I was eight-and-three-quarters years old in 1985 when my family moved from West Palm Beach, FL to Kansas City, MO. My Dad had accepted a job with Bott Broadcasting. All I knew was that my grandparents lived in Kansas City. So, I packed up my GI Joes, Star Wars figures, my brown Fisher Price tape player, my Thriller cassette, and said good-bye to my childhood best friend, Tommy Hahn. Two months to the day that my Dad started Dick Bott, himself, fired my Dad. He gave him no severance and told him he didn’t have what it took to be in radio.

We had left behind a brand new house in Florida that wasn’t selling. The mortgage was quickly depleting what savings my Mom and Dad had. For the next year Dad did odd jobs to make ends meet. I remember delivering phone books with him one weekend for what I assume earned less than $25. Pretty soon, boxes of food and clothes started appearing on our front stoop every Saturday morning. I put it all together. We had nothing.

We rented a duplex from a Hindu family. Early one evening they showed up at our door with their children who were my age. I heard them tell my parents they had decided we should stay in their duplex for as long as we needed because they knew we were “good and Christian people.” That moment constantly challenges my faith and learned belief that Heaven is reserved for Christians. It was in that duplex that I remember my Dad bounding up the stairs after a day of job hunting laughing and exclaiming in relief and disbelief, “I got the job! I got the job!”

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Well… it’s official. Everyone has lost their minds, their cool, and their sense of humor. Furthermore, CBS has lost the largest ratings they may ever see.

What I have to say has no bearing on pretty much anything, but I can’t help myself: this Don Imus controversy should have either happened a long long time ago, or not at all.

But that isn’t really what is on my mind. What’s on my mind is someone I used to work with. Jason Whitlock.

For three years I worked with Whitlock on his afternoon sports radio program on KCSP 610 Sports. Our show was good, but our management didn’t know what to do with it. Part of the reason the show was so entertaining is that Jason is the master of launching himself into the middle of the controversy du jour.

Wouldn’t you know it, this morning I wake up to coffee, Kashi Heart to Heart cereal, and my wife exclaiming, “Eric! Jason Whitlock is on T.V.!” I don’t typically find Whit being on t.v. all that surprising, he’s often on t.v. However, he’s not often on the Today Show on NBC talking to Matt Lauer about Don Imus, Jesse Jackson & Al Not-So-Sharp-ton.

See, what I mean; the master of launching himself into the middle of the controversy du jour. Of course, I watched. I couldn’t help but snicker to myself as I could see Jason snickering to himself as if to say, “I can’t believe these people took the bait and I’m in the mix now!” I can believe it, though, because Jason is the first person I’ve heard make any sense of this whole thing. Just read the first few lines of Jason’s column this week:

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again. Read the rest.

I can only respond with a phrase Jason made famous on The Doghouse: “Ihmm!”

Place your bets, XM or Sirius… who will pick up Imus’ wildly successful show?

Finally, a quick, public heart-to-heart to Jason: dude, couldn’t they have found a better back drop for the set you appeared in front of? Looked like a law office scene the ripped from an Olan Mills studio. I can almost guarantee you don’t have one of tose green lamps in your pad.

I’ve needed to get this off my chest for some time. It’s something that urged me into the voiceover world. Business owners doing their own voice work – or television ads for that matter. If you are a business owner who does their own voiceovers I’m going to tell you what your “Account Manager” will not: you sound awful!

Local radio is rife with small business owners proclaiming, “Ooo-wee, man! Our fries are the best,” or “Make sure you come to my dealership before you buy another car…” At first, I can’t take it and I turn the channel. The next time I hear the ad I think about what a disservice they are doing their business. People just like me are turning the station because we can’t handle listening to their shrill, smokey, fake, or monotonous voice.

Then I think about how awful it is that this business just spent hard earned money to promote their company for naught. I wonder if radio sales people are telling these business owners, “What we’ll do is have you do the commercial! People like the personal nature of hearing the owner talk to them. Plus, you get to be on the radio!” And these poor souls are duped in to thinking they have bought an effective tool. Sad. Side note: isn’t it ironic how radio stations spend millions researching how to get listeners to listen to their product, but not the spots providing the millions to pay for that research?
I have a client in Texas, a business owner who has this figured out. He knows he doesn’t belong on his own radio ads. Kudos to him. Not just because he’s one of my clients, but because he could have taken the easy and cheaper path of doing his own spots. Sure, it costs him a little extra to have someone else voice and produce his spots, but he knows it is worthwhile. His professionally produced spots keep a listeners attention and prompt action.

So a call out to all ad agencies and radio salespeople: take advantage of your creative departments/freelancers. Your clients will thank you when they discover how effective their investment really is, then spend more money with you!

Friends don’t let friends do their own radio spots!

Words I had to look up (either for meaning or spelling) in writing this post: rife, monotonous, naught, duped.

Over the weekend America lost a legend; Kansas City lost a voice and most importantly a friend. Buck O’Neils history is 94 years rich.

Because of segregation he was never allowed to attend Sarasota High School, or play baseball for Florida State. However, at least he had some opportunity at a formal education unlike his Grandfather who was a slave.

As an adult O’Neil played baseball in the Negro Leagues for the Kansas City Monarchs. He will be remembered by most, though, for his work in preserving the history of the Negro Leagues and the seemingly thousands of stories about the men he played with.

As a kid I remember going to watch the Royals play here in KC and my Dad would point out this man holding a radar gun sitting down low behind the plate and taking notes. “That’s Buck O’Neil,” he’d tell me, “he played baseball a long time ago.” Between innings people would line the aisle way down to where he was sitting and working to ask for autographs. He signed every single one of them and greeted each seeker with that smile that became so familiar in Kansas City.

More recently while working for a sports talk radio station here in KC I was given the good fortune of many personal encounters and conversation with Buck. He loved to talk… about anything! While sitting in the studio with us once, doing the show, we got to talking about baseball, the home runs, steroids and the lot. I mentioned that I was bored with it all, the whole game. I’d rather watch the small ball: bunts, sac flys, hit & runs, stolen bases, spectacular defense, etc. O’Neil chuckled, smiled real big, pointed straight at me and said, “That’s because you’re a baseball man!”

To most that wouldn’t mean much, but to me it meant a ton. I always struggled with feeling like I didn’t belong in the sports radio world. For Buck to say that to me, and agree with me, was great encouragement. He may not have known the weight that remark carried, but I suspect he did.

That was a great thing about Buck. He knew the respect people gave him. He knew what kind of weight he had to “throw around,” and he didn’t do it flippantly. He respected his clout, and never held it over anyones head. He used it to help revitalize a suffering and segregated part of Kansas City, to appeal to Lawmakers to make the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City the National museum for the Negro Leagues and most importantly he used it to break down barriers of race. He never once said a bitter thing about the horrors of racial segregation he faced. No he chose to forgive and encourage others to do the same.

Coincidentally, Buck was one of my wife’s patients during the two weeks leading up to his death. She said he was never short of visitors (family and close friends) and never absent of a smile. Even my wife, who had limited interaction with him, commented on what an inspiring and delightful person he was.

When Buck was rejected for the Baseball Hall Of Fame he said, “Don’t cry for me. I’ve lived a long and plentiful life. Cry for the children who don’t get to go to a good school…” That’s perspective.

Buck, we will miss you: a true National Treasure and a “Baseball Man.”