moment.

It's Zellig, it's Gump, and you're there, and hopefully, you know, you leave a mark. And I suppose in that case, it was somewhat of a tattoo. But just from a technical point of view, I said and did everything I would have hoped for and could have hoped for based on my experience leading up to that moment. And I crossed the finish line standing up. I was thinking about that because we've been talking about the Yankees announcers and Cardinals announcers being present to call these big home runs this year, as opposed to gaming on Apple or some other outlet. Is that how announcers think about big plays that the lottery is going to hit and you're going to be there? It's going to be your inning. It's going to be your game.

No. You're just there. It's just happenstance. It just happens to happen. Whatever call or moment I've been involved with, I had no control over being there when that moment took place. And so, again, having been around ESPN all those years, years and in New York with the jets and God save me, the generals, and the Yankees and the Dodgers, I've been around a lot of big games and big moments.

Luck, happenstance, circumstance. And so no, you go in and you're going to call what you see and hopefully you come up with something that sticks. You mentioned John Sterling, the guy and new guy. How did you two get along? It was interesting. You know, again, John had always been the guy. And I say this now, we're, what, 18 years removed.

And we have a very nice, cordial relationship and friendship. We talked three, four times a season. When I got there, you know, I was the new guy who was high. hired by George, and I was going to work alongside him. He had had Michael Kay as his partner, who basically he trained as a broadcaster, and worked with several others before I showed up. And so I was a different breed from what John had worked with. I wasn't, you know, some kid from Columbus who had just shown up one day.

So I think there was, and we were two play-by-play guys and not play-by-play, former player. That took a while. I think it was unfairly reported that we didn't get along. From my perspective, we just came from different places who just happened to arrive at that place for that period of time. and it took a while. And the hardest part was that people were writing and assuming stuff that wasn't quite true. And that is really, how do you then go and tell folks, hey, what you're writing really isn't true without getting into a controversy?

And that's a last thing in the world I want to do. So I just kind of let it roll. And, you know, we had three years. and then when my contract was up, it was not going to work that way for a long period of time. The Yankees wanted me to stay and offered me an enormous sum of money to do their studio show, the pregame and post game, which I didn't want to do. I had done all that prior to the Yankees. And happenstance circumstance, I get a call from the Dodgers.

Would you be interested in, we're going to make a move out here. We're going to replace Ross Porter. Would you be interested in coming out here? Having been a fan of the Dodgers since I was five, I've really hurt my negotiating posture when my first words were, fucking eh, Bubba. And within a few weeks, we had made a deal. And again, this was now, I was the first,

new guy from a court, which, you know, the good news was, hey, I'm going to be part of this new era of the Dodgers. The bad news was I kind of became a spokesman for the Gaddafi family a little more sooner than I had expected. But, you know, again, here we are 18 years later. And it's where I always wanted to be. And here I am. You had a quote after moving to L.A. I want to feel joy again, that it's okay to laugh. There's no better theater in baseball than Yankee Stadium for the drama for the history, but it's a hard place to work. Yes, it is.

I don't know what it is now. It certainly was then, but it was also where I grew up. So I was sufficiently hardened to that kind of nonsense. That never overwhelmed me, but that was just the price of doing business with the Yankees for George and all of that that entails. And, you know, there's such a different vibe between New York where I grew up and Los Angeles,

where I now live, that, yeah, I mean, it was a lifestyle difference. It was a whole vibe that was different. And, you know, again, competing with John to some degree for time. Just booed, Yankees, nuts, crazy, Bronx. Coming to L.A. where it was nice and mellow and fun. And I've been blessed to work with Rick Monday for 18 years. And in our business, if you've got a partner for that long, you're very fortunate and I'm very lucky. Listening to baseball on the radio feels very personal.

How do you convince a fan base to let you be their voice? Time. It just takes time. What I don't consider myself, if I look at what I do and have done in my career, I don't look as myself as necessarily a play-by-play announcer. I mean, I began my career playing tunes. I was playing classic rock when it was new and not classic rock. I was doing news.

I was news director at four radio stations. Two of the four were all news. I did television reluctantly. I've always been a radio guy, not TV. So whatever it is that I bring to the booth every day, it's not specifically with a baseball background, but this is an assignment that I have had now for 20-something years and four with ESPN, and when I covered boxing.

That was my assignment then. I covered that as my story. And so I'm in their ears, in their cars, night in, night out. And I guess my desire and goal is to be that comfortable pair of brown shoes when you get home at the end of the day. And not anything stylish or flashy, but show up every day, try to report the story as accurately, concisely and as uniquely as I can because all of us are different personalities who are calling games and you hope that over a period of time you are embraced and received in that car and in that home and in that kitchen where the game may be heard all right so concise like a pair

of comfortable shoes how else do you want to sound when you're doing a game on the radio like I know what I'm talking about. That's really important. That's credibility. You have to have credibility. What else? Vin always tells the story about one of his first big conversations with Red. Now, here's, I'm talking to you now, matter-factly, about Red and Vin,

who happened to be Red Barber and Vin' and Vin' and I'm part of the, this lineage and I have to pinch myself every day. And Red said to Vin in his first year, he said, young man, you have something that nobody else has. And Ben's thinking, oh, I can't wait to hear this. And Red says, you, you are you. That's all you can be. You can't be me. You can't be anybody else. You have to be yourself. And that is such a valuable lesson. for all broadcasters. I can't be the next this or the next that. I can only be the best broadcaster I can be

based on the experience that I've had and Lord knows it's been a while now. 2020 Dodgers win the World Series. You get to make that call. To Adomis, call strike three. The Dodgers win. Finally, the weight is over. The Dodgers.

are the champions of 2020 in a year like no other where joy has been so hard to come by tonight tears of joy let them flow what do you remember about that moment you and i are talking in my dining room 10 feet from here is where i called the game um again i when i was a child it's all i ever wanted to be um i turned the sound down, I'd call the games and so on, and nobody heard. Now, here I am, because of the pandemic, having called all the games from my living room, which was alternate parts, cool, bizarre, weird, sentimental, but it was, that was what we had to do in 2020. So now we're getting to the point where the Dodgers can actually clinch. And again, I'm having these childhood flashbacks. And Urias with the strikeout. And I said, finally, the weight is over,

the Dodgers are the champions of 2020. And I talked about joy, which to me is what all of this stuff should be about. And I said something about how There was so little joy this year, but in this moment, we can share the joy. And I'm there in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt with a headset mic on in my living room, media room, whatever you call it. And I'm actually calling the Dodgers World Series championship, which was beyond a pipe dream, 65 years earlier. And there it was. It was the goddamest thing. And in its way,

it's every bit as memorable, perhaps even more so than the Boone home run, just because of circumstance. Did I know that I would someday become the Dodger announcer? Did I know there would be COVID? did I know that we were capable of actually doing a game from home with all the technical wizardry that they had? No, but there it was. It was in that moment. And Lord knows you hope you don't stumble all over yourself too badly. Aaron Boonsomer was a lightning strike. But with the Dodgers, you had time to think about what you might say.

Did you think about that in advance? You know, I called Vinn that morning. We spoke a lot. I mean, he meant a lot. So on the morning of the clinch, I said, I'm a, hama, hama, hama, ma, hama. And I said, I think I have an idea. Yeah, what's that?

I said, how about in a year that's been so improbable? And he said, I believe it's been. For those who don't know, 1988 World Series. Yeah. To be the single greatest sports call of all time, the Kirk Gibson home run. So I kept thinking all day about the word joy. And it's fascinating. You brought it up about the Yankees in, what, 20 years ago?

And it was such a joyless exercise for all of us in 2020. You had the dopey cardboard cutouts, which were creepy then and even creepier in retrospect. And I'm in my living room with stats and all this stuff all over the place. And it's over. And I'm there. I'm at that point, I guess a 70-year-old guy calling the World Series, not beside age, not significantly different. in emotion from the five, six, seven-year-old kid that was calling Brooklyn Dodger games. So it was just a wonderful confluence of emotions, of life's experience.

Oh, that's another one. Who calls the goddamn World Series from their living room? No one until 2020. No one. So, yeah, it's crazy. see. That's one of those that just happened. Speaking of Vinny, you move out here in 2005, and for a time, the first three innings of the radio call were his television call on the radio. And then you came in in the fourth inning. What was that like as an announcement?

It was unique. Well, look, A, it was VIN. So, you know, if VIN wanted to do the first eight, fine. Or if he wanted to do the last eight, fine. Vinn was the reason I wanted to do what I'd do and what I wanted to be when I grew up. So let's begin with that. I, like hundreds of millions of people, Vin, you know, with the death of the queen, it reminded me about Vin. He was in everybody's life, the way. the queen was in everybody's life.

And so when I came out here, that was, those are the rules. Fine. What am I going to say? No. But it was actually more difficult than I think folks might imagine. Because you're picking up a race a third of the way through. and you've got to kind of reestablish what you're seeing without, you know, restating what they had just heard from the master. And so Mo, Rick Munday and I, we just kind of sit there and wait, and then it was our turn.

And it was difficult, but again, you figure out a way to make it work as best as you can. When was the last time you talked to Vin? I talked to Vin the day of the Sandy Kofak statue unveiling. I was asked to do that. And that was clearly a place where Vin would like to have been, should have been, could have been. And so I called him a few days earlier and told him as much. I said, I feel honored. I feel saddened.

I feel, I have all these emotions that I wish you were there and able to do it. And he said, no, no, no, no. My time's up. It's yours just go be good. And he was really a father figure to me. So we do the Kofax statue's ceremony. And Mark Walter, Sandy, Joe Torrey, Clayton Kirshaw. and I was the emce.

And when you're doing something like that, you just don't want to step on the moment. And so it was very important for me to really get it done and get it done right, which, and it turned out very nicely. So I'm driving home and Vinn calls, and we have this lovely chat. And in all the years we were together, he never critiqued my work. and I never, what I'm going to critique his, you know, we just didn't go there. And it was really, and understand, we had dinner. Then a fellow named Billy DeLurie, came out with the Dodgers in 58, Rick Monday and

either four of us had lunch or dinner before every home game and several on the road for 14 years. So do the math. I mean, it was over a thousand dinner. So we were close, but we never talked about specifics of, hey, this call or that call. And so he calls me and he said, I just watched the Kofak ceremony. And he could not have been nicer, more complimentary. And it was, it was lovely. And that was the last conversation that I had with Vin.

and I guess he passed away, you know, a month or two later. I guess a month later, whatever it was. It was relatively short period of time. A couple questions about your background. Growing up on Long Island, you went to high school and the big basketball player at the rival high school was Dr. J. Julius Irving. Julius Irving played at Roosevelt. And I raised this question of high school alumni, who's the biggest?

Julius Irving, Eddie Murphy, or Howard Stern. They all went to Roosevelt High School. Julius was by class, 67. Eddie Murphy, I think, was a few years later. So that's one of those, I suppose, it depends on your age and interest. Yeah, he played at Roosevelt. I actually played on the same court as Julius in the summer in high school. We had a kid named Jeff Halliburton, who actually was a better player in high school than Julius was.

And he went on to Drake and played for the hideous 76ers. But Julius was the ugly duckling. He could do these things and then he kicked the ball out of bounds and stuff. So we played, you know, half court. and he ended up at UMass because he wasn't that great yet. But yeah, Julius Irving Roosevelt High School, 67, and I went to Malvern High School, class of 67. You mentioned spinning records.

I read that in college you had a radio show called the Flower Power Hour. Oh, Jesus, yes. Can you give us a sense of what DJ Charlie was like on the Flower Power Hour? I was so cool. Um, I, the moment I graduated high school within a day or two, I, I, I took off for San Francisco. Hey, Ashbury. I mean, I was just a hippie. And I suppose to this day I am.

Um, and so I was always into music and I was always into the radio. Um, and in those days, when you played albums, you know, that was FM underground. And the flower power hour sounds embarrassingly dopey now, but it was actually kind of cool then. And so, yeah, I played all the songs that weren't top 40. And that's what the flower power hour was all about. Were you doing a voice? This is me. Yeah.

You weren't given a nice husky tone. No, I didn't. This is it. You know, I got a voice. thankful it was from my dad and not my mom. No, no, I heard it was not FM. No, it wasn't. No. I always wanted to ask you about this. July 1981, Wimbledon.

It's back. John McEnroe has just won a match, I believe, over Rod Fraul. And afterward in the interview room, there was what Newsday called a scuffle between a British reporter and an American radio sportscaster. Charlie, the radio sportscaster was you. I was not the British report. No. What happened?

Again, I've had this in Gumpian zealig-like experience. So it's 81. It's Borg and McEnroe. You know, Borg and McIntyreux, I think they faced each other only nine times, but they were always spectacular moments and there were such disparate personalities. And in that year, McEnroe was having a relationship with a female player. Stacey Margolin, and they were in the process of breaking up. Now, this is backpage news for the tabloids. They had a feel day with it.

And, of course, McEnroe fed the beast with his temper and his spectacular play. And so after each match, a reporter named Jules Whitaker, who's either James Whitaker or Jules Whitaker, would constantly be asking the question after the match, Mr. McEnroe is it true that you and Stacey Margolin are Splitsville. Splitsville. McEnroe first day said, look, I'm going to talk about tennis. I'm not going to talk about my personal life. Next match, there he is.

There's the question. McEnroe is getting steamed. Next match, next match. Now, they go to the semifinals. He beats Frawley. And with each passing day, this little tiny press room became a spam can that was just overrun with reporters. And McEnroe after Mr. McEnroe gets up and launches every F-bomb you could hear. And he leaves.

Now, this little press room is going crazy. And I was next to a reporter from Life magazine, which gives you some idea how long ago it was. She and I went over to this guy, Whitaker, and said, come on, man, you're screwing it up for everybody else. We just want to get our quotes like you. And then this other British reporter named Nigel Clark, God bless him. And we turned out to be friends years later, comes over to me and said, it's none of your business and starts pointing his index finger in my face. He says, get your fucking finger out of my face.

And then it's now beginning to heat up. He steps up on a chair and dives on me as if I'm the swimming pool and he's Greg Lugainis. And I'm thinking, I haven't been in a fight since junior high school. And there it was. And there was one camera that wasn't even supposed to be in that room that picked it up. And I just saw the other day the McEnroe documentary. there I was again. I can't go away from that.

But it was just one of those crazy moments that I was there and it had nothing to do with patriotism. It was just some reporters telling other reporters, come on, let's see if we can, can't we get together? Didn't work out quite so well. And how did the fight come out? Unanimous decision for you. Come on, man. I assume. but I got to make sure.

You mentioned the generals. This would be the New York, New Jersey generals of the USFL. They were the New Jersey generals. The owner considered them the New York, New Jersey generals. The owner being for the uninitiated? Donald Trump. What is your abiding memory of being the announcer of Donald Trump's USFL team? I was with the team longer than he was.

What a shock. He bought the team after one year. he was at that time the tabloids considered him the boy builder he wanted a football team so he could get the back page of the post and the daily news newsday because he often had space on page six the gossip and got some notoriety with real estate. But if he had football and he had page six and then occasionally he'd get the front page, I mean, for him, was the trifecta. So the whole thing about him owning the football team was all about him.

It was then what I saw when he took over the team in 84, but I had first met him a couple of years earlier. what you see now he was just in a petri dish then becoming the human being that he has become he wasn't a pleasant character he would often tell folks years later that he made my career and he had nothing to do with my career we gave him work when he didn't have any I was already there. You know, I was, I don't need to go through what I was doing at the time above and beyond the generals.

But it was, he, he lied with the greatest of ease then, as he does now. So, yeah, I saw young Donald metastasize into old Donald. Fast forward a couple of years, 1988. You were hired by ESPN. Mm-hmm. Thanks in part to a Norwalk, Connecticut liquor store owner named Larry. Larry the liquor guy. So Donald Trump didn't help your career, but how did Larry?

Larry had much more impact on my career than Donald Trump did. I had moved after the generals disappeared, the competing radio station, W.EBC, called and asked would I be interested in doing the Jets? Well, sure. So I go and do the Jets for a couple of years. And in the third year, new management had come in. The Yankee announcers at the time were Hank Greenwald and Tommy Hutton. They were fired.

John Sterling came in in 80. So they had lost the football contract. And I was also doing the morning drive radio program beside the jet. And it was my turn to face the execution. Never had it happened before. And I had nine months left on my contract, so it was fine. So it got a fair amount of attention in the papers that I was jettisoned. Ooh, J-E-T-S, Jess, Jess, Jess, Jess.

And that was on a Friday, or it was on a Thursday. It was reported on Friday. And Steve Bornstein, then the president of E.S. They were in the process of trying to restart SportsCenter. And they brought in John Walsh to me, one of the great broadcasting editorial geniuses. And his job was to give SportsCenter something new. And so Bornstein goes into this liquor store,

the liquor store in Norwalk, Connecticut, Larry, Larry the liquor guy. And he says to, knowing Steve, had something to do with that cable station up in Bristol. He said, my favorite sportscaster got fired, and I don't know why. And it's crazy. And Steve said, what's his name? He gives him my name. And Bornstein being a TV guy in Connecticut, I'm a radio guy in New York.

He didn't know me from Adam. So on Monday, he goes to the recently hired John Walsh. You know, this Steiner guy said, well, yeah. And I had known John when he was doing inside sports. and I was at RKO Radio. Anyway, we had a history. And he tells the story about Larry the liquor guy. Let's see if we can track him down.

Knowing that I was gone, I had a weekend home up in Woodstock, New York. And they had no idea where I was. But one guy did, and John is trying to track me down. And they find me in, in, uh, Woodstock. And I'm, you know, I had nine months left on my contract. It was great. And John calls and said, would you come over and audition for SportsCenter? I said, John, I don't know anything about television. It doesn't matter. I said, John, I have nine months left on my contract. It doesn't matter. Come on over. And I went over and I had no idea what I was doing. I really, that's not false.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I could write a little bit. And so I do this audition and that's it, the end of it. I go home, go back to Woodstock, and I hear nothing. And then about three weeks or a month later, I get a call from Walsh. Well, I'm sorry we haven't spoken to you in a while, but we've had all these auditions. We'd like you to come over and anchor sports center. And again, sports center then bears no resemblance what. And I, gosh, really?

And so had it not been Steve Bornstein going into his liquor store in Norwalk on a Friday afternoon in May of 1988, and Larry the liquor guy hadn't mentioned my name, you and I would not be talking today. I mean, it was just a goddamest thing. Yeah, Larry the liquor guy in Norwalk. SportsCenter was a half-hour show then? Yeah, yeah. And when I started, again, I was terrible because I didn't know how to do it. But I could write.

That was always my fallback. And so I was doing the 2.30 a.m. Eastern Time show, which was, and in Bristol, Connecticut. So there was no life. Okay. So it's Christmas of 88. I'm only there a couple of months. And Bornstein and Steve Anderson, who's running the newsroom, take me out to lunch one day. And they said, well, how's it going?

I said, I don't like it. Why not? I said, I always vowed not to go nine to five in anything, but certainly not 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. This ain't working. And they said, and this is right around, thank you. Thanksgiving Christmas. They said, come February, we're going to put you on the 7 o'clock show where you can do what you do best, which is right. And I ended up doing that for 14 years, you know, and then spent 12 of those years with Bob Lee.

And seven of those 12, Bob Robin Roberts and I. So again, all along I've just gotten, stepped in shit and came out, smell like Chanel. There were not that many bearded anchors on ESPN. Was there ever a conversation about should Charlie shave the beard? As a matter of fact, there was, which I, again, it was one of those. When I had just been hired, I was sent off to a consultant of theirs, who was basically given me a crash course on television. And he asked me, matter of fact, what do you think about your beard?

I said, never think about it at all. I just don't shave much. So I get hired. I'm on the air, sporadically early and late, early in my career and late at night. And one day Anderson comes over to me and said, we've just had a meeting. And yeah. And we've decided you can keep your beard. And I thought, I had no idea.

It was up for discussion. The irony is that right around that time, I guess a year later, I meet Wolf Blitzer, and we are friends to this day. And to this day, we are both proud of the fact that Wolf and I were the only bearded Jews on television in the 80s and 90s. And never thought even that was a big deal. But yeah, they actually had meetings about my dad. beard. Did ESPNC you pretty quickly as the hard news guy? I think so. I think so because my background had been news. And again, I had known John and the boxing that I had done was with basically network radio coverage. So that's where I got, I earned my chops in boxing.

and the news stuff came from the time preceding that early in my career. So, yeah, and Bob was the news guy. And so the two of us forged this just wonderful, deep friendship that we have to this day. So, yeah, I think they did. What was the vibe of SportsCenter with Bob and Robin versus the 11 o'clock show? we Bob Robin and I are friends to this day I will show you pictures of the three of us all these years later after we're done we were family Bob has now become intimately involved with the sports broadcasting school at Seton Hall I've got you know my school at Bradley and Robin is Robin. And so we were all, Bob was right of center.

I was left of center. And Robin was the fulcrum on the seesaw. And so we had this wonderful, wonderful friendship that we have to this day, and we are so lucky to have had it. Who was the sports center anchor you just did not mesh with on the air? I don't know that there were, you just go do it. You know, I can't honestly say, ooh, he or she's working tonight? No. And if there was any kind of imbalance, you get through it in a half hour and you move on to the next day. So that was never an

issue for me. You were going to work with whoever they put you next to. I'll find a way to make this work. Yeah, but for the most part, it was Bob Robin and I. So if Bob had a day off or Robin had a day off or somebody was filling in. So really, right around February of 89, I was working at first with a fellow named Bill Patrick, and then after that, I think Eric Clemens for a bit. And then Bob came in when Keith, I guess Dan had arrived,

Bob, who was doing the 11 o'clock show, was paired with me, and then we just had a good old time. You were also the boxing guy, as you mentioned, for many years on a yes. One of my early members of watching ESPN is you wearing a tuxedo. Yes, I hated that. That was always the costume.

We are doing a boxing match, so we must be wearing a tuxedo on the night of the fight. Pretty dopey, don't you think? Yeah. I hate it. I absolutely hated it. It was Bornstein's sense of humor. And I said, I look like a fucking matri-D. What is this?

That's what they were. And in those days, that's how fights guys. were doing it. And so Al Bernstein, with whom I worked all those years, we were decked out in tuxes, and then we would have, for a big fight, a fighter of significance, also decked out in a tuxedo, and always the fighter's bow tie was askew. It just, it was part of the deal. But yeah, those those tuxedos were dopey. And you had a relationship of sorts with Mike Tyson during that period? What was it like? What was great about covering boxing then? There were several things that made it utterly unique that won't happen again. One, it was the early days of pay-per-view.

And so HBO or Showtime wanted us involved in the promotion because if they're going to be pay-per-view, these folks have to have cable and they're watching ESPN. So, So we were never told what to say, but we were given unbelievable access. Fighters by trade in those days were much more open. They had no guardrails in conversation. And all of them, all of them, were open and honest to us, with us, and spent a lot of time with them at their camps leading up to fights. many nights before fights,

I would spend time playing blackjack or poker with these folks, knowing that, you know, whatever we say that night is not going to go on the air. And if I was of the betting ilk, I probably could have done quite well because I had a pretty good idea who was, you know,

full of confidence and who was full of shit. And so I had this wonderfully, unique insight to all of these guys. And Tyson may have been the most interesting and compelling because you just never knew what he was going to say next. When he prefaced an answer, can I tell you something? Buckle up your seatbelt. You're gone on a journey. And so we had a very good relationship until Indianapolis and where he felt that because his perception, we were friends, I should have been nicer to him in our reporting. And I said, that's not my job to be your friend. If we get along, great. My number one responsibility is to tell the story as accurately as I can't.

So it wasn't just Mike. It was all of these guys. Again, I was so lucky. The first fight I covered was Ali Holmes in the parking lot at Caesars. And the last fight I covered was when Holy Field had a piece of his ear removed. And I said that night, Abander Holyfield and a portion of his right ear were rushed to the hospital in separate cars. That's a wonderful line, which was true. That's a Jim Murray lead right there. It was true. It was the, we had Mike Buster Douglas, had Buster Douglas as our expert that night, having lost.

to Holyfield having upset Tyson. He was perfect or so I thought. So now Tyson bites Holyfield's ear and spits it out. So we're on the air post fight. And all he said for 15 minutes, like a broken record, I don't believe what I just saw. I don't believe what I just. I said, can you offer up any more than that?

I don't believe what I just saw. Buster. We got 15 minutes. Yeah. So Buster and Al Bernstein and I were just, you know, mouths dropped. And again, so it was at a period of time, it was the last real golden age of the fight game. Holmes and Cooney, Leonard Hearns, Hagler, Duran, Coleyfield comes in, Riddick Bow, and they were all interesting people. And so there were great stories to cover. And we were given access. So, you know, it was a trifecta covering. It was I covered, it was an assignment. Did I love it?

I love the people. I love the atmosphere. I really liked the event quality of these megafights. But beyond that, it was an assignment. A couple more for you, Charlie. If you had to pick one ESPN commercial you start in for your personal highlight film, is it Y2K Follow Me to Freedom or Charlie gets traded to Melrose Place? They were both favorites for different reasons.

One, follow me to freedom is now 23 years old, and people still know it. And that to me is astonishing. When we taped it that day, Wyden and Kennedy, they'd come in, and they'd shoot maybe eight or ten commercials all out of sequence over the course of a week. And on this particular day where I do the payoff line, follow me to freedom, I'm preparing sports center, as I often would. About noon that day, they put Indian war paint on my face. Well, doesn't everybody? So I'm typing up the show and then about four o'clock in the afternoon. They say, all right, it's time to, we're going to go do the takes. And so I go into the men's room.

I look at my face and I realize, Jesus, I've had Indian war paint on my face all day. And again, I just did the stuff they asked me to do. This is none of my creation. And so we did about a half a dozen different takes of Follow Me to Freedom. I'll lead you to the underground brothers and sisters. We did about a half a dozen different takes, and they were the, ultimately they decided on follow me to freedom. Fast forward to March or in spring training. Wyden and Kennedy had also done the Nike spots and chicks dig the long ball. So I'm at the Braves camp, and I'm sitting with Glavin and Maddox.

And we're screaming at each other, which commercial is going to have longer legs? Chicks dig the long ball or follow me to freedom. You know, it was all fun in games, and I'm pretty comfortable with my position to this day anyway. So that was, that one I like. And the other one was when I got traded to Melrose Place for Andrews' shoes. I go out there, so I'm on the set, and the women of the show had no idea who I was. Hey, they couldn't care less. And so I'm introduced to the Laura Layton, I think.

Laura Layton, thank you, who was very nice. And again, she has no idea who I. And so we go through this, and I'm Bobby the Pool Boy, wearing the only tank top I ever worn my life. I had a pair of glasses on and then sunglasses on top of a hat and I'm cleaning out the pool. And so there I am on the set of, you know, the big number one show at the time. And I had no idea who they were either. So it was a push. And then we finished shooting it.

And I said to Laura, I said, if this is the end of your career, I apologize. guys. And then that year or the year after at one of the ESP's, she and I presented an award to somebody. You were a double act now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So bring me full circle here. When you have that conversation with Brian Cashman and say, I'm interested. I would talk about this. What gets you to the point in your mind where you would say, I'm okay with leaving ESPN? Been there 14 years. I always, always wanted to be the Dodger announcer. Getting to ESPN, I thought, was another step closer to being the Dodger announcer. I get there in 88, and the next year they get baseball tonight, and now I'm hosting, along with a guy

named Dave Marish, the first couple of years of baseball tonight, and then they get the radio play-by-play. and, you know, basically my first real radio play-by-play experience was ESPN radio, the Sunday night games. I'd done a lot of what they call the B-network games on TV. So that was another step. And now I'm there 14 years at ESPN. And living in Bristol, it's not ideally suited for me. And then I'm offered the Yankee job.

9-11 happens right after 9-11 the giants offer me a job and and so the the cashman meeting and George happened to walk in um it was like okay I'm getting closer and then who would have ever expected in 2004 I get a call from the Dodgers so this crazy master plan that I hatched when I was seven for Brooklyn, you know, eventually took place in L.A. and I came out in 2005. Now, having done a few hundred, several hundred Dodger games, how do you look back at those 14 years in Bristol now? I couldn't be here without those 14 years. I never wanted necessarily or certainly expected to be on television. I mean, it just was not on my radar screen, but look at it. back on it, it was wonderful. I think one of the things, whatever advantages I have had in my

play-by-play career is that now many of the managers, general managers, even owners, sounds crazy, grew up watching me. So I had or have, I guess, some degree of credibility. They know what they're going to get. I'm not just some guy off, you know, the turn of truck doing play-by-play, everybody. So that experience made me better at doing this because I've had more access to those who I feel I need to talk to. One of the things that's kind of crazy, though, is that the younger players have no idea that I was on SportsCenter. They just don't. Or if they do, they are profoundly indifferent. But so many of the guys who were, what, 35 and over basically grew up.

up watching. So they have some degree of who I am, but that, that, that's just happenstance and part of the experience. Charlie Steiner, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you for inviting. It's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about Aaron Judge tying up Babe Ruth with 60 home runs was, I not you babe. K-N-O-T-N-O-T-N-T. Today's headline comes from valued listeners Seth Somerfeld. It's from the Seattle Times.

Have you been following the don't worry darling story, David? Yeah, I don't know how deeply compared to, I don't know, I don't know what the limits of my knowledge should be, but yes, I've been dimly following, staying aware of it. I think a light knowledge will do in this case. There is a saga for the uninitiated about director Olivia Wilde and the stars, Florence Pugh and Harry Stiles, but what's important to most of us is this movie stinks. No fresh ideas, says the Seattle Times, no great performances, nothing original about Don't

Worry, Darling. What was the Seattle Times's strained pun headline? No ideas. No performances. Seattle Times. I mean, it feels like it has to be a don't worry. darling pun, right? What if we use a surname of one of the co-stars? Wild?

Or no, she's a director. Not Florence Pugh, but styles. Mm-hmm. Stiles clash, styles. No new ideas. Just there's nothing here. There's nothing here, man.

Out of styles, empty. I mean, there's just, we got, there's just no, nothing for me to hang my hat on here. It's styles. Styles over substance. Stiles over substance.

Well, that's unnecessarily attacking, going after Harry Styles. Is he the problem? Well, you know, he was just prioritized, perhaps, in the making of the film moment. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.