The play-by-play’s the thing
Welcome to training camp for future sports broadcasters
NATICK - Call them Generation ESPN.
They breakfast with “SportsCenter’’ and drift off at night listening to Joe Castiglione and Dave O’Brien call a Sox West Coast game. They dream of following in Jerry Remy’s footsteps someday - not necessarily by stepping into the ex-infielder’s cleats, but by warming the seat next to Don Orsillo’s in the NESN broadcast booth.
In short, they’re a lot like 10-year-old John Fulton, a Sherborn fifth-grader who’s polishing his broadcasting skills this fall at Young Sportscasters of America, a Natick training facility for RemDawg wannabes.
John doesn’t follow just the local pro sports teams. He follows every team in every major sport. This week during a taping of “Back Talk,’’ an hourlong sports talk show streamed over the YSA website, he broke down the Minnesota Vikings’ offense and Baltimore Ravens’ playoffs prospects. His debating partner: WCVB-TV weekend sports anchor Bob Halloran, who seemed both bemused and bewildered by the depth of John’s knowledge.
John’s mother would hardly have been surprised, though. “We go to friends’ houses,’’ says Luisa Cestari, “and he entertains them with the play-by-play from last night’s game.’’ Some even ask him for help making their Sunday football pool picks, she adds.
“Back Talk’’ and its cast of youthful commentators are showing up at a time when Boston’s pro teams have been enjoying unusual success - the Sox, Patriots, and Celtics have all won at least one championship in the past six years - and its sports media complex is also undergoing rapid expansion. ESPN.com recently added a Boston site to its lineup. Radio station 98.5 FM the Sports Hub is making a bold bid to challenge WEEI-AM’s sports talk supremacy. Major media entities and even the teams themselves are updating their websites and tacking on new sports blogs. All of this serves to amplify 24/7 chatter about everything from Tom Brady’s knee to Daisuke Matsuzaka’s value as the Sox third starting pitcher in the playoffs.
For kids like John Fulton and Max Kliman, a Needham seventh-grader taking classes at YSA, the trickle-down effect is as recognizable as Bill Belichick’s hoodie. They’re light-years beyond the casual-fan level of youthful sports interest. They know the games, the players, the highlight-reel videos, and who narrates them. They know what “P.T.I.’’ stands for and who on that show is interrupting whom.
Max, 13, logged his first hours behind a microphone during a weeklong camp in August. Dubious at first, he grew to love the experience so much that he signed up for after-school lessons this fall. Last week he was assigned to compile and read “Back Talk’’ news updates, which he pulled off with scarcely a hiccup.
A sports nut - Max plays soccer, basketball, tennis, and baseball - he watches ESPN “all the time,’’ he says, and particularly admires the work of “SportsCenter’’ anchors Stuart Scott and Hannah Storm. His best-case professional scenario, Max says, “would be like Jim Rice. Be a player first, then retire and work for a TV network.’’
Like Chris Woycik, 15, of Wrentham, another YSA summer camper, they may also conclude that becoming the next Tony Kornheiser could be as cool as becoming the next Dustin Pedroia. And more realistic. “You have to be really into sports to be here, because that’s really all we talk about,’’ Chris observed at a camp session a few weeks ago. He’d just gotten a tutorial (“Stop saying ‘we’ when you’re talking about the team, son’’) from ex-Sox broadcaster Jerry Trupiano in some of the finer points of doing baseball play-by-play.
Veteran Boston sportscaster Jimmy Young, who launched Young Sportscasters of America last spring, claims he’s no longer surprised when a fifth-grader starts reeling off names from the NFL’s weekly injury list, or smoothly narrates every scoring drive from a Boston College football game as if channeling his inner Chris Berman. Young has recruited 42 apprentice sportscasters, all boys aged 10-18, to his program so far. Word of mouth is his most potent marketing tool, according to Young. Parents figure, why not harness my child’s obsession with sports to some greater, more productive purpose? And Young is happy to oblige. Students pay between $100 and $300 monthly for classes covering skills like studio announcing, interviewing, TV production, and editing.
“I’m getting 14-year-olds with green screens in their basements,’’ says Young, referring to the monochromatic backdrops TV studios use for projecting images like weather maps. Kids like John Fulton may be precociously fluent in sports talk - “The stuff that comes out of his mouth makes us look at each other and say, ‘He’s 10?’ ’’ Young says with a laugh - but they’re not that unusual in marrying their passion for sports with their fascination for modern media techniques. What these kids learn by practicing in a fully equipped TV studio or radio booth, their efforts broadcast to actual viewers and listeners, helps them in all facets of communication, Young contends.
“We’re teaching them eye contact, enunciation, expanding their vocabulary, communication skills they can use in really any field,’’ says Young. “By sticking a camera on these kids, they get to see themselves as the world sees them.’’
Generation Text, meet Generation Teleprompter.
The idea behind the YSA program grew out of “Kid Company’s Sports World,’’ a Sunday night show Young hosted on NECN in the late 1990s. Young and his staff now help students produce a weekly radio show (airing on WBNW-AM and affiliates) along with the “Back Talk’’ webcast and a new student-produced sports blog. Jake Saltzman, a junior at Brookline High, recalls showing up at YSA camp and being paired with John and Max on a radio broadcast. “I was totally thrust into the fire,’’ says Jake, who’s taking after-school classes in Natick twice week.
While YSA continues to grow through viral marketing (its website links it with Young Broadcasters of America), it’s not the only training ground for aspiring Bermans and Scotts.
Play-by-Play Sports Broadcasting Camps operates summer camps for 8-to-18-year-olds in eight cities, including Boston. Jeremy Treatman, a former Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter who started the camps in 2002, says that over the past five years alone the explosion in sports media has driven young people to consider its career options. “Twenty years ago, probably four out of five kids wanted to be pro athletes,’’ Treatman says, while today “it’s pretty even’’ between playing a pro sport and joining the broadcast team.
Christopher Cavalieri, a professor of communications at Boston University, brings 40 to 50 high-schoolers to campus each summer for workshops in media production and sports broadcasting. The proliferation of sports media - regional and national, broadcast and online - has “increased exponentially’’ in recent years, Cavalieri notes, and young people are taking notice. “This is a boom period, a perfect fit’’ for teenage media junkies with an interest in sports, he says.
Talking sports with a 10-year-old who’s smarter than he is can be disconcerting, Halloran jokes. Young agrees and says that on the YBA radio show, he hears adults express amazement about talking to teenagers about sports. Of course, some are amazed to find teens who will talk to adults, period.
Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com. 