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Jim tells us how these broadcasts came to be:
It all started in 1974. For years I had gone to sports events and done the play-by-play in my head, but finally in '74 I decided to really do it. Back in the 60s you could count on hearing any significant local sports event on the radio. They even broadcast the Soap Box Derby! But by the early 70s that started to change, as Ann Arbor grew and began to lose it's small town feel while philosophies changed regarding how a radio station should be programmed. So during the early to mid 70s almost no Ann Arbor high school games were being broadcast. Fortunately this would change a few years later with the arrival of cable TV! Early in 1974 I attended a Huron-Pioneer hockey game which turned out to be one of the most exciting games I had ever seen - the winning goal was scored with less than a minute to play. I thought then what a shame it was that such a terrific game had not been broadcast or recorded. The only historical record of the contest would be a brief newspaper article. Then a few weeks later the Huron hockey team played in the state championship game and I was shocked when I looked up to see an empty press box - again, nobody was bothering to cover this game either. That's when I decided that I was going to start recording the games that I attended. The first game that I took a tape recorder to was the championship game of the Ann Arbor summer hockey league. As fate would have it, another superfan and wannabe sports announcer named Dave Dye showed up to record the same game, and the DJ Sports Network was born. For the next 8 years we recorded hundreds of games - everything from softball at Vets Park to Michigan basketball, which we taped from our seat in the stands. Some of these games ended up being aired on the radio or Cable, but most of them we did just for practice and fun, and are being broadcast for the first time here. What you will hear on this show are the tapes that have survived over the years, plus some football games I did when I returned to Ann Arbor in the late 90s. A couple of months ago I came close to losing the tape of the first game in the series, the January 1975 hockey contest between Huron and Pioneer. When I took the tape out to listen to it, it literally began to fall apart in my hands. Big surprise - it's 30 years old! That's when I decided that I needed to get these tapes transferred to digital format, and also thought that it would be fun to finally share these broadcasts with you. Fortunately A3 Radio agreed, and I hope you have as much fun listening to these games as I did announcing and restoring them. Q & A with Jim: Q: What stations made up the DJ Sports Network? A: In 1973 I launched a pirate radio station on citizens band called WSJH, where I hosted a daily music show. When I started recording games the next year, I aired them on WSJH as well, and Dave started his own station on the other side of town, WDYE, to put the games on. We often wondered if anyone ever heard these broadcasts and about 2 years later we got our answer. The CB Radio craze really took off in about 1976 and I began talking to other kids in the neighborhood on CB. A couple of them said to me "You sound like the guy who plays music," and I told them that it was me! Q: If you could turn back the clock, would you do anything different? A: Yes. I would have saved ALL of the games we broadcast on tape, not just a few. In order to save money, I used to dub scoring plays from each game, but then we would reuse the tapes. Looking back now, it would have been well worth the extra expense to have bought more tapes and kept everything. We do have a "Best of Ann Arbor Sports Classics" series in the works that will feature the highlights that were saved from these broadcasts. Q: Do you remember what some of these "lost broadcasts" were? A: I did a couple of University of Michigan Varsity-Reserve football games - often the numbers on the players jerseys didn't match the roster, which made the broadcast challenging. Dave played on the Tappan Junior High basketball team and I recorded several of their games too. And remember the Michigan Stags of the World Hockey Association? They held their training camp in Ann Arbor and we taped a couple of their exhibition games at Yost. There were plenty of others, too. Q: What was the weirdest situation you encountered while announcing a game? A: There were a few strange ones, but probably the most memorable was the time that Dave and I went up to Saginaw to broadcast the state fastpitch softball tournament. The diamond where the game was being played looked like a makeshift little league field. The right field fence was such a short distance from home plate that what would have been a routine pop fly at Vets Park went for a home run there! Also, there was no scorer's table so we ended up announcing the game from a stoop outside the park shelter. We did the Ann Arbor Merchants game on Friday night, but then thunderstorms caused the rest of the tournament games scheduled for Saturday and Sunday to be cancelled. A real disaster of a weekend at the time, but fortunately we can laugh about it now! |
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