Charley Steiner, 30 years ago

Charley is so freakin' real. Funny. Met him a couple times. Seems like that was his whole persona.

 

Craig Kilborn's Feel-Good Edition was the high-water mark before SportsCenter's wave finally broke and rolled back.

Speaking of which, whatever happened to Michael Smith? He got screwed.

 

He would be a guest on KNBR when the Yankees or Dodgers were in town and talk about his days selling ads for the Berkeley Barb.

Always had great one-liners on SC like "George Foreman has knocked over more tomato cans than a rookie bagger at the A&P."

 

Doesn't surprise me at all. Always came across as more human on air.

 

It’s great. Also on the list: NJ Devils mascot on the down-bound elevator. The USWNT players eating orange slices to the dismay of Otto the Orange.

 

I've realized that all companies evolve along a distinct path from radical startup to corporate monolith, whether it's Bell Telephone, U.S. Steel, Apple, IBM or ESPN.

There's a different vibe when you're part of a team trying to make something out of nothing, almost like a "family business" even if your own investment is just your time and energy. It's work but it's also fun. Bob Ley, George Grande and Chris Berman fit into that profile for ESPN when it was still showing Harvard-Yale baseball and SportsCenter out of a rudimentary studio in Bristol for Getty Oil.

Then as you become successful, that transforms into more money, more staff, more pressure to keep on the cutting edge of whatever you're making. The upside is being able to attract quality talent but the downside is as you add more layers, the feeling of a tight-knit community begins to fade. To me, that's the Dan Patrick-Stuart Scott era.

At some point, there's a tipping point, where in order to achieve the next step, you need more investment than you can bring in through profits. That's either going public or being bought out by a larger existing corporation. Now the decision-making process becomes multi-layered, entire sections of the company operate independently of one another, the ability to maintain the growth of the original product is no longer the primary motivation. That's basically soon after Disney bought ESPN.

Then there's the plateau stage, where the company has matured but at the expense of what made it such a game-changer in the first place. Other ventures carve away at the talent base, revenue and market share. There's an increasing need to play it safe rather than experiment, because the big decisions now directly affect the bottom line. The people who had the original vision have retired or left so there's no one who was involved in the creation and implementation of the business. It's running on inertia now.

ESPN is spending more to get fewer eyeballs. But the corporation has forgotten how to provide the compelling reasons to watch that those eyeballs found interesting in the first place.

 

Steiner was the good guy who got into a fistfight at a Wimbledon post-match presser.

 

I'm reading the oral history of the network. Those early years were rough and then IMO they hit the peak with Steiner, Edwards, Patrick, Cohn and that crew.

John Walsh's resistance to the "This is SportsCenter" commercials and the "they're going to become celebrities and then we'll have to pay them more" is interesting to read about. Quite a cast of characters.

 

Steiner does Dodgers games on the radio. He's a pretty lousy play-by-play guy, but a fun listen with partner Rick Monday. You can tell he loves the game and the franchise he grew up rooting for.

His eyesight is not good and he misses a lot of stuff.

 

You basically described Harry Caray in one sentence.

 

Also the good guy who got shoved out of the booth by John Sterling after Aaron Boone's ALCS-winning homer in 2003. Boy did those two hate each other and boy was John mad Charley got the big call.

 

Easily the worst "big call" you'll hear. By light years.