Arroe Collins All Level Sports...

Versatile Five Sport Broadcaster Kenny Albert Marks His 31st Season At FOX Sports

When Kenny Albert was growing up, family gatherings sounded a lot like a dispatch from the first all-sports radio station. There was his father, Marv, whose voice shaped the sound of modern basketball, and there too were his uncles Al and Steve-a trio of professional play-by-play men with a listenership that spanned the country.It was only a matter of time before Kenny, armed with a toy tape recorder, yearned to follow in their footsteps.Some 3,000 broadcasts later, Kenny Albert has amassed countless stories from the world of sports and media. A Mic for All Seasons is his chronicle of a charmed yet unlikely journey, from a youth spent calling games in his bedroom for a fictitious audience to ten-hour bus rides with a minor-league hockey team, plus the time he worked five different sports in one chaotic, 19-day stretch.The only play-by-play broadcaster who currently calls all four major sports in North America, Albert details the stand-out moments from his three-decade career, including the 1994 Stanley Cup Final, Jose Bautista's bat flip in the 2015 ALCS, and the U.S. women's hockey Olympic gold-medal winning shootout in Pyeongchang in 2018.Part memoir, part behind-the-scenes look at the world of broadcast media, A Mic for All Seasons also features stories about life in the booth, game preparation, travel hijinks, marquee events, meetings with star athletes and coaches, and much more.

Broadcast on:: 05 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

At Sprouts Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy, and delicious. Step into our bulk department to discover a world of options with hundreds of scoopable bulk bins and grab-and-go favorites. From wholesome grains and spices to limited-time goodies like pumpkin apple cashews and butter toffee peanuts, plus buying in bulk means you can get as much or as little as you like for your next recipe or snack attack. Visit your neighborhood Sprouts Farmers Market today, or flavor fills every scoop. At Sprouts Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy, and delicious. That's why you'll find the season's best organic produce hand-picked and waiting for you in the center of our store. We bring in local farm-fresh fruits and veggies bursting with flavor. Come on in to discover everyday favorites like juicy berries and crisp greens, but also unique peak season varieties like moon drop or cotton candy grapes. Visit your neighborhood Sprouts Farmers Market today, where fresh produce is always in season. Hello and good morning, Kenny. How are you doing today? I'm good. How are you? Well, you've got to be super busy because here we are. I mean, the NFL is only three weeks into it. Here comes basketball and hockey is really starting to kick up. I mean, and here you are doing play-by-play for everything. Well, the craziness of the schedule will kick in very shortly, Harold. Had a little bit of time off in the summer, which was nice. Wasn't on a plane for two months, which is very unusual for me, but now heading into week three of the NFL, I had the Giants Vikings game, week one, Patriots Seahawks in Foxborough, Massachusetts, week two, and now getting set for the Giants and Browns in Cleveland. And then, yes, the NHL will kick in in a couple of weeks. I work about 15 NBA games as well, so it's the most fun time of the year. You have to really be organized and follow everything, you know, from the various sports and keep track of what flight I'm going to, what hotel room I'm in. You know, now I've started to take photos of the hotel room number, just in case. But no, it's a great time of the year. I always tell people there's a lot of work and travel involved in what I do, but I never really feel like I'm working, which is certainly a nice feeling. How do you embrace the cadence of each one of those games? I mean, you can go from a ball, a play-by-play announcer to a hockey game, which is at the speed of light. It's a great question. You know, as far as the preparation, that's pretty similar, although there are certainly more hours of preparation involved in a football game because it's two teams that I might not have seen all season, basketball and hockey teams are playing all the time. So you're keeping up with their games and there's a lot of reading involved. But as far as the cadence, they're all so much different. Hockey, like you said, it's moving so quickly. And I do hockey on both TV and the radios. The radio is even faster because you have to be so descriptive and give the score and time a lot more than you have to on television. Basketball is kind of similar to hockey, although it's a slower pace. There are probably more whistles and stoppages, but you're basically calling the action for the 48 minutes and hockey are calling the action for the 60 minutes. Football, it's the most rhythmic. It's one play, and then it's 20 or 25 seconds. It's another play, and then it's 20 or 25 seconds. You're weaving in storylines, setting up your color analyst. Baseball, to me, was always the most challenging of the four because I don't do it very often. Probably 10 or 12 games a year. And up until two years ago, there was so much downtime between pitches between batters. But now with the introduction of the pitch clock, it actually moves a lot quicker. So from a play-by-play standpoint, I've really enjoyed doing games during the pitch clock era. At Sprouts Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy, and delicious. Step into our bulk department to scoop up as much as you like from hundreds of bins filled with wholesome grains and limited-time goodies. Visit your neighborhood Sprouts Farmers Market today where flavor fills every scoop. For the ones who know safety isn't a catchphrase, it's a culture. The ones who help make sure everyone makes it home safe. For the safety-minded who watch everyone's backs, Granger offers supplies and solutions for every industry as well as safety assessments and training to keep your facility safe and your people safer. Call clickgranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. I'll tell you when I was really drawn into your book because of that you were doing play-by-play inside your bedroom, which I did the same exact thing. And then today with these VR goggles, dude, I'll turn down the sound, and I will do play-by-play with those goggles on. Wow, that must be an interesting look, but I did it. My parents gave me a tape recorder when I was about five years old. I grew up around sports casting, my father and uncle long time play-by-play broadcasters, but it's really all I wanted to do, ever. And I would do games off the TV. I didn't have to VR goggles at the time, but I would call games off the TV in my bedroom. When I was old enough, I would start bringing the recorder to various games at Madison Square Garden or Space Stadium and was real fortunate in high school. I was covering the local, for the local paper and my school paper, many of the sports at my high school. And out of the blue, a small cable station showed up and they had two cameras and a little production band and that was it. And they needed an announcer. I volunteered, they clipped a mic on my shirt and sat in the second row. The people around me probably thought I was talking to myself and called that game and met with the producer after the game and he gave me the opportunity to work about 75 to 100 sporting events over the next three years. So that was invaluable experience at that age. How is AI technology going to change your sport because I know what it's done to radio? That's an interesting question. I don't know that much about it yet. I know that I'm a big preparer, I'm an information guy, I love getting information from all different places. When I started working professionally, the internet didn't exist, there were no cell phones. So that has certainly evolved over the last 30 years, but I'm sure, again, I need to learn some more about it, but I'm sure it will have a huge effect. Wow. Is it difficult to walk into each one of those booths because I mean each, each booth has its own personality, how do you adjust yourself? Whenever I'm asked about my favorite stadiums or arenas, to me, the number one factor is what's the location of the broadcast booth? Yeah. Welcome to the field or the ice or the court. So that's a big part of it. Some of them might be smaller than others. For football, obviously, you hope to be right on the 50 yard line and that's where most of the television booths are. Some of the radio booths, they're either in the corner or on the 10 or 20 yard line. So that could be a challenge for hockey. Oftentimes, we're way up in a press box and you might not see the numbers as well on the jerseys. You don't feel like you're as into the game as much as if you're about halfway down and in about half the arenas, we're lucky enough to have a really good location somewhere in the lower bowl or in the middle of the arena, but that's a major factor as far as doing our jobs well. Well, thanks for giving us your personality and giving yourself permission to be so creative with your love for sports, dude. Thanks, I really appreciate it and hope to chat again soon. You bet. You'll be brilliant today. Okay? You too. Thanks. This is the story of the one. As a warehouse manager, her job is to transform chaos into clarity and to see patterns where others see problems. Luckily, she's got a partner who shares her perspective. Granger offers over a million industrial grade products backed by real-person support and in-depth online resources so she can tackle every task with precision and turn potential setbacks into streamlined success. Call click Granger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. For the ones who know safety isn't a catchphrase, it's a culture and the ones who help make sure everyone makes it home safe. For the safety-minded who watch everyone's backs, Granger offers supplies and solutions for every industry as well as safety assessments and training to keep your facility safe and your people safer. Call click Granger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. [MUSIC PLAYING]