Posts Tagged ‘sports’
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Lindsay Czarniak Finds Center Stage at Home
Text by David Gignilliat / Photography by Jonathan Timmes
The Florida Marlins had just traded for Carlos Delgado, and WTVJ-Miami reporter Lindsay Czarniak was waiting at the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport for the power-hitting first baseman to arrive. It was the kind of impromptu reporter gathering that typically occurs when a new player joins a club, especially one of Delgado’s caliber. Two seasons earlier, in 2003, the Puerto Rican slugger led the major leagues in RBIs and hit 42 home runs for the Toronto Blue Jays. His free-agent signing was a big deal, worthy of coverage on local 11 o’clock newscasts around the country. So it made sense that then-NBC4 sports director George Michael might be calling Czarniak for a videotape to play on his station’s Washington D.C. air.
Czarniak, whose family moved from Harrisburg, Pa., to Virginia when she was 5, knew the voice on the other end of the line. Like many Northern Virginians her age, she grew up watching Michael, an affable former disc jockey, entertain television viewers with his energetic, highlight-driven local sports coverage. Whether it was rasslin’, Redskins or rodeo, he had a knack for getting people to tune in and pay attention. He’d built a local empire out of his effective mix of bombast and enthusiasm, created a syndicated hit in “The George Michael Sports Machine” and was entering his 25th year in the D.C. market.
But Michael wasn’t calling Czarniak to talk about a ballplayer, a story or a videotape. He wanted to hire her.
Michael had first noticed the James Madison grad a year earlier, catching her freelance work on The Speed Channel. She was young and had only been doing sports for a few years, but he liked what he saw. She had good energy. She was photogenic. She did her homework. She connected with people.
“I just liked the fact that she had the ability to ad-lib, and I thought she had good relationships with the drivers,” says Michael, 69, who now hosts the “Redskins Report,” “Full Court Press” and “The Jim Zorn Show,” all studio shows on NBC4. “She just had this natural charisma about her … I hate to use the word ‘it,’ but there’s an it [factor] to it. Some people have it. Some people don’t. And Lindsay had it. And I just said to myself, This is exactly what we’re looking for.”
At first, Czarniak, now 31, thought he was joking. She hadn’t sent him a demo. Originally a news reporter, she’d only done sports for a short time. She didn’t think he was even aware of her work.
“It was crazy. I really thought [George] was kidding,” says Czarniak, who lettered in lacrosse and field hockey at Centreville High School in Clifton. “My first thought was, You’re kidding me. I remember I hung up the phone, and I called my mom and said, Mom, you’ll never believe who just called me on the phone.”
Czarniak accepted Michael’s offer in April and joined the NBC4 staff in June 2005. Since then, the trajectory has been Washington Monument-steep for the 1996 Centreville High graduate. In September 2006, she officially became Michael’s co-host on “The Sports Machine.” After budget cuts at NBC4, Michael decided to abdicate his anchorship in March 2007 rather than pare his staff. The move eventually shut down “The Sports Machine,” but vaulted Czarniak and colleague Dan Hellie into unique co-anchor roles. Czarniak often anchors the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts alongside colleagues Doreen Gentzler, Jim Vance (“the coolest guy I know,” she says) and Bob Ryan, regularly grabbing the highest ratings among local newscasts.
And in a little over three years, she’s quickly become one of the area’s more recognizable media personalities. Her caricature adorns the wall at The Palm Restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C. She’s graced magazine covers, won comedy contests and performed searing Barry Manilow duets with local media. She guests on several local radio shows, authors two blogs, and last summer a local minor league baseball team feted her with a commemorative bobble-head day (“Only one kid came up to me with the head ripped off,” she jokes). And, in the argot of some of her devout male fans—the denizens of sports bars, message boards, blogs and Fed Ex Field parking lots—she’s earned a reputation as a legitimate sports babe.
“Lindsay is absolutely striking in person, but she’s still that girl next door,” says J.P. Flaim, 38, part of the Sports Junkies quartet that hosts a morning radio show on 106.7 WJFK-FM. Czarniak has been a guest on their testosterone-infused show. “She fits right into our locker-room atmosphere like one of the guys.”
Her colleague agrees.
“Lindsay is obviously attractive but there are tons of attractive [women] doing sports on television. What really makes her stand out is she is so likable,” says Hellie, 33. “I can’t tell you how many guys want me to set them up with Lindsay and how many girls say they would love to have a drink with her. I think it’s that old saying: Guys want to date her, and girls want to be her.”
Czarniak’s work continues to attract interest from beyond the Beltway. She works with cable network TNT as a pit reporter on the station’s NASCAR Nextel Cup telecasts. The Oxygen Network (owned by NBC) plucked the talented journalist to host its “Gymnastics on Oxygen” show last summer, covering the 2008 Summer Olympics from Beijing. Her contract with NBC is up for renewal in 2009, and she’s likely to have some suitors outside the Washington, D.C. area.
“I absolutely love what I do, and I feel like the opportunities that I get are amazing, so I really can’t ask for more. Sure, there’s stuff that I would love to try out there at some point, but right now I’m absolutely content,” says Czarniak, who lists CBS news anchor Katie Couric as one of her role models. “I really feel like my job matters, and I feel like I [get to] do it in my hometown, which is an opportunity that a lot of people never get. I’m very well aware of how special that is, and if you [ever] leave an opportunity like that, there’s just something to be said for being able to do that in a place where you call home. So, I’m aware of how difficult it would be to find that anywhere else. I don’t know. We’ll see. It would have to be the right opportunity, but right now I could also see staying here for a really long time.”
Czarniak has roots that run deep in Northern Virginia. A lifelong sports fan, her interest in sports journalism traces its origin to her father, Chet, who spent 17 years covering and editing sports for USA Today. An accomplished student-athlete, she was both homecoming queen and class president at Centreville High. Active in art and theater, Czarniak’s mother recalls a time she took her daughter to see a Matisse exhibit at a local art museum.
“She would really get absorbed [in one of his paintings], and she just looked at me and looked at one of his drawings and goes, ‘Mom, do you think if he had tried harder, he could’ve done a little better?’” Terri Czarniak, a principal at Rose Hill Elementary School in Alexandria, can recall.
“She was just very focused about things, even at that [age]. She just always wanted to know more, and then apply it, and then just seek out the next challenge.”
Czarniak took that thirst for new challenges to James Madison University, where she declared her major in electronic journalism by the end of her freshman year. Even her professors sensed they had a future star on their hands.
“Lindsay certainly was one of those people who makes a very, very positive and strong impression right from the very beginning,” says Rustin Greene, one of Czarniak’s James Madison professors. “She knew that she was just beginning, but she also knew that she had a lot to offer in wherever she was going to go. She just had that sense of confidence. It wasn’t cocky or arrogance at all—she was just a very confident young woman.”
After Czarniak graduated from JMU in 2000, she moved to Atlanta, where she worked for CNN as an associate producer. The next stop was Jacksonville, Fla., where she scored her first on-air position as a news reporter with the local FOX affiliate. A few years later, she found herself crossing over into sports at Miami’s WTJV, an NBC affiliate.
She’s taken a few lumps along the way, like the time in Jacksonville when she stood in front of a tree farm and went completely silent during a live shot. “I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there with this guppy face,” she recollects. Or the time she stepped on Jim Vance’s foot and apologized to him on-camera. Or when she inadvertently called Washington, D.C.’s Caps hockey team “The Craps.” But Czarniak—often self-deprecating, and rarely wan—seems to take it all in stride.
“You just try to relax, get over it and have fun,” she says. “The truth is about television, you never want to memorize what you’re saying. If you mess up just one word, then it all goes out the window. You don’t memorize stuff—you just know your story.”
Since taking the helm, Czarniak has had her fair share of high-profile stories—the 2008 Caps playoff surge, a pair of Olympics, George Mason University’s Cinderella Final Four run—but nothing quite like the tragic murder of former Redskins safety Sean Taylor. Czarniak was the first sports reporter to gain the opportunity to interview various Redskins players after the all-Pro’s death in November of 2007.
Working the beat at Redskins Park, she had interviewed Washington’s mercurial field star on several previous occasions. “If he had agreed to talk to you and open up, he was someone that was just a warm, intriguing person,” she says.
Inside the Beltway, Redskins coverage is always high-stakes, but the Taylor story upped the ante. “Those situations are really what it’s all about [as a reporter]. I really enjoy the challenge of delivering news regardless of what the story is,” Czarniak says. “It’s interesting when it happens to a team you’re around all the time because it’s all very surreal.”
Czarniak has successfully emerged from the thicket of what is generally considered a male-dominated broadcast profession, and done so with remarkable grace and élan. Relentless in her preparation—“there are always tons of books in her car,” her mother notes—she refuses to put too much stock in the glass-ceiling side of the debate concerning female correspondents reporting from the field sidelines.
“People will ask me a lot of times how I feel about being in locker rooms. It’s not a big deal. Sure, it’s different. But why make it a big deal? It’s not. The guys don’t treat it like it is. You’re treated the same as everybody else,” Czarniak says. “I feel like sometimes you have to do more to prove that you’re as good as the guys and that you know your stuff. And, maybe that’s the one area where it gets kind of tough … But I think the bottom line is that everybody just wants to be respected, guy or girl.”
(April 2009)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, March 19th, 2009
Can Our Reporter Keep Up with a Man Who Is on the Air from Sunup to Sundown? No.
Text by Buzz Mcclain / Photography by Jonathan Timmes
At 6:45 a.m. I’m idling at the dark, cold school-bus stop. My daughter is in no mood to talk so I have Fox Sports on the XM radio. I’m listening to a rant by Steve Czaban, the host of the national broadcast called “The First Team,” as he opines on sports, of course, but also other things in pop culture that occupy the blurry fringes of the early-morning mind of the average male listener. He’s informative, sure, sort of, but he’s more than that. He’s amusing without any “morning zoo” excess.
So now it’s 6:45 p.m., and I’m driving in the darkening remnants of rush-hour traffic to pick up my son from his piano lesson. I turn on the radio to the local sports station, ESPN 980 AM, and the voice coming out of the Prius speakers is Czaban’s. He’s the co-host of “The Sports Reporters” with Andy Pollin on ESPN 980, on the air from 4 to 7 p.m. each weekday.
It’s the Czabe again. I do a double take. He seems to be on the air from 6 in the morning to 7 at night every day on two different sports talk stations. Can that be right? It doesn’t seem possible. Maybe he’s taped.
But no. Not only is it possible, but if I were in my car with the radio on at 8 a.m. Wisconsin time, I would be listening to Czaban doing a different broadcast on a different station in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee.
Solly Rings His Bell
Is there more than one Czabe? How does he keep a schedule that has him on the air nationally and in two local markets for 13 hours a day while maintaining a 4 handicap in golf?
To find out, I followed Czaban for a Thursday from sunup to sundown, to see exactly how a man can stay on the air and stay on top of things without, I don’t know, sleeping maybe?
Czaban’s producer, Steve Solomon, calls Czaban’s phone at 4:30 a.m. every morning because “alarm clocks can’t be trusted,” Czaban said. Czaban lives with his wife Deana and daughters Catherine, 9, and Megan, 6, on 10 acres in Round Hill, west of Leesburg and near the Loudoun County-West Virginia border.
Now consider this: The station where he broadcasts from is in Rockville, Md., just west of the District of Columbia. Czaban’s house is 25 miles closer to Winchester than it is to Rockville.
The Czabe is unfazed by the commute.
“It’s 52 minutes door to door,” Czaban says, fluidly reciting the vagaries of traffic that he breezes through in his 2005 Acura, from his long driveway to the McDonald’s near the station where he takes his morning sustenance.
Breakfast is long gone by the time I get to the station at 7:30 a.m. (alarm clocks really can’t be trusted). He’s already been on the air an hour and a half when I make it to the fourth-floor suite of ESPN 980.
Czaban is about the right size for his authoritative baritone. He’s 40 and keeps his hair clipped short so as to blend it with his ever-heightening forehead. He’s easily 6-foot-1 and comfortably carries his 228 pounds, “but I should be 205,” he says. Remarkably, he appears healthy, not exhausted at all. I expected suitcases under the eyes.
He sits at an oblong table with his back to a bank of windows looking out at Rockville Pike; as he talks into the microphone in front of him he deftly punches up the sound effects heard on the show from a box of 1,000 of them he has at his right hand.
Across the table is his “First Team” partner, Scott Linn, who, along with Solly (he hates that nickname, but they call him that anyway), has the same morning-to-evening schedule as the Czabe. Brutal as that may be, they live far closer to the station in Montgomery County.
Listeners tuning into 150 Fox Sports stations and XM’s national broadcast eavesdrop on a running conversation between Czaban and Linn, who have been together since June 2002. Linn scans listener emails, reads the Internet and makes notes from newspapers, while Solly forwards periodic phone calls to Czaban.
Czaban, who wiggles in his seat the way a golfer might waggle at address on the tee box, has a few notes on a computer printout of topics. What’s astonishing is how much detail he applies to a variety of subjects, and how much color his clever turns of phrase bring to the conversation.
“He’s the iron horse of broadcasting,” remarks “Smokin’” Al Koken, who hosts 980’s afternoon show with John Thompson and Brian Mitchell. “How he has the energy and passion at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. to do what he does, that’s the true mark of a professional.”
Here’s how: When the show goes into commercial at 8 a.m., Czaban cracks open a two-ounce 5-Hour Energy shot, one of many. He’s so beholden to the elixir that he calls his home theater—a 110-inch projection screen flanked by 60-inch plasmas so he can watch three games at one time—“The 5-Hour Energy Dome.”
When the Fox Sports show is done at 9 a.m., Czaban goes on the air from the same chair and microphone for 30 minutes with Bob Madden and Brian Nelson—“Bob and Brian Mornings,” the No. 1 show on rock station 102.9 FM, the Hog, in Milwaukee. He was 27 and temporarily out of radio when he became a feature on the show, and now he’s “like an adopted son” in Milwaukee, Czaban said.
‘The Mean Streets of McLean’
Czaban grew up “on the mean streets of McLean,” matriculating to Cooper Middle School and Langley High. His father was a computer-systems analyst for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and his mother taught elementary school.
“The whole ‘mean streets of McLean’ became one of my favorite cliches on the show because the suburban streets of the McLean Hunt were anything but mean,” explains Czaban, who played drums in a high-school garage band. “Nice, quiet, tree-lined, very middle America. We played tackle football in the park every weekend during the fall and winter. Basketball games in driveways of at least three different kids. I played whiffle ball in the yard, where my roof over the front porch was the ‘upper deck.’ Stuff like that.”
It was around age 11 he hit his personal sports zenith, when he made the McLean Little League All-Star baseball team and discovered the joyous wonders of golf. He realized then he’d maxed out in the former and devoted himself to the latter.
His passion for golf manifested in the form of the creation of the annual Potomac Cup, a tournament between golfers from Virginia and those from Maryland. He started it in 2001, humbly, and now “I’m blown away with where we’re at with logoed shirts, logoed golf bags and all the different stuff we do.”
Virginia, by the way, leads 5 to 3.
His first move from the area was to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he earned a degree in communications in 1990 and for four years did the play by play for the Gauchos’ football and basketball games, while also hosting a local sports show. He moved back to his hometown and was again out of radio when Andy Pollin hired him at WTEM-AM (now ESPN 980) to do updates as a part-timer. “He’s sent in a tape, and it was pretty good,” Pollin recalls. “He was working as a range monkey over at Avenel. I remember calling his mother to see how to get hold of him.”
Then he was on to Chicago for One-On-One Sports Radio Network, where he met Bob and Brian, Charlotte’s WFNZ-AM, six months at ESPN Radio and then back to WTEM, where he was finally paired with Pollin on “The Sports Reporters.” Pollin, 50, an area native whose extensive institutional memory of local sports is collected in the new “Great Book of Washington, D.C. Sports Lists” with Leonard Shapiro, believes their partnership works because of their differences.
“We’re very different,” he says. “A different age, different politically, different interests, that works well on the air, but in terms of what we can bring to the table, we generally agree on what we want to talk about. I know how he’s going to react to certain things, and that’s how we come up with show topics.”
Czaban’s office is next to Pollin’s. It’s a smallish affair and looks like a 14-year-old boy’s bedroom, with framed Sports Illustrated covers on the walls, a large Darrell Green action painting over the desk, and assorted bobblehead and toy collectibles on a bookcase. But the dominant furniture is an overstuffed green chair and ottoman with a blanket on it. It’s where Czaban takes his daily nap.
As he updates his popular website, The Daily Czabe, Czabe.com, with opinions, videos, photos of women in bikinis and reader poll, we talk about time management. Each year he takes four breaks for himself and others with his family. He occasionally does a Sunday Redskins TV pre-game show, but says: “I don’t want to take on any more on the weekends.”
It dawns on me that he has to watch a lot of weekend sports to be as informative as he is. Isn’t that working on weekends?
“You have to watch the games, but you should still want to watch the games,” he insists. “What’s frustrating for me, particularly with the morning show, is I can’t watch as many of the games as I’d like to because I just can’t function on four or five hours of sleep. And that’s frustrating because I’m still a guy in this business who believes in watching long-form sports, watching details, the game within the game. You can get by in sports radio now with the Internet, with just watching the ‘SportsCenter’ highlights and reading stories, but I’m of the mindset that I’m still a sports fan and want to watch as much as I can in long form.”
The idea that every listener thinks they could do his job is not new to Czaban. “As Andy likes to say, ‘Everybody’s got one good show in them.’ One. What are you going to say the next day? And the next day? And the next day? That’s the real trick to it. And in truth, not everybody has one good show in them because there is a sort of a learned art to talking into a microphone and doing it in a way that makes the microphone disappear.”
The Lure of the Chair
Czaban can play 18 holes of golf during his break between shows, but today is not a golf day. So while the Czabe runs “some pretty mundane errands” after lunch—we had a 20-minute meal at a nearby barbecue place—I find myself in the plush green chair in his office.
Whoa. It’s nice here. The sun is on my face, ESPN.com is on his computer monitor, and you can hear faint sports radio down the hall somewhere. It’s cozy. Relaxing. Oh, man, is it relaxing. And before you know it, I’m out.
How embarrassing. But who could resist?
I groggily make way at 3 p.m. so Czaban, Solomon and Pollin can have a pre-show meeting; they quickly discuss a small handful of possible topics in no detail whatsoever and adjourn.
After the meeting it’s Czaban’s turn to snooze, and he closes the door. A few minutes before 4 p.m. he strides into the studio and takes a different seat, this one facing the window with a clear shot of Golf Galaxy across the highway. I find myself staring at it, my mind wandering to the fairway, and despite my nap, my eyes are heavy. And Czaban has three more hours of work to go.
The show moves at pace—in the car the commercial breaks seem much longer than they do in the studio—and at 5 p.m. he has a slice of pizza and a diet Dr Pepper. There’s been no exercise today besides walking to and from the parking garage. He has a home gym, “a nice one, but I never use it. I’d use it theoretically at night, but who wants to?”
At 5:30 p.m. he takes in another slice, plus additional 5-Hour Energy shot. At 6:21 there’s more pizza—free from a sponsor—and at 6:37 he does The Daily Czabe, a humorous roundup of non-sports items that either irritate or appeal to him.
My question is: When did he find time today to discover anything new to talk about? And how does he go all day on three programs and never once repeat himself? In an odd moment, I find myself quoting him to him, forgetting that I had heard him say it 10 hours earlier. Clearly, I’m getting delirious.
At 6:55:46 he says his final words on the air and after quick goodbyes is out of the studio, out of the building, out of the garage and into the thinning traffic for his ride home to Round Hill.
And all I can think is how grateful I am that I can sleep in tomorrow.
(March 2009)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, January 8th, 2009
After 11 Years Yakking About Sports, Pop Culture and Bikini Contests, Can Radio’s Junkies Keep It Up?
By Buzz McClain / Photography by Jonathan Timmes
It could be any rec room in the country. Four guys sitting around a table, ESPNHD showing highlights on the flat screen as they jaw about yesterday’s game, today’s celebrity scandal and the weekend’s poker party.
Except this session of off-the-cuff, innuendo-laden repartee is overheard by 15,000 listeners a day, most of them driving their cars to work as the morning sun rises over the traffic in front of them. It’s not easy to get out of bed, into your clothes and into your car at such an hour, but the Junkies make the torturous time between 5 and 10 a.m. weekdays just a little less odious for listeners, mostly men between ages 25 to 54.
The Junkies can relate because they, too, have to get up at ungodly hours to be in the WJFK-FM (106.7) studios, when they would rather be, in Junkie lingo, back in bed “roughing up a suspect.” (It’s not what you think. Well, maybe it is.) But each day they drive in the morning darkness, three from Montgomery County, Md., and one from Ashburn, to Fairfax City not to be the first at the station, but definitely not to be the last.
Because there’s “the breakfast rule.”
“If you’re late you have to buy breakfast for all the guys, and I don’t want to [expletive] with it at all,” said Eric Bickel, who is usually the first to arrive. “I leave my house about 4:30 a.m. from Kensington. It’s not so bad.”
E.B., Bickel’s on-air tag, means the traffic isn’t so bad. Getting up is bad, always. “I go to bed late, that’s the problem,” he said, his ball cap hiding a silvery coif that’s a nasty combination of hat hair and bed head. “Late” is 10:30 p.m.
“Jason’s the only one who’s militant and goes to bed at, like, 8:30 p.m.,” added John-Paul Flaim, a.k.a. J.P., indicating Jason Bishop, who, at 6-foot-6 is nicknamed Lurch, after “The Addams Family’s” towering, deep-voiced zombie servant.
“You never get used to waking up at 4:30 in the morning,” Bishop said. “Never.”
“So I don’t—and any of us don’t—sound like ingrates, I realize there are tons of people who get up earlier than us for jobs they despise,” added John Auville, the Junkie with the shaved head who goes by his childhood nickname of Cakes. “So I’m not going to complain about waking up early for a job I love.”
“We are selling out to the Man,” Bickel mockingly pointed out.
Still, he’s not complaining either.
From TV to Radio
The Junkies’ story of how affable boyhood pals from suburban Maryland came to be regional media donkeys (affectionate Junkie speak for a fool) and easily take over morning drive-time for the immensely popular Howard Stern is as inspirational as it is unlikely.
It started with Bickel’s then-future mother-in-law. She thought the boys could do a public access television show about sports. In an “Aw, why not?” moment, Flaim, Bickel and Auville took the required broadcast training at Bowie Community Television and launched “The Sports Junkies,” not knowing when it would air or who would see it.
Kick-off didn’t go exactly as planned. The day they were to tape their first show, “Cakes was at Geoffrey Giraffe doing a double shift,” Flaim remembered. Indeed, Auville, then manager at a Toys “R” Us store, couldn’t get away. Instead of debuting with a two-person show, Flaim and Bickel called another friend, Bishop, who they knew didn’t have much going on, and who just happened to be available. As usual.
“He did the first show, and we said we can’t fire anybody for a stupid show we’re not paying anybody for, so that’s how Jason got in the mix,” Flaim explained. “I’m not sure anyone knows that. Jason wasn’t part of the original plan.”
The program proceeded as a quartet, and while it was fun venting about sports on TV, “I think it’s fair to say that at the time we were all searching for what we wanted to do professionally,” Bickel said in a moment of retrospection. “In the back of our minds we were dreamers. We said, Hey maybe we’ll do this cable access show and who knows, maybe somebody will like it and we won’t have to get a real job.”
A “real job” for Bickel, who has a master’s degree in education, was going to be the position of a high school counselor or basketball coach. Today, he still dresses the part of the latter: Sweatpants and a hoodie compose a typical day’s attire.
Bishop was in the marketing department for the NFL Philadelphia Eagles, commuting to Bowie on weekends to tape the TV show. “His title was peon,” Auville said. “I was,” Bishop quickly concurred. “I was a nothing. I barely got paid anything.” Other than that occupational dalliance, he’s never had a “regular” job.
Flaim finished law school at Temple, a serious educational commitment, while the Junkies were doing weekend radio. “We opened my bar results on the air,” he said. He failed. As a consolation, “It was good live radio,” Bickel said. Flaim passed the bar the second time, but to this day he’s never practiced law.
Auville is the only one who had a real career to abandon at the start of the Junkies’ take-off. He had four and a half years as a manager with the Toys “R” Us chain, a job that taught him, among other things, that “retail sucks,” as he’s wont to put it. He willingly left $25,000 in unvested 401(k) funds to quit and be a full-time Junkie, “which was a pretty penny when you’re 26 and your wife is pregnant,” he said.
A decade later, any regrets? This got a big laugh from all four. “Are you kidding?” Bickel said. “You’re looking at the four luckiest guys in town.”
The Promotion
In 1995, after some 16 episodes of their television show, the self-promotional Junkies sent a tape to The Washington Times, where it was favorably reviewed. That caught the attention of WJFK, who put them on the radio on weekend nights in 1996. They got a raise from their $50 per shift fee the next year, when they went full time and assumed the 7 to 11 p.m. slot. In 1999 the show became syndicated, bringing the Junkies to national attention.
Frequent promotional events, ranging from bikini contests to a tackle football game against the D.C. Divas women’s team (8,300 came to see the Junkies win 28 to 6) to a professional boxing match (5,457 saw Flaim—a.k.a. “The Latin Donkey”—get knocked out in the first round at the Patriot Center by Jay “The American Dream” Watts), raised their profile and assured an audience of young adult men willing to live vicariously through them. The added presence of the Junkettes, their team of scantily clad boosters of considerable feminine pulchritude, didn’t hurt either.
In 2002 they flipped to mornings at WHFS-FM (99.1); three years later they returned to WJFK at midday until they were sucked into the morning vacuum left behind when Stern famously blasted off for Sirius Satellite Radio. The pressure to even come close to Stern’s ratings was on. With caution, Flaim asserted they’ve now exceeded the King of All Media’s numbers.
They don’t come close to Stern’s $500 million, five-year deal Sirius contract, but Bickel said, “There’s lots of money in local radio.”
Like how much?
“Aw, come on man, I can’t go into that,” Auville said, addressing the one topic the otherwise bluntly candid Junkies never, ever discuss. Ironic, considering it’s one of the first questions they ask of their on-air celebrity guests. “Not us. We’re not into flaunting our W-2’s. I’ll just say we make a nice living. We’re regular guys who got a great opportunity and we realize how lucky and blessed we are to do what we’re doing.”
Flaim echoed the refreshing attitude: “I will say we are very happy and lucky to be doing something that we love with great friends. And we’re lucky that we get paid for it.”
Bickel admitted that the show sometimes has a chaotic frat boy sound, but each Junkie is a 37-year-old married suburban father. Auville has three kids, Bickel two, Bishop two, and Flaim has one.
“In the end, we’re just family guys,” Flaim said.
There’s nothing particularly dangerous about the Junkies’ stream-of-consciousness, generally inane, occasionally hilarious carpool-ish patter, unless the odd discussion of fellatio, fornication and various body functions offends you. But such frank content—with its graphic nature denatured by Federal Communications Commission-safe, coded language—is to be expected in today’s ever-coarsening broadcast market. Anyone shocked by descriptions of “ducks,” “swallows” and “spotted owls,” all Junkie slang for unprintable activities, can listen to a less offensive station.
“There’s an edge to it, but an innocence, too,” Bickel said. “We have our moments, but even when we’re at our most outrageous there’s a naivete. I think we can get away with a lot of stuff because people know we’re doing it in a spirit of fun. That’s always been a theme we try to push.
“I think people get that.”
Men Only
Most women do not. The Junkies’ cumulative audience is overwhelmingly men, and one look at their testosterone-driven website, www.junkiesradio.com, with its prominent female derrieres and bursting bikini tops, shows they know their audience.
“It’s a male-skewing station, which is hugely important” when considering their audience, Auville said. Women don’t typically tune to 106.7 for the other shows, which include “The Opie and Anthony Show,” twice fined by the FCC for indecency, sports talker Jim Rome, and “The Don and Mike Show” and “The Big O and Dukes,” both of whose hosts are virtually estrogen-free.
“It’s not that we’re hating on women,” Bickel said, “but you are what you are. We had a lot more women listening to us when we were on HFS, which was a rock station.”
Added Flaim, “There’s a perception that it’s a sports show, and sports might be 25 to 40 percent of a show, depending on the day. But a 35-year-old chick in her car doesn’t want to hear that [sports content].”
They might not want to hear women referred to as chicks, either.
The Final Sign Off
None of the Junkies has considered a future beyond the radio gig. In fact, it seems to frighten them to consider there’s a caboose on the gravy train.
“I’ll be a professional blackjack player,” Bishop offered, and you wonder if he’s kidding.
“We’re tainted,” Bickel said, no doubt speaking for the group. “I could never work a real job again. Once you work four hours a day, you’re tainted for life.”
(April 2008)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, January 8th, 2009
Six years after his retirement from the Washington Redskins, 2008 NFL Hall of Famer Darrell Green hit the ground running at Ashburn’s Redskins Park. “Yes, let’s go!” Green declared, and he blew through the lobby as if there were springs in his shoes.
By Jill Stewart Brigati
Seasons of a Man
KNOwn as THE NFL’s “fastest man” for his breakneck 4.2-second 40-yard dash, Green was dressed in his new uniform: business attire. He is Darrell Green, CEO of Darrell Green Holdings, as well as founder of non-profit Darrell Green Youth Life Foundation (DGYLF).
The 5-foot-9-inch former defensive back cradled a box of “Follow me to Canton” decals under his arm and scooped up a stack of papers as he entered the press conference. It was May, and while this year’s lineup streamed off the field from their first round of off-season activities, Green beelined it into a media event with former teammate and fellow Hall of Fame honoree Art Monk to announce how the pair would use their renewed celebrity status to work for the greater good. They were about to embark on a 10-city charitable fundraising tour, to include Canton, Ohio’s Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony in August.
Green, 48, still emanated game-day energy. “Hey, it’s our season, let’s go!” he cheered into the microphone, cameras clicking, TV lights ablaze.
He and Monk opted for the road show over relaxing in their perpetual off-season. “For whatever reason, people are interested in someone who can run fast or catch a ball,” Green said. “There is wisdom in taking advantage of that now.” So the two men leveraged their HOF spotlight honors to launch a joint non-profit venture, Hilaron, promoting education, job-readiness and character development for inner-city youth.
Jewell Green can recall her husband’s desire to give back to the community burgeoning as soon as he became part of it in 1983. It started with a children’s Christmas party hosted by the mayor’s office. Green kept bringing more and more players down to the mayor’s party, she said, until he realized he could start a party in his own house.
Then DGYLF was born in 1988. At around the same time, “Art was handing out Thanksgiving turkeys from a truck,” said wife Desiree. Within a few years, Monk founded the non-profit Good Samaritan Foundation with former teammate Charles Mann.
“We were kids when we got here,” reflected Green on his early years with Monk. “We’d drive up to football camp with our legs tucked under us, looking out the window.”
As the “kid” evolved into a man, Green set a lifetime of NFL records—all in Washington. At 23, he was a first-round draft choice from what was then known as Texas A&I. He first made his mark with D.C. fans chasing down Dallas Cowboy Tony Dorsett in the opening game of his rookie season in a 99.5-yard run. Now, having spent his entire 20-year career in D.C., he’s set a record for the most years with one franchise. Green holds claim to the most game starts (258), most games played (295), most career interceptions (54), and he was the first player in game history to make at least one interception for 19 straight seasons. “The Ageless Wonder” also earned the title of record-holder as the oldest cornerback to return an interception for a touchdown (age 37) before he retired at age 42—another record-breaking age for cornerbacks.
But from diehard fans to Washingtonians who know nothing about football, you say, “Darrell Green,” and they say, “nice guy.” He describes his humanitarian work as a lifetime passion.
“Football was my job. This is my heart’s desire,” he explained. The All-Pro, Pro-Bowler and Super Bowl champ wants his name to equate with social action. “We talk about legacies … Say what you want after I’m gone,” he teased. “While we’re here I want everyone talking about what we can do today.”
NoVa Neighbors
The fact that Green has remained in the Metro area post-retirement has helped him cull support for his causes. He and Jewell live in Ashburn with their three children, his corporate office is in Sterling, and DGYLF is headquartered in Northeast D.C. Green has also been involved in area campaigns for colon cancer prevention, smoking cessation and employment for ex-offenders.
His day-to-day involvement in his work makes Green a very busy neighbor. “I met with a guy in prison last week, I have a student coming in this weekend from Texas to start college, and I took my son to see the warriors [returning soldiers] over at Walter Reed yesterday.”
The 19-year-old considered the experience. “At first I didn’t know what to say to these guys—they’re my age. I really didn’t feel worthy,” he said. But Dad’s example led the way, and Derrick wound up playing video games with the soldiers for a couple of hours. “I plan on doing a lot more of this kind of thing.”
Green expressed gratitude for the fact that he sparked his children’s desire to serve society. “For me, the cement is dry,” he said in reference to the foundation he has built for his family. “This is not to say that a tree might not fall on the house, but I do not have to rebuild that house every day.”
In It Together
Green credits his personal stability and that of his family’s to a religious faith that was first imbued in him in his college days. He said his sense of morality, devotion to family and work ethic all stem from “the spirit inside me, versus my own spirit.
“There’s also a safety net around me—people like Art, my wife, our families, people we keep fellowship with, they keep me on track.”
Former Redskins star linebacker Ken Harvey attends the same church as Monk and Green. “You couldn’t meet someone more deserving than Darrell,” Harvey commented on his friend’s HOF honors.
“He was a shoo-in,” Monk agreed. “Given my track record, I was glad to come in on his coattails.”
Monk deadpanned as he alluded to the disparity between Green’s first-year selection and what many fans found to be a bewildering seven-year wait for him. “It is no coincidence we were inducted together,” added Monk, who credited a higher power for the match-up.
Green said he’s thrilled to be inducted alongside his like-minded teammate. “He’s my friend, [I consider him] my family, our families take vacations together, the kids call us ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle.’” The pair is also bonded by their commitment to serving others through the church; both of their personal charities happen to be faith-based.
“It all makes sense; now is the time for us,” Green beamed.
The Skins, Today
According to Green, one of his related goals is to inspire a new generation of Redskins to lifelong philanthropy. “This goes beyond all runs, tackles … missed interceptions,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. In particular, he’d like to see Hilaron live in perpetuity via younger players willing to pick up the torch. “This is our life’s work, not a [temporary] program,” he said, adding the outline of a hope that Route 281, the name of their fundraising tour, will be adopted by future Hall of Famers.
Indeed, the veteran’s influence both on and off the field seems to be catching on. As second-year linebacker Matt Sinclair exited Redskins Park on the day of the conference, he paused to share his thoughts on Green: “He shows us a rich tradition. I was a kid when he started playing. It was clear he was the type of guy you’d strive to be like—as a player, in business and as a man.”
When asked about the team’s newest staff member, Sinclair responded he feels confident that, while the leadership of Joe Gibbs was “iconic,” new head coach Jim Zorn will be able to “bring the players back to that great tradition.”
Green was careful to note he thinks Zorn has his work cut out for him, and sees Zorn’s job as one of player development. Gibbs left a strong base of veteran players, Green said, and it’s now up to Zorn keep the bar high.
“We were fortunate,” Green said, referring to the Skins’ golden years and Gibbs’s first go-round as coach between 1981 and 1993. He does not point to Gibbs’s first retirement as a wrench thrown in the gears, but rather points to today’s locker room as a microcosm of a troubled society. “You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to see there are issues.”
“These guys exhibit the entire range of morality,” he continued. He doesn’t see an easy way to weed it out. “You’ve got talent and skill along with exploits and rehab, players who are money-driven and players who are morality-driven.” He paused, unsmiling. “Unfortunately, it will be Zorn’s responsibility to manage that.”
New players like Sinclair said they’re attracted to Zorn’s laidback approach, a contrast to Gibbs’s style; Green cited the new coach’s “blue-collar, roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-to-work” attitude as one that he believes will positively impact the team.
Family First
Green’s man’s-man-next-door persona developed from his working-class upbringing in Houston, Texas. He was one of seven children and the fourth of five boys.
“It was the best childhood anyone could have,” he reflected. “I wouldn’t trade it for a minute.”
According to Green, it was his father’s drive and sense of commitment that got him off to the right start in his own career. “If he could do 30 years at his [job], I could surely do 20 with the Redskins.”
Even at the height of his professional success, Green made sure he kept no longer than an eight-hour workdays, in order to spend time with his family.
“Today it’s not much different,” Green said, although he does admit to having recently missed some of his days off with Hall of Fame-related requests.
“The day of the [HOF] announcement was our last day of relaxation,” Jewell said. “I came to this press conference to find out what our schedule looks like for the few next months.”
The Greens, who have been married for 23 years, both agree that neither of their lives have changed inherently since Darrell’s career came to a close.
“We wanted to extend our trip in Florida [for the Super Bowl/HOF ann ouncement], but the kids had to get back to school,” Jewell said.
“Still the same value system,” added Green.
Green would be repeating his springtime pep talk at media gatherings umpteen more times throughout the summer season. “There’s still enough reminiscing to do, excitement to tap into from us old-school guys …you know, from the days when we still had hair,” he laughed. Just as the Redskins are ready to launch into a new era, he added, so is he.
“Let’s go,” Green said. “Follow me.”
(October 2008)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, January 1st, 2009
Winning a New Stadium Poses Major League Challenges for a Minor League Team
By Rawn James, Jr.
Photography by Jonathan Timmes
A Friday night game opens the PNats’ first homestand of the season and C. Richard Pfitzner Stadium resembles a 10-year-old Ford scrubbed spit-shine clean for the prom. The grass beams manicured green beneath the late evening’s summer sun. American and Virginian flags flap in a breeze blowing as easily as the players’ trot from the dugout. The stadium is ringed by tall deciduous trees whose leaves flutter high above the ballpark, mimicking the children below who dance to the music accompanying each batter’s introduction.
The game is against the Frederick Keys and, despite the balmy weather, attendance is sparse. Most fans are seated in the first four rows of box seats along the first and third baselines.
The bleachers are nearly empty. Pfitzner Stadium is well-staffed with earnest teenagers, and there appears to be a one-to-one fan-to-staffer ratio. Before you sit in your box seat, a smiling teen wipes it clean for you.
What the crowd lacks in numbers, however, it makes up for in enthusiasm. The fans greet the starting lineup with justified cheers: Unlike their major league namesakes, the Potomac Nationals are doing well this season. They are in first place in the Northern Division of the Carolina League. Their pitcher tonight is a 6-foot-5-inch 22-year-old southpaw named John Lannan, and the fans want him to pick apart the Frederick Keys lineup. When the umpire makes a close call on a ball, boos bellow across the field. The next pitch is a strike. Lannan wipes his brow.
Photography by Jonathan timmes
Winding the Pitch
Last winter, just 30 miles south of the Washington Nationals’ new stadium site, it appeared that their Single A affiliate, the Potomac Nationals, would join their major league namesake in procuring a new stadium.
Team owner Art Silber spent months negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the Prince William Park Authority to replace 23-year-old G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium with a state-of-the-art $22.5 million ballpark. Under the terms of the MOU, the PNats, as fans affectionately call the team, would lease the 6,500-seat stadium for 25 years. Silber agreed to pay half the stadium’s construction costs and the county would pay the rest.
By the time a public hearing was held in January, however, the PNats’ prospects for a new stadium hung lower than the winter clouds over the Occoquan River. Six of the eight members of the Prince William Board of Supervisors told The Washington Post that they would vote against the plan. County residents seemed almost unanimous in their opposition to a publicly-financed stadium. The Board of Supervisors never brought the plan to a vote.
Silber admitted, “Right now everything’s stopped.” Indeed, it appears the plan to replace Pfitzner Stadium with a publicly-funded ballpark is dead.
Occasionally, though, even the wiliest pitchers get hit deep and the most predictable politicians surprise. The Potomac Nationals’ continuing quest for a new stadium is the story of how the region’s most conservative county is poised at the vanguard of changing the method and meaning of building an arena with public funds.
This Old House
The Potomac Nationals joined the Single A Carolina League in 1978. After being affiliated with major league teams like the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox, the team associated with the Washington Nationals in 2005. In September 2006, the Potomac Nationals signed a player development deal affiliating the PNats with Washington for at least the next four years. The Washington Nationals issued a statement declaring they were “excited to extend our working relationship with the Potomac Nationals.”
The Potomac Nationals were less than excited to spend another season playing in Pfitzner Stadium. Originally called Davis Ford Park when it opened in 1983, the ballpark was renamed a few years later to honor the Board of Supervisors member who led the successful effort to move the Class A baseball team from Alexandria to Woodbridge. Barry Bonds played his first professional baseball game at “the Pfitz” as a member of the Prince William Pirates. During the 20 years since then, several amenities have been added to the arena, including the box seats behind first and third base and a new scoreboard. As the team’s website boasts, however, “the basic structure from 1984 still remains.”
This, according to Brian Merzbach, proprietor of the long-standing website www.ballparkreviews.com, is the root of the problem. Pfitzner Stadium “is a very cheaply made, typical ballpark of the mid 1980s,” he wrote. “I’ll go back when they have a new stadium, but certainly not before.” Merzbach, who responded from his home in New York, said that a stadium’s condition “absolutely affects attendance. With a good facility, I have no doubt that the Potomac Nationals would be able to draw a large number of fans.” Art Silber, the man who has owned Potomac’s baseball team for 19 years, could not agree more. “[The stadium’s condition] is seriously affecting attendance,” he said. “It’s so uncomfortable to sit there. We only have about 500 individual seats. Everything else is a bleacher, and more than half of those do not have backs.”
Silber is an energetic former president and CEO of a Baltimore-based bank whose vivid love of the game belies his corporate background. At 66 years old, he coaches first base in a Nationals uniform, and is one of only two men in professional baseball permitted to wear Jackie Robinson’s retired number 42. (The other is future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees.)
“A couple seasons ago,” Silber continued, gaining momentum in discussing The Pfitz’s condition, “a fan sitting up in the bleachers actually fried two eggs on the bleachers during a day game. That’s how hot it was in those seats.”
And while the fans may have it bad at The Pfitz, the players have it even worse. “We have three showerheads for 30 people. The locker rooms are beneath the high school level. We only have one toilet. The press box is an absolute joke; the roof leaks.”
How does it compare to other ballparks in the league?
“It doesn’t. It is simply a horrible, horrible facility that is literally falling apart. The nuts and bolts are rusting.” Silber sighed before concluding, “If we don’t get a new ballpark, we’d have to leave because the facility would be unplayable.”
The score is tied at zero at the end of the first inning.
The PNats mascot, Uncle Slam, resembles a larger-than-life Smurf in an Uncle Sam getup. The crowd cheers when a 3-year-old boy named Clayton beats a decidedly gimpy Uncle Slam in a race around the bases. When he isn’t hosting between-the-innings entertainment, the mascot mingles and jokes in the stands.
Uncle Slam also sponsors a reading program in which over 10,000 area students participate. After the fifth inning of a game last season, Uncle Slam shoved two men out of the beer line to get a quick laugh from other fans. He is complex that way.
Ian Desmond is the PNats photogenic 22-year-old shortstop from Sarasota, Calif., who has hit one homerun this year. With the score tied at zero at the bottom of the second inning and with a man on second, Desmond hits his second homerun. The Nationals’ score goes up by two runs and the crowd erupts.
After the game, Desmond will tell Robert Daski, a reporter who covers the PNats for The Potomac News with a George Will-like appreciation for those who play the game, “Everything’s kind of clicking right now. It takes a lot off your mind when you’re having fun.”
The night’s fun is just beginning for Desmond as he receives high fives in the dugout; he will hit a double and a single later this evening.
Public Peanuts Needed
NBC News reports that, over the last 15 years, local governments have granted $15 billion in subsidies to finance stadiums. Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s success in persuading localities to foot the bill for major league stadiums has trickled down to minor league teams. The Brooklyn Cyclones, the New York Mets’ Class A team, play in the 7,500 seat KeySpan Park, which opened in 2001 and cost the City of New York $39 million.
The Big Apple’s taxpayers shelled out another $71 million to build Richmond County Bank Ballpark for the Class A Staten Island Yankees. The borough’s president claimed that the stadium would economically energize its neighborhood—the same argument set forth by proponents of the Washington Nationals’ stadium in southeast Washington, D.C.
Jeremiah Collins, a fan keeping score in the box seats with his girlfriend, takes his Nationals baseball seriously. Decked out in a Washington Nationals cap and T-shirt, Collins has been coming to minor league games in Woodbridge for eight years. When asked what he thinks of The Pfitz, he replied, “This is definitely one of the smaller stadiums. The one in Myrtle Beach is larger and nicer.” Collins nods to indicate the mostly empty ballpark. “But this is a great deal. You can pick out where you want to sit. Compared to the prices at RFK, 12 bucks [for a box seat] is great.” Asked if he would pay higher ticket prices to replace Pfitzner Stadium, Collins is emphatic: “I definitely would pay more for a new facility. Definitely.”
As for the team?
“They’ve gotten better in the last five years.”
Before the third inning, the announcer proclaims over the speakers that the judges have determined which is “The Dirtiest Car in the Parking Lot.”
“Oh, that’s messed up,” laughs a man who could win any Carroll O’Connor look-alike contest.
The announcer broadcasts the license plate number and invites the car’s owner to claim the prize: a free deluxe car wash courtesy of a local sponsor. Everyone looks around to see who owns the Dirtiest Car in the Parking Lot. The winner is not immediately forthcoming. On cue, the DJ plays Rose Royce’s classic song “Car Wash” over the loudspeakers; adults laugh and children dance while the Nationals toss around the baseball.
Major Players
The seat of the Prince William County Government is at 1 County Complex Court, just off Prince William Parkway. Facing a massive parking lot, the only destination in walking distance from the County Complex is Pfitzner Stadium. Any publicly-financed ballpark deal will have to be approved by the Prince William Board of Supervisors, which meets three times a month at the James J. McCoart Administration Building at the Complex.
The Chambers seats visitors comfortably in movie theater-style chairs, complete with cushions covered in red fabric. Supervisors conduct business on a semi-circle dais, and, unlike members of most legislative bodies, they actually pay attention when a colleague is speaking.
Noticeably absent from the dais is the fidgeting, whispering and empty seats that tend to make most legislative hearings look like college freshman biology lectures.
After serving three years as Supervisor for the Occoquan District, Corey A. Stewart was elected Chairman-at-Large in a November 2006 special election. In an interview one week before the PNats 2007 season opener, Stewart offered this assessment of Pfitzner Stadium: “It’s the worst stadium in the Carolina League, and its poor condition is suppressing the team’s revenue.” Having said that, Stewart added flatly, “There will not be a vote [on stadium funding] this year. It’s a question of how much debt can we afford.”
Right now, Prince William County can hardly afford to take on any new debt. The national slowdown in the real estate market hit the fast-growing county particularly hard. Prince William faces an $18.1 million shortfall for fiscal year 2007, and this figure may increase in 2008.
Yet, Stewart says he is “very optimistic” that the Board will approve a publicly-financed stadium construction plan if it comes for a vote next year.
Everyone Wins
By the end of the sixth inning, the PNats lead the Keys 8-0. The night’s breeze carries a slight chill. A junior high school teacher, who asked that her name not be used because she was discussing a school trip to the stadium, described sitting in the bleachers.
“They are very uncomfortable, especially when it’s cold. That’s when they feel cold and damp. But when it’s hot, they burn in the sun.” When she attends games with her family, she adds, she sits in the box seats. The Potomac Nationals go on to beat the Frederick Keys 8-2. Six PNats had more than one hit, and pitcher John Lannan pitched his third straight win. For all its shortcomings, no one ever claimed that The Pfitz was unlucky.
The Board of Supervisors’ goal, were it not accompanied by the outlines of a plan to enact it, would comprise the sort of everyone-wins proposition most often found in campaign speeches and elementary school talent contests: As Chairman Stewart described it, the Board wants to build a stadium “that costs the county literally nothing. It will be revenue-neutral.”
County officials hope to build its revenue-neutral ballpark with something of a quilt of public and private funds. Silber is committed to paying half of the new stadium’s estimated $23-million price tag.
The county will pay for the other half by selling the naming rights to the new stadium and dedicating the state sales tax revenue to paying for the ballpark — an idea first promulgated in Richmond when Virginia was competing for a major league team.
“The combination of Silber’s contribution, plus naming rights plus a sales tax refund [from the state] brings us very close to having a revenue-neutral stadium. The debt challenges have forced us to think outside the box.”
Even if Richmond balks at permitting the county to pay for the stadium with stadium-generated revenue, the county might be able to pay its half of the construction costs from the naming rights revenue alone. The Fresno Grizzlies play in a relatively small market and recently sold the stadium’s naming rights to Chucchansi Gold Resort & Casino for $16 million over 15 years.
The Potomac Nationals play in one of professional baseball’s largest Class A markets; naming rights to its stadium could fetch over a million dollars per year.
“So many major companies in the area have bought naming rights,” Silber said. “Look at FedEx, Comcast and Verizon. We are pretty optimistic and hopeful that we will have a new ballpark for the ’09 season.”
(August 2007)