Memories of The Dutchman and Go-Go

The triumvirate above, captured in a 1976 photo taken at a football game at Titan Stadium in Oshkosh, are about to inflict a live sports broadcast on an unsuspecting Fox Valley radio audience. That’s yours truly on the left, wearing a Vikings football jacket (don’t ask; I’m a lifelong Packers fan; the jacket was a gift and I still have it); in the middle is Dave Hoopman, my sax-playing compadre from the John Check band, who provided stats and analysis on the broadcasts; and on the right, in the Sox jacket, is Oshkosh-born former major league pitcher Bill Gogolewski, who made the color comments on the game.

And a colorful character he was.

Gogolewski pronounces his name the traditional Polish way, not the Americanized version. He’d say “see that ‘w’ in my name? It’s there, but it’s not pronounced”.  Actually, as I learned, he just didn’t want people to say go-go-LOU-skee, preferring go-go-LES-kee; but when he introduced himself to people, if you listened carefully, you could hear just the slightest “v” sound…go-go-lev-skee.  The story of how we came to be a broadcast team in ’75 and ’76 starts with another Oshkosh native, former National League umpire Lawrence “Dutch” Rennert.

Dutch spent his summers umpiring in the Pacific Coast League from 1965 to 1972, and in ’73 was called up to the majors where he had a great 20-year run.  In the dead of winter, when baseball wasn’t being played anywhere, Dutch would come back to Oshkosh and work as a referee for high school basketball games, which is where I first met him.  Before each game I broadcast, I’d always get the names of the officials if I didn’t know them. The first time I met Dutch he was officiating a game with the great Otto Puls, who said to me “you ought to know this guy, he’s from Oshkosh”. We often ran into each other in various sports circumstances (including the 1975 Major League All-Star game, at County Stadium in Milwaukee) and always had polite conversations.  We’d often talk about my high school baseball coach at Hortonville, Russ Tiedemann, who moved on to UW-Oshkosh and sent a bunch of guys (Jim Gantner to name one) off to careers in pro baseball.

The Dutchman, as everybody called him, had quite a career as a National League ump, including umping in three World Series and at two All-Star games. A 1983 New York Times poll named Dutch Rennert  the best umpire in the NL.  He essentially invented the colorful and animated “steee-rike” call – there are plenty of examples on YouTube you can easily find – and was the ump who, in August of 1990, ejected Reds manager “Sweet” Lou Piniella after arguing balls and strikes with him. It made Sweet Lou’s quick temper flare in perhaps the best (or worst) example in Major League history, when on his way to the showers Sweet Lou pulled first base off its mount and tossed it into the outfield.

Dutch, who spends most of his time in Florida now, lost vision in his left eye after the ’92 season, and that ended his career.

In the fall of ’75, Dutch called me at the radio station, and said “you know, Bill Gogolewski just retired from pro ball; he’s kicking around Oshkosh somewhere – you ought to give him a call and see if he wants to do some games with you”.  Long story short, Go-go (as everyone called him) was eager to get a chance to learn something about sports broadcasting, and also became a fine advertising salesman for the station.

Bill was born in Oshkosh on October 26^th of 1947, played for Oshkosh High (back when there was only one high school in town), and was drafted in the 18^th round in 1965 by the Washington Senators. He did his time in the minors, and was called up to the big leagues by the Senators in 1970.  That's a picture of Gogo as a rookie, above. At that time, he was paid the kingly sum of one thousand dollars a month ($12,000 annual total). I believe the major league minimum salary is now $480,000 a year.  Gogo was a relief pitcher for the Senators in ’70 and ’71; he wore uniform number 13.

In 1972, six unsuperstitious players in the big leagues wore #13; Go-go used to joke “two of the best pitchers in the majors in ’72 wore #13; I’m one, who’s the other”? The answer is John “Blue Moon” Odom. (In ’72 four other major leaguers wore #13….Dave Concepcion of the Reds, Doyle Alexander of the Orioles, Joe Ferguson of the Dodgers, and Dick Woodson of the Twins.)

Here’s a great baseball trivia photograph (above): Gogo’s 1974 baseball card, showing him in a Rangers uniform.  He was traded to the Rangers in ’72 and pitched for them for two seasons, but his baseball card photo for ’74 was taken just prior to the start of the season, and he was traded to the Indians when the season started, so he never actually appeared for the Rangers in ’74.

Gogo spent his last year in baseball in ’75 as a reliever with the White Sox.  He told me he was eternally grateful to his Sox pitching coach, the late great Johnny Sain, for getting him through the entire season. Gogo said his back and arm hurt so much he could hardly stand it, but Johnny Sain helped him make it to the end of the season, when he retired.

He never complained about his pain, but I knew it was there.  One time, when he thought he was alone in the radio station’s sales office and was getting ready to visit a client, I came in to talk to him about an upcoming sports broadcast.  He didn’t see me in the doorway, had his back to me, and bent down to pick up his briefcase – which weighed maybe 10 pounds.  He got it a few inches off the floor with his right arm, but quickly dropped it, let out a soft groan, and grabbed his arm.  I didn’t want him to know I saw it, so I quickly left.

Gogo was a fast learner; he caught on to sports broadcasting quickly, and I encouraged him to tell some of his great baseball stories during breaks in the game.  He had so many great stories; I can’t remember a single one, though.  After the broadcasts, we’d often end up at Repp’s Bar on the river in Oshkosh, where Gogo would tell some of the many “not suitable for broadcast” stories about his time in the big leagues.  He was a natural on the American Legion league baseball broadcasts we did in the summer of ’76; and he made great contributions to the many football and basketball games we did in those seasons.

Gogo still lives in Oshkosh, where he is the head of the City Parks Commission.  Great guy; great storyteller; I’m honored to have worked with him.

Can't Nobody Speak Good English No More?

I guess it was when I heard NBC News reporter Dennis Murphy say “one-year anniversary” on a report Saturday night.  This man – nearly my age – went to an exclusive prep school (Georgetown Prep  in Maryland) and is a graduate of Williams College. So he is at least partially educated.  I think it was hearing an experienced network reporter like Murphy say something as stupid as “one-year anniversary” that set me off on this, my latest rant about the decline of appropriate grammar, usage, and structure of the English spoken (and written) by news broadcasters.

Please have mercy for my wife, who must listen to me rant about this stuff just about every day.  And don’t get me wrong –I know the difference between conversational and formal English and am a huge advocate of the conversational form, even in news reports.

Let’s face it: nobody says “fled on foot”.  Everybody says “ran off” or “ran away”.  Yet you hear that usage just about every day on broadcast news, where the writer simply transposed the phrase from the police report.  Somewhere in my dusty old consultant report files, I have a piece of broadcast news copy which contains the phrase “fled on foot in an unknown direction with an undetermined amount of United States Currency”.  In English, that’s usually said “ran off with a bunch of money”, yet the young person who wrote the story (or, more appropriately, plagiarized the police report) was capable of speaking perfectly acceptable conversational English – while NOT on the air or writing news copy.

That’s an example of what I used to call the “process-product” fault – getting so wrapped up in the process of writing news copy that you forget the goal is to produce copy which will be easily understood by the “end-user”.

A report on a Green Bay TV station a few days ago told of “a child who was injured by a firework”.  I’m not sure how that tortured usage came to be.

Here’s something that comes up several times every summer in Madison.  It’s a constant source of belly-laughs to hear the local newsies deal with “Concerts on the Square”.  There are six of them, every Wednesday night from mid-June to the end of July.  It’s as though the plural noun can never be changed or altered: “The Concerts on the Square are postponed tonight due to (and, of course, it should be “because of”) bad weather”.  Wouldn’t it be simpler to say “Tonight’s Concert on the Square is postponed because of bad weather”? 

These are the kind of folks who would never say “physics are the hardest subject I ever took in High School” but can’t deal with deconstructing a simple plural noun.  And let’s not even open the can of worms about those who say things like “I’m going to the Brewer game tonight”.

If Journalism were truly a profession, rather than an occupation, you’d have to pass some sort of test before being allowed to inflict news on the general public.  I’ve often said if someone were serious about Journalism, they’d take a lot of courses in English composition to learn the craft of properly using our language. 

Imagine what general medicine would be like if doctors didn’t have to take and pass many courses in anatomy.  Or what general aviation would be like if pilots didn’t have to understand the physics of powered flight.  Or if you went to a service garage where the mechanics knew a lot about engines, but nothing about transmissions.  Or a public school band director who knew a great deal about playing brass instruments, but nothing about reeds or strings.

What I’m getting at is that so many people who are presumed to be professional communicators seem to know so little about the fundamentals of English.  They couldn’t diagram a sentence if you asked.  They have no understanding about subtleties like active versus (or, as the young folks say, “verse”) passive voice.  They’ve never heard of terms like misplaced modifier or dangling participle. They wouldn’t know a relative pronoun from a reflexive pronoun.

I realize this battle was lost a long time ago, and the pushback I would get during my consulting days usually consisted of some form of “you don’t need to be an auto mechanic to be a good driver; I don’t need to know what makes it tick, I just need to know how to operate it”; or “ya, well, the Beatles couldn’t read music, but they sure created a lot of damn good songs”.  Depending on my level of frustration I would occasionally reply with something like “if you could write news as well as John Lenon and Paul McCartney could write songs, your boss wouldn’t have paid me to come here and try to teach you this stuff”.

People who say things like “it’s my parents’ 35-year anniversary tomorrow” would never say “my mom is celebrating her 56-year birthday tomorrow”.  But a veteran professional communicator like Dennis Murphy who says something as stupid as “one-year anniversary” needs retraining.  That kind of crap is for the young folks.

Fear and Loathing In Tile-Land, or, The Flooded Basement Syndrome

I spent a total of about 20 minutes today sucking up water from the floor on the lowest level of our home with a shop-vac.  According to the precise meteorological monitoring equipment installed at the Morrissey Compound, as we call it, we got just under four inches of rain (or, as the weather folks now say, “rainfall”) between 4 AM and 8 AM.

My first pass with the shop-vac around 9:30 AM sucked up most of the water; and another quick pass at 2 got the rest.  Near as I can guess it amounted to about 5 gallons of water; at least that’s what I drained out of the shop-vac.  But 5 gallons of water looks like a lot more when it’s pooled on a tile floor.

I don’t have it anywhere near as bad as a lot of people in Madison had it today.  There are people I know who are telling stories on social media about standing ankle-deep or higher in water in their basement, bailing it out as best they can.  And if you’ve seen the videos from University Ave on the local TV’s, you know a lot of folks in that neck of the woods are facing a lot of hours of back-breaking work.

We don’t really have a “basement” per se.  Our home consists of four levels, and the lowest level, which sits on a concrete slab (or, as many would incorrectly say, a “cement” slab) is only half below the grade. The lowest level has an expansive “great room”, and full bedroom and full bathroom, a large storage closet, and a mechanical room where the HVAC equipment, water heater (or, as some would say, “hot water heater”), sump pump, and water softener are located.   All told the lower level is around a thousand square feet. We pulled the carpet out of the great room and bedroom a couple years after we bought the house, and replaced it with tile.

The lower level flooded several times the first summer we lived in the house; each time it was during hellacious rainstorms where the sky just opened up and it rained hard for a long time.  After we got as much water out as we could, we had to call in professionals to clean and sanitize the carpet, which was a soggy mess. 

I called a local landscaping contractor the next spring to tell me what he thought we should do, and his solution, which carried a 28-thousand-dollar pricetag, was to essentially recreate the Suez Canal in our back and side yard, to “capture” the water flowing down the natural lay of the land and redirect it away from the house.

I didn’t like that idea.

So I asked a bunch of people what they would do, short of building the Suez Canal, and most of them said I should try replacing our standard 4-inch rain gutters with commercial 6-inch gutters – and put a long extension pipe at the end of the downspout to throw the water draining off the roof as far away as possible.  I got an estimate from a local contractor, and I think it ended up costing three or four grand to replace all the 4-inch gutters with 6-inch commercial extruded aluminum gutters.

We went from having five or six “flooding events” each summer to one, maybe two at the most, and much, much less water got in when it did flood.  The challenge, as I learned, was to keep those big-ass gutters free of the ten zillion whirligigs that come off the huge old maple tree in our yard.  If I’m not vigilant about asking my wife to brave life and limb and go up on a ladder to clean out the ends of the gutters….where my 210-mile-per-hour gasoline-powered leaf blower with the eave-cleaning attachment can’t reach….the water will back up at the end of the gutter, eventually fill the gutter because it’s draining so slowly, and a ton of rainwater draining from two levels of roofs will end up splashing down right next to the foundation, and eventually seep into the lower level.

It’s not pleasant, but it’s not really that much of a pain to drag the shop-vac down there and suck up a few gallons of standing water.  It could be a lot worse.  Replacing the carpeting with tile, and adding the 6-inch rain gutters was money very well spent.

If you’re not so lucky, you have my sympathy.

WTMJ Lawyers to FCC: Talk Shows Are "Bona Fide News". REALLY? SINCE WHEN???

There was a time, many years ago, when the logo above had at least an element of truth: WTMJ-AM was sort of like the “official” station of Wisconsin.  As the broadcast outlet for the Milwaukee Journal (the call letters stand for “The Milwaukee Journal”), WTMJ had fact-filled newscasts twice an hour all day and all night, and some of the best on-air personalities ever to work in Wisconsin.  WTMJ’s signal pretty much covered the entire state.

 

That was a long time ago.

 

Now, WTMJ is just another radio station, featuring extreme right-wing “talk personalities” and highly slanted news.  Often, it’s the stories WTMJ does NOT report (anything negative regarding Governor Walker or a member of the Republican Party) that clearly indicate the news department’s editorial bias.

 

No one under 40 years of age views WTMJ – or any other radio station – as “Wisconsin’s Radio Station”. All radio stations are equal in the digital age; whether a station has 500 watts of power or 50,000 watts of power; whether its signal reaches one neighborhood or seven states; whether it’s connected with a TV station or not, every radio station is equal on the internet.

 

WTMJ has become such a sycophantic voice for extreme right-wing politics that a petition was filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by a group called the Media Action Center asking that the station’s license be revoked for supplying Scott Walker half a million dollars or more worth of free air time during the recall election, and refusing to give ANY time to supporters of Walker’s opponent in the recall, Tom Barrett.

 

This is the verifiable truth, although that seems these days to be an abstract concept for legions of citizens who feel entitled to their own facts and their own truths.  WTMJ simply refused to allow on the air anyone who had anything bad to say about Scott Walker.

 

The FCC has pretty much gotten itself out of the content-monitoring business, even though that was once one of the most important duties of the huge federal bureaucracy.  But there are still a few rules that have not been de-regulated, one of which is called the “Zapple Doctrine”, which states broadcasters must give supporters of both major party candidates comparable air-time.  The only exception to the Zapple Doctrine is a “bona fide news program”.  The exemption is given to allow and encourage real-time, live coverage of candidates’ events, news conferences, and public appearances.

 

Oh, there’s still some FCC content monitoring:  if a woman exposes her breast at half-time of a big football telecast, the FCC will be knocking on the control room door before the end of the third quarter.

 

Anyone who’s listened to WTMJ talk-show hosts Charlie Sykes or Jeff Wagner can discern within a few minutes their political bias.  And on a talk show, that’s fine.  There are just as many lefty yammerers as there are right-wingers.  The problem is that so many Americans have lost the ability to discern between “news” and “talk” programs.  (Where would they get that idea that talk programs and news programs are the same thing…..certainly not from the host of the highest-rated talk show on American radio, who refers to himself as “America’s Anchorman”.  At least the late Paul Harvey clearly labeled his broadcasts as “News and Comment”.

 

Now, for the first time in American history, attorneys for WTMJ have responded to the FCC regarding their license challenge – officially and in writing, mind you – with the assertion that its local political talk shows are “bona fide news”, and are thus exempt from the Zapple Doctrine.

 

This assertion that talk shows are news programs is complete BS.

 

But, if the industry trade publications are right, there’s a 50-50 chance the FCC will decide that Charlie Sykes is indeed, a “newsman”.

 

If so, it will be a sad day for Democracy.

Stand By For Astonishment

It’s “Spring Sweeps” for the TV industry – from April 25^th through May 22^nd – and if you’ve been wondering why you’ve been seeing a barrage of promotional announcements on the local news channels for sensational stories coming up on the news at 6 or 10, you now know the answer.

It’s ratings time.

This is why one of the local news channels just did an expose’ about prostitution in Madison. And why you’ll likely see stories about germ counts in local restaurants (“would you eat here, knowing what you know now?!?!?!?!), merchants caught swindling folks at the cash register (can you trust ANYONE these days?!?!?!?!?), and bedbug infestations at local hotels (“would you want to sleep here?!?!?!?).

OK, maybe it’s not that bad, but – there was that local prostitution story.

Married, as I am, to a woman who worked in local TV news for many years, I can attest that most of this sensational stuff is the bane of the local reporter’s existence.  The spring rating period is one of the most important ones for the TV industry, and while the local ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox affiliates can’t do much to control the ratings for the network shows they carry, they can – and do – vie for your attention in their local newscasts.  And sweeps month is when they do it the most aggressively.

In some markets, it’s far worse than it is in Madison.  Reporters will be ordered to do outrageous things like spend a week as a homeless person, to “show us what it’s like”; and they’ll trot out the most absurd stretches of the concept “could this happen here?”, which has been a staple in the broadcast news industry for decades.  Houses in a small subdivision in northern California are slowly slipping into unexplainable sinkholes, and people’s homes and huge investments are crumbling – COULD THIS HAPPEN HERE??????????

Take it all with a grain of salt.  They do what they have to do to get your attention, to make you watch, to drive up the ratings.  It’s simply the way the game is played.

What’s sad is the story behind the story, which you can hear from broadcast news practitioners when they gather at local watering holes to commiserate: the legitimate investigative stories that they’ve done, documented, and produced – where they really get the goods on somebody – only to have the story be “spiked” by the station’s legal counsel as “too dangerous to air – we might get sued”.  Well, that’s the point, isn’t it: when you get the goods on somebody, they’re going to sue you!

So, relax and enjoy the expose’s of dirty restaurant kitchens and bedbug-infested hotels ….laugh at the outrageousness.  

It’s sweeps month.

A Sad Day In Iowa Radio

Broadcasting has lost an icon with the untimely death of Mark Vos, who was felled by a fatal heart attack this past weekend.  Mark was only 58, but he has left an indelible mark on radio broadcasting, and leaves a legacy of respect and admiration from his scores of friends and former colleagues.

The picture above, a promotional photo for KRNA, was taken “a few years ago”……when Mark, on the right with the bass guitar….and my friend and business partner Glen Gardner were busy dominating eastern Iowa radio as “Those Guys In the Morning” on KRNA.  When Mark took over as Program Director at KRNA in 1986 and teamed up with Glen to do the morning show, the duo opened a new era of great rock radio and total dominance of eastern Iowa ratings for a decade.  KRNA is licensed to Iowa City, but the studios are a few miles north in Cedar Rapids, and the KRNA FM signal booms over five states.

Mark Vos was universally regarded as a programming and promotions genius, with an uncanny ability to bring the biggest names in rock to Cedar Rapids for concerts and promotions with KRNA.  He worked in Cedar Rapids, but his name was known by rock radio programmers from New York to Los Angeles.  And those who had the privilege of working with him – I’m sorry I never had the opportunity – have nothing but praise for his ability to organize, manage, and inspire great talent.

Here’s a more recent photo of the same duo, lifted from Glen’s Facebook Page, at a recent reunion concert put on by the “KRNA House Band”, Jif and the Choosy Mothers, at the Chrome Horse in Cedar Rapids.

When Glen and I were doing a morning show in Madison, he often spoke of his former days with Mark at KRNA.  Glen lives in Boston now, but – he’s in Cedar Rapids today, a trip he makes frequently as a consultant to the radio station.  I already knew Mark by reputation long before Glen moved across town in Madison from MidContinent to MidWest in the 90’s, when we became colleagues instead of competitors, and while Glen is one of the most brilliant rock programmers in his own right (he took WJJO from a middling-at-best radio station on a rocket ride to the top of the pack), I’m sure he learned some of his tricks from his days with Mark Vos.

As is the case in so many professions, us old radio guys are all seemingly connected in one way or another.  In recent years, I was honored to have Mark as a frequent commenter on this blog when I posted rants about radio.

Gone too soon, but never to be forgotten.  Rest In Peace, Mark N. Vos.

The Job Creators Have No Clothes

Sometimes it’s hard to figure ‘sconnies out.  We elected two of the most diametrically opposite political personalities you can imagine, to U.S. Senate – a Tea Party Crypto-Conservative born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-wife’s- mouth Republican from one of the most conservative areas in the state; and a wildly liberal open lesbian Democrat with an undergrad degree from one of the most liberal east-coast colleges (Smith) and a UW Law degree from by far the most liberal county in the state.

Go figure.

I think it has more to do with the political wind blowing at the time of any given election, rather than the true “will of the people”, and I think it’s the same thing that gave us a Republican governor and legislature.  It wasn’t that ‘sconnies loved Scott Walker; it was more of a “meh” about Tom Barrett.

I can’t think of an institution other than elected government where so many people who profess a distaste for the institution hold positions of power.  Radio broadcasting failed as an industry when bankers, rather than broadcasters, started calling the shots.  The auto industry has long known that you really need to have a “car person” running things – somebody who is really into automobiles.  The beer industry is run by people who love beer; the sausage industry is run by people who love grinding meat. Yet now we seem to have a lot of people in positions of power in our state and national government who openly dislike government.

It was this anomaly - politicians who hate government - that resulted in the creation of WEDC, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.  In July of 2011, Scott Walker and his government-hating pals over at WMC on East Wash and their political cronies (the ALEC crowd) decided to do away with the state government institution which was charged with, among other things, creating jobs.  Out went the state Commerce Department and in came WEDC, a quasi-private outfit which was supposed to create the quarter-million jobs Walker promised in his campaign.

The failure has been spectacular.

WEDC was supposed to be the centerpiece, the showplace, the masterpiece of the job-creators: it would lead the state out of the recession, attract and encourage businesses to locate here or be created here, with the attendant jobs for ‘sconnies, and show exactly what can happen when the private sector takes charge of a once-government-run agency.

By any metric, our state’s performance in the area of attracting business, creating jobs, and emerging from the recession has been dismal, bordering on abysmal.  The WEDC has been a laboratory experiment on exactly how NOT to run a business: cronyism, corruption, weak or nonexistent fiscal control, a revolving door for leadership positions; a dysfunctional human resources effort - as witness the brief tenure of WEDC’s latest PR-meister, John Gillespie, who lasted a month before somebody bothered to check his background and discovered he was a big tax cheat and apparently a huge unemployment cheat.  (I thought business people HATED unemployment compensation.)

The paragraph above isn’t just my opinion.  Every item I mention has been fct-checked and reported by the state’s responsible mass media, and confirmed by an audit.  These bozos have pissed away tens of millions of dollars they have no way to track; doled out perks like Badgers sports tickets and the like to their pals; awarded money before contracts were signed….in other words, the agency is corrupt and out of control.

The job creators have no clothes.

A couple observations:  government is NOT a business and should NOT be “run like a business”; and, those who hate government should not run for political office.

And ‘sconnies should learn not to elect people who claim their “business experience” will translate to helping government run more efficiently.  WEDC has disproved that claim forever.