Olden Hoping to Be a Hit by Describing Them for Indians

It’s nice to know that sometimes there is fairness and justice in the crazy world of sports broadcasting.

Take, for example, the story of Paul Olden, an inner-city youth who dreamed of some day becoming a major league baseball announcer, and then, through persistence and determination, became one.

When Olden was a 15-year-old sophomore at Dorsey High in Los Angeles, he went out for the school’s baseball team. One problem. He couldn’t hit the ball.

Well, he thought, if he couldn’t play the game maybe he could become an announcer.

Now, consider the odds. There are about 650 big league jobs available for players, but each of the 26 teams employs only a few announcers.

And consider that, these days, the usual route to the broadcasting booth is via the playing field.

But Olden wasn’t deterred.

For years, he would take his tape recorder to Dodger Stadium or the Forum, sit high in the stands and call games just for practice.

He studied broadcasting for two years at Los Angeles City College and, in 1974, he got a job as a news assistant at radio station KLAC. In 1980, he went to Spokane to announce minor league baseball, and in 1984 he went to Las Vegas to do the same.

All the while he mailed out audition tapes to everyone he could think of--more than 300 over the years, he estimates.

His efforts finally paid off. The other day, the Cleveland Indians hired the 33-year-old Olden as a radio announcer.

He’ll share play-by-play duties with veteran Herb Score, who has been an announcer for the Indians since 1963.

Olden, it is believed, is the first black who is not an ex-player to become a regular major league baseball announcer.

Olden, who has a rich, resonant voice, was hired because of his broadcasting skills. And that’s what makes his story such a nice one.

Add Olden: During his stint at KLAC, part of his job was gathering material for Jim Healy’s show.

It was Olden who, on May 14, 1978, asked Tom Lasorda that now-famous question after Dave Kingman, then of the Chicago Cubs, had hit three home runs against the Dodgers: “What was your opinion of Kingman’s performance?”

Lasorda’s expletive-filled response has been well chronicled by Healy, who is now with KMPC.

It was also Olden who, while reviewing tapes of former President Jimmy Carter addressing farmers during a protest rally in Washington, discovered this response by one of the farmers: “Aw, that’s a bunch of bull.”

All-Stars: CBS will televise Sunday’s National Basketball Assn. All-Star game at Chicago at 10 a.m., but you may want to check out the all-star announcers on the ABC radio broadcast on KLAC (570).

Boston’s Johnny Most will handle the play by play for the first half, with Chick Hearn serving as commentator. They’ll switch jobs in the second half.

It should be interesting.

Add NBA: TBS will televise Saturday’s activities in Chicago, which includes an old-timers game, a long-distance shooting contest and the popular slam-dunk contest. The coverage begins at 11 a.m.

CBS’ game coverage Sunday begins at 9:45 a.m. with a pregame show. Pat O’Brien and James Brown are the hosts.

There are two other all-star games coming up. ESPN will televise the NFL’s Pro Bowl live from Honolulu Sunday at 5 p.m. and will also televise the NHL All-Star game at St. Louis next Tuesday at 5.

O.J. Simpson, who will work with Mike Patrick and Roy Firestone on the Pro Bowl, is a candidate to become ESPN’s permanent third man in the booth next season.

ESPN is scrapping its guest-announcer format.

Nice switching: ESPN was right on top of things Thursday night, leaving Brigham Young-Utah to show the final minutes of Stanford’s upset of No. 1 Arizona.

Then the cable network switched back to show the No. 3-ranked Cougars hold off the Utes to remain the nation’s only undefeated team.

BYU, by the way, plays on ESPN again Saturday, facing Alabama Birmingham in a 6 p.m. game, and that may be a bad omen. ESPN has featured a ranked team in 29 telecasts this season, and 15 times the ranked team has been upset.

TV-Radio Notes

George Foreman fights Guido Trane on ESPN tonight at 6. Trane, from Rome, has a record of 12-6-4, with 8 knockouts. Foreman has scored six straight knockouts since returning to the ring last March after a 10-year layoff. . . . If Foreman gets past Trane, and it’s assumed he will, he faces a tougher test on March 19 when he faces Ander Eklund at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Eklund (16-4-1, with 4 KOs) is the Scandinavian heavyweight champion. The Foreman-Eklund fight will be televised on cable on a pay-per-view basis, with most systems asking $14.95. Choice Entertainment of Torrance is handling the distribution of that fight. . . . Also tonight at 6, FNN/SCORE is offering a three-fight card as a pay-per-view event on some of the systems that carries the service. The fights, at Atlantic City, N.J., are Roberto Duran vs. Ricky Stackhouse, Marlon Starling vs. Fujio Ozaki and Mark Breland vs. Juan Alonzo Villa.

Angelo Dundee has been hired by ABC to fill in for boxing commentator Alex Wallau, who is ill. Dundee will work Saturday’s Vinny Paienza-Greg Haugen fight with Don Chevrier. The fight is scheduled as the opening segment of “Wide World of Sports,” which begins at 4:30 p.m. . . . NBC opens its 1988 boxing schedule with Frank Tate defending his International Boxing Federation middleweight title against Britain’s Tony Sibson at Staffordshire, England. The fight will be the second part of Sunday’s “SportsWorld,” which begins at 10 a.m. The first hour will be devoted to live coverage of the Pizza Hut All-Star Softball Game at Orlando, Fla. Wally Joyner will play for the American League team, which will have Kansas City’s Bret Saberhagen pitching. Bob Costas and Tony Kubek call the action.

Prime Ticket has made a multiyear deal with USC and UCLA to carry live football and basketball. American Spectacor, the new service due to begin operation in April, had been trying to lure the schools. . . . ABC has already announced it college football schedule for the first three Saturdays this fall. On Sept. 10, the network will televise USC at Stanford at 12:30 p.m. and Nebraska at UCLA at 5 p.m.; on Sept. 17, a doubleheader beginning at 9 a.m., Notre Dame at Michigan State and Miami of Florida at Michigan, will be televised, and on Sept. 24, Oklahoma at USC will be shown at 12:30 on a regional basis.

Donn Bernstein, popular director of college sports for ABC the past 13 years, is leaving the network to join a New York public relations firm. Bernstein was sports information director at UC Santa Barbara in the 1960s. . . . TBS has hired former player Billy Sample as an Atlanta Braves announcer. He’ll work with Skip Caray, Ernie Johnson and Pete Van Wieren for TBS’ 135-game schedule. Sample played six years with Texas, one with the New York Yankees and one, 1986, with the Braves. Sample has been involved in broadcasting since 1981.

Mark Helmer, formerly of KLAC and the public address announcer for the Harlem Globetrotters, has replaced Fred Wallin at KFOX-FM. Wallin is now at KABC, working with Stu Nahan on “Sportstalk.” . . . ABC’s Donna de Varona gave birth to an 8-pound, 14-ounce boy, John David Pinto, in New York last Saturday night. De Varona’s husband is John H. Pinto.

The Winter Olympics will be previewed during a two-hour special on ABC Sunday at 11 a.m. . . . CBS will televise the AT&T; Pebble Beach National Pro-Am live Saturday and Sunday, beginning at 1 p.m. both days. . . . TVAM Golf, Inc., of La Habra, has come up with a new type of golf show. Amateurs with a handicap between 5 and 40, for a fee of $65, take part in a two-day tournament. The top four advance to a nine-hole playoff, which is taped for television. Then it is shown the next week, on Thursdays at 4:30 p.m., on UHF station Channel 18 (KSCI). Gift certificates are awarded to the finalists.