It was the late summer/early fall of 2003 and ESPN was conducting a contest to see who would be the next "SportsCenter" anchor. It was part of the promotion called "ESPN Dream Job."
I happened to look at the schedule and there it was: St. Pete Times Forum, Saturday, October 4, 2003.
Now what the heck did I know about being a broadcaster, reporting the news to millions of people who were watching it?
Abso-freakin'-lutely nothing! I had plenty of work on the radio over the years in Toms River, N.J. and in Key West. I did the occasional sports show on Clear Cable 8 in the 1990s with my good friend Art Criss hosting. It took a lot of paying attention to what the host or commentator said and me not answering, "What? What did you say?"
Other than flapping my gums to make it sound like I was talking coherently, I just danced the on-the-air stiletto dance. In other words, I had plenty of knowledge, just not enough to think I was anything great in broadcasting.
Good, I thought, but not great.
Still, it couldn't hurt to find out if I had what it takes to play the role of a broadcaster. The arena was 2 1/2 hours away and I was willing to start heading down to Tampa at 2:50 in the morning with no sleep at all and done with the Palatka Daily News after another round of Friday night football.
I didn't know how long I was going to last, but I planned to be done with this and meet an online friend named Michele afterward. She lived in St. Petersburg. At least I had that to look forward to.
I drove throughout those early Saturday morning hours and then arrived at the arena by 5:50 a.m. There were a few people in front of me, but I was in a very good position to be part of the first group to go in and interview/test. It was mostly a lot of talking about our "dream job" and how it was going to go and there were mostly young men, at least 10-15 years younger than me, and there were a few ladies in the line.
We started talking about how this was all going to go down ... figured it would be "write your own script with something that happened" or "see how well you speak in front of a camera." Honestly, I"m not sure what any of this was going to be like. So you know everyone had to be on guard here.
At 7:10 a.m., the first 30 of us were allowed in as the line behind me began to grow with lots of candidates to be the dude or lady working next to Dan Patrick or Stuart Scott or Linda Cohn. In other words, there were a lot of wannabe dreamers behind us.
The 30 of us or maybe more than 30 of us were brought into the arena and we had to walk down a hallway until we got to a place that looked like a large college classroom. We were about to find out what the first part of the test to be a "SportsCenter" anchor was going to be about.
They put a test in front of us and those running this little event wanted to find out how much we knew about sports.
Unless everyone there was an absolute sports nut, I knew I was going to the second round. Now, I can't remember every question that was asked on these four sheets of paper, but I do know a couple: Who was the American League Cy Young Award winner in 2002? (Barry Zito) and what were the two leagues that made up Triple-A baseball (International and Pacific Coast leagues).
I knew I did well. When the tests were taken from us, I felt confident I had made the second round. I was uncertain of a couple of these questions (and they were all from a variety of sports), but I felt like I was going to move on.
A half-hour passed by and we were still in our seats. Then one of the young ladies running the entire day bellowed out the first names of those who were moving on.
I heard my name. So we were moving on to another room after the names of 10 of us were revealed aloud. As I put my blue dress jacket back on, I head out the door and the young lady who had told us who was advancing approached me.
"I just want to let you know that you got all the questions right and you're the first person we've tested in all our stops who got all 30 correct."
I was absolutely, freakin' dumbfounded. I smiled, but it felt awkward. All these stops ESPN's tour made and I'm the first person to nail all 30 of these questions? Wow!
But though I may have aced the test, the next part was going to throw me off. The 10 of us were put into another room not very far away from the testing area. This time, we were standing around a table, all 10 of us, and we had another representative, though to be honest, this guy was so far away from where I was that I had no clue whatsoever what we were about to do next ... and sure as shit, guess who got to be the starting guinea pig for this?
Yup ... me! And I had no freakin' clue what this hopped-up-on-Red Bull bunny was saying. He just points to me and I go, "What? What am I doing?" He told me to emulate by play by play my most favorite sports moment of all time.
At that moment, I couldn't come up with anything other than a luke-warm "And it's going back ... way back ... it's gone." I still believe to this day that if I didn't go first, I would have done much better. But I had no idea of what I was going to emulate. This is what happens when you have several great moments in your head, but your mouth doesn't record what your brain might be thinking.
After I went, the others were nailing their favorite calls of all-time in the way they interpreted it. Then I, along with the rest of the group, was asked who the nost overrated athlete was at that time.
Thankfully I wasn't going first here. I had time to think about it. When it came to me, I knew what I was going to say.
"Chipper Jones. Because for all the greatness he delivers every year, how many World Series titles does he have? One. That's all ... one."
I redeemed myself a little better here, but that play-by-play bit hurt. And I knew it did. I just wasn't good at that time at improvisation, making shit up as I went along.
I never said I was a great dancer. By the time this was done, it was 8:45. And because I was among the first people tested, I had to wait hours upon hours upon hours to see if I made it into the next part of the testing.
By that time, it was almost 2 p.m. I had been at this arena for eight-plus hours. I was asked by one of the young ladies there to write a short "SportsCenter" spot that I would read in front of a camera, whenever that time was going to be.
Thankfully, the bar inside the St. Pete Times Forum was open. And that meant the TVs were on. And I had my eyes affixed to what was on that day: Major League Baseball playoff games. One TV had Game 4 of the series between the San Francisco Giants and Florida Marlins in Miami, another had Game 3 of the series between the New York Yankees and Minnesota Twins at the Metrodome.
I knew this was going to take awhile, so like a good "SportsCenter" anchor did, I took notes of the games that were going on. Remember: In the world of sports anchoring, you only have so much time to do a highlight, usually about a minute. So that's what I did: Try to melt all the individual moments into the biggest highlights of the day.
If you remember Game 4 of the Marlins-Giants series, you remember how it ended. A base hit to left field by Jeffrey Hammonds. J.T. Snow is heading to home plate to tie the game up, but Mr. Marlin, Jeff Conine, gets the ball on a hop and fires a strike to catcher Pudge Rodriguez, who is bowled over by Snow, but keeps possession of the ball for the third out and the Marlins winning the game 7-6 and advancing to the National League Championship Series.
The Yankees-Twins game wasn't going to have too many highlights. The biggest of those highlights was the two-run home run by Hideki Matsui off starter Kyle Lohse that gave the Bronx Bombers a 2-0 lead. There was also the RBI single by Bernie Williams that scored Juan Rivera in the third inning to make it 3-0. And other than an A.J. Pierzynski home run in the third, Yankees starter Roger Clemens was on top of his game, allowing five hits over seven innings with one walk and six strikeouts. Mariano Rivera came in for the final two innings and held the Twins hitless, striking out three.
It was a long wait by now -- it was almost 6 p.m. and finally, I was brought into the room to do a "SportsCenter" type reading. By now, I don't think the two women who were in the room with me wanted to hear me talk, but I told them, "You said have something ready. Well I do! Let's go!"
So I basically read the copy since they ddin't exactly put a teleprompter in front of me. I read my script fluently -- proved I knew the English language well -- and gave a dramatic reading of the Giants-Marlins game: "Now there J.T. Snow on second as the winning run. Jeffrey Hammonds singles off Uggie Urbina to left field. Snow is sent home, but Jeff Conine delivers a perfect one-hop throw to Pudge Rodriguez, who gets mauled at the plate by Snow, but holds on to the ball ... then shows it off to everyone with eyes on him! That's the ball game! That's the season for the Giants as the Marlins hold on for the 7-6 victory and advance to the National League Championship Series!"
It was obvious the two women were so busy with what they were doing they had no idea what was happening in the outside world. I can still hear one of them saying, "Wow." Then I read them the much-shorter version of my Yankees-Twins report.
One of the women told me it was fine, but they would let me know if I moved on to the next round, which I think was in Atlanta or somewhere close to there. They thanked me for my time and I was finally out the door by 6:30 that evening. Over 12 hours later, I was back in the car and headed to St. Petersburg to meet Michele at her place. I picked her up and we went to a fairly nice restaurant. We ended up spending the night together in a hotel in Pinellas Park and we left the next morning.
But after I dropped her off, I got a copy of the St. Pete Times. The headline on Page 5C blurted out "ESPN offers shot at a 'Dream Job.' I read the story and how all these wannabes wanted to be the next anchor. Some had no idea about sports, others thought they had the personality to move on.
Imagine my surprise, however, when seven paragraphs into the story, I'm reading, "And ESPN, which gives a 30-question written trivia test as Step 1 in the process, was treated to the first perfect score."
Then came the eighth paragraph: "But it took more than sports knowledge. Only a perfect score kept perfect-score guy in the game, though producers admitted he probably wouldn't make it much farther, as he lacked those other qualities they desired."
You know ... like a personality!! Mine, apparently, was too, ummm ... shitty ... for them. Either way, I got to read my own obituary of this contest in a newspaper and I hadn't died. ESPN producers were sinply just confirming my thoughts ... even though I felt I was better than how they rated me.
Needless to say I got a post card from these fine people who told me I did not make it to the next round, but told me my knowledge of sports was so overwhelming, I could have succeeded as a contestant on their game show "2-Minute Drill." Found that fascinating.
The reality show moved on without me (waah-waah) and in the end, a guy named Mike Hall wound up winning it all. Good for him. I'm almost certain he was much, much better than me.
But that's not the end of the story. It was over a year later -- December 26, 2004 -- and I'm sitting in the meal room below the press box at Alltell Stadium in Jacksonville as I'm getting ready to cover the Jaguars game with the Houston Texans. I looked up where I was sitting alone at ... and there was the stunning story of the death of NFL legendary defensive star Reggie White, dead at the age of 43.
I was shocked, practically saddened. Moments later, a female voice came over me from behind.
"Hey! Perfect -score guy!"
She was clearly close enough for me to know I was who she was talking to. I turned around and it was her -- the young lady who told me that I scored 30 for 30 on the sports knowledge test. She just wanted to say hi because she was working with an ESPN crew that was on location for this particular game.
I smiled. I don't know why I did, but I did.
Actually, I knew why I did. I may not have been perfect for what ESPN was looking for nearly 15 months earlier. But for one weekend -- thanks to the St. Pete Times -- I was "Perfect-Score Guy."
That was perfect enough for me.
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