The Penalty Box: Ask Roger #2
November 9, 2020 at 10:03 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
When you are in the public eye like I am, people ask you a lot questions. They assume you know things—some people assume you know everything.
Some media-types get annoyed by it, but I enjoy it. When you are in radio, you find yourself talking at people a lot and not enough with them. These conversations, in whatever form that happen in, help give me insight into what listeners to our broadcasts are thinking. It’s helped me be a better broadcaster.
When people ask me questions, I am happy to answer them as best as I can.
I thought it might be fun to share some of the questions, and answers, with you this week.
When did you start broadcasting? Well, that depends. My first real broadcast on the radio was at Butler in 1986. I was the color commentator on a women’s basketball broadcast on a radio station whose signal covered the campus and not much more. It was a good place to start.
But, anybody who grew up in Argos knows that my life in broadcasting started at about age 5 at the humble Grossman farm. Back then, my only audience was the butterflies and the bumble bees. Throwing the wiffle ball up and hitting it with my wiffle bat while imitating the batting stances of the big-leaguers of the 1970’s and announced (out loud) by me in a style that could only be described as a minced pie of the voices I was listening to as a kid was a daily activity. Whoever the Cubs were playing, that’s who they played in my back yard. Home games were played in the backyard because we had a grape vine, and so hitting the ball into and over the ivy was natural.
Basketball games happened in my parents’ bedroom with a hoop my dad made that sat on top of the door. I still have that hoop.
The family swing set was a big deal in the fall—field goals kicked over it, soccer goals kicked through it.
How do you remember all of the stats and information you give out during your broadcasts? Easy—I don’t. Over 30 seasons of broadcasting, I developed good relationships with schools and their coaches. A lot of schools post their stats online so that broadcasters and other media can see them, but some don’t. Some are, shall we say, more willing to share their information than others.
I take the information, however and wherever I get it, and condense down onto my scorecards. I won’t bore you with that whole process, but I basically fit a team and players season stats and stats from their last game on one sheet of paper (2 sheets for football—offense and defense).
I only use about 30% of the information on my cards in that game.
Aren’t those close games hard to do? Not at all. A broadcaster is a story teller, and we tell the story as it’s happening. Close games that come down to the final play, final minutes, final at bat—those games are easy because the story tells itself.
It gets hard when your team is losing by 30 and there is a still a quarter to go.
Do you think we will have a full basketball season this year? Given what the health department numbers are showing, and what we have already seen, I don’t see how any team in over coverage area is going to play every team that was on their schedule.
It’s hard enough with the Northern Indiana winters, which can push a game to a different date. But COVID and contact tracing are a totally different thing. A team that has a player or coach that gets contact traced could be off the court for a week or more. A week in girls basketball could mean as many as three games. It’s going to be pretty tough to shoe horn three games into an already-full schedule.
The season will start and games will be played. But it’s gonna be herky-jerky, and people who have been sitting the same seats in their gym for decades may not be able to occupy them this winter. And the state tournaments are anyone’s guess. Who knows what things will be like tomorrow, let alone March.
We’ll do our best on our radio broadcasts to make you feel like you are still in those seats.
What did you do Saturday night when the Warsaw girls basketball game was cancelled? It was so nice Saturday that after I got home from officiating elementary games in the Tiger Den, Holly and the kids and I raked a mountain of leaves to the curb. And then we hung out—the kids watched a movie projected onto the siding of the house (yep, that’s a thing) and I cranked up the fire pit one last time this fall.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, as calming as sitting by a fire on a crisp evening in autumn. The bright yellow leaves above us were reflecting the light of the flames in a way that—well, let’s just say that when I get to heaven, I want my little corner of it to have a place that is just like that.
Other questions I get asked often: Where were those fire trucks going Saturday around 7pm? How much longer do you think you will broadcast games? Can you explain how you married such a beautiful woman? Why do people put pineapples and chicken on pizza?
No answers for those…we’ll just throw another log on the fire instead.
When you are in the public eye like I am, people ask you a lot questions. They assume you know things—some people assume you know everything.
Some media-types get annoyed by it, but I enjoy it. When you are in radio, you find yourself talking at people a lot and not enough with them. These conversations, in whatever form that happen in, help give me insight into what listeners to our broadcasts are thinking. It’s helped me be a better broadcaster.
When people ask me questions, I am happy to answer them as best as I can.
I thought it might be fun to share some of the questions, and answers, with you this week.
When did you start broadcasting? Well, that depends. My first real broadcast on the radio was at Butler in 1986. I was the color commentator on a women’s basketball broadcast on a radio station whose signal covered the campus and not much more. It was a good place to start.
But, anybody who grew up in Argos knows that my life in broadcasting started at about age 5 at the humble Grossman farm. Back then, my only audience was the butterflies and the bumble bees. Throwing the wiffle ball up and hitting it with my wiffle bat while imitating the batting stances of the big-leaguers of the 1970’s and announced (out loud) by me in a style that could only be described as a minced pie of the voices I was listening to as a kid was a daily activity. Whoever the Cubs were playing, that’s who they played in my back yard. Home games were played in the backyard because we had a grape vine, and so hitting the ball into and over the ivy was natural.
Basketball games happened in my parents’ bedroom with a hoop my dad made that sat on top of the door. I still have that hoop.
The family swing set was a big deal in the fall—field goals kicked over it, soccer goals kicked through it.
How do you remember all of the stats and information you give out during your broadcasts? Easy—I don’t. Over 30 seasons of broadcasting, I developed good relationships with schools and their coaches. A lot of schools post their stats online so that broadcasters and other media can see them, but some don’t. Some are, shall we say, more willing to share their information than others.
I take the information, however and wherever I get it, and condense down onto my scorecards. I won’t bore you with that whole process, but I basically fit a team and players season stats and stats from their last game on one sheet of paper (2 sheets for football—offense and defense).
I only use about 30% of the information on my cards in that game.
Aren’t those close games hard to do? Not at all. A broadcaster is a story teller, and we tell the story as it’s happening. Close games that come down to the final play, final minutes, final at bat—those games are easy because the story tells itself.
It gets hard when your team is losing by 30 and there is a still a quarter to go.
Do you think we will have a full basketball season this year? Given what the health department numbers are showing, and what we have already seen, I don’t see how any team in over coverage area is going to play every team that was on their schedule.
It’s hard enough with the Northern Indiana winters, which can push a game to a different date. But COVID and contact tracing are a totally different thing. A team that has a player or coach that gets contact traced could be off the court for a week or more. A week in girls basketball could mean as many as three games. It’s going to be pretty tough to shoe horn three games into an already-full schedule.
The season will start and games will be played. But it’s gonna be herky-jerky, and people who have been sitting the same seats in their gym for decades may not be able to occupy them this winter. And the state tournaments are anyone’s guess. Who knows what things will be like tomorrow, let alone March.
We’ll do our best on our radio broadcasts to make you feel like you are still in those seats.
What did you do Saturday night when the Warsaw girls basketball game was cancelled? It was so nice Saturday that after I got home from officiating elementary games in the Tiger Den, Holly and the kids and I raked a mountain of leaves to the curb. And then we hung out—the kids watched a movie projected onto the siding of the house (yep, that’s a thing) and I cranked up the fire pit one last time this fall.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, as calming as sitting by a fire on a crisp evening in autumn. The bright yellow leaves above us were reflecting the light of the flames in a way that—well, let’s just say that when I get to heaven, I want my little corner of it to have a place that is just like that.
Other questions I get asked often: Where were those fire trucks going Saturday around 7pm? How much longer do you think you will broadcast games? Can you explain how you married such a beautiful woman? Why do people put pineapples and chicken on pizza?
No answers for those…we’ll just throw another log on the fire instead.
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