One night, I'm on my way home from a get-together and flip on the radio as I'm prone to do. I tend to be all over the radio road during the day -- when you're house- or carbound like I am, radio's your pal -- but after 10PM, it's usually "Sportsline" on WTAM-1100 with Kevin Keane. I grew up listening to "Sportsline" on 3WE with Pete Franklin with my dad; to me, there's nothing that symbolizes my relationship with my dad any better than those nights where we'd huddle around his old radio and hear what the fans had to say about the Indians, the Browns and the Cavaliers.
So, I call up Keane around 10:30 at night, from the car, on the way home after having a few tasty bevvies. I give him what-for about his analysis about the Cavaliers. He shoots back about being a candidate for their 9th annual "Amateur Night" and was that why I was calling...? Um, well no, not really. I was calling to tell him he was wrong. I said it wasn't my plan to be on "Amateur NIght," but that if I got the green light to do it, why not? Next thing ya know, I'm doing an on-air callback. Then a second one. Then a third... and then I'm not just a contestant anymore, I'm a finalist, and strapped into the main broadcast desk on April Fool's Day doing my so-called radio thang.
My radio thang...? Yup. I had a blast. It was great fun and I can't thank Keane, Brian Motts, Ray Davis and the rest of the WTAM-1100 AM crew enough for giving me a half-hour, primetime shot at "38 states and half of Canada." It was a dream come true and I had some great callers (gotta love a caller from Minneapolis!) and a lot of fun. I'm not sure if I'll win the contest (as of press time I was in 3rd out of 5 contestants) but if you want to vote for me, that would absolutely rock. WTAM will post the podcasts later this evening at http://www.wtam.com/pages/sportsline/amateurnight/ and you can listen to me there so you won't be blindly voting if you didn't hear it live. Or, you could just go straight to the voting here: http://www.wtam.com/pages/keanepage1.html and click the "Pete" button to vote to help a brother out. I'll leave you with this from the WTAM "Amateur Night" website:
"The contestant who does the best show as voted, 50% by audience participation and 50% an evaluation by Ray Davis (our boss), Motts and myself will co-host a "Sportsline" show with me. Our winner will also join Mark Schwab and me in the "Party Booth" at Progressive Field for an Indians game this summer and receive a WTAM prize package that Motts will put together with some cool stuff from the "Big One's" prize closet."
Now, don't you want to help out a fellow blogger/ friend/ relative/ writer-who-makes-your-day by voting for your pal, PCHQ? I mean, c'mon... the two-guy combo I'm competing against read from scripts... scripts, I tell ya! And besides, I hear second prize is a can of corn and a Cory Snyder rookie card.
Well, I gotta go. It sounds like the L'il Man is up.
PCHQ
