‘Best Announcer Never Heard’ Given a Big Break by NBC

Talk about a big break.

Charlie Slowes is a 28-year-old who announces Washington Bullets’ games for a weak-signaled radio station.

Saturday, he’ll be announcing a Dodger game for NBC.

Slowes may be unknown, but he gets his chance because NBC will be televising four baseball games to various parts of the country Saturday.

The network has its No. 1 team of Vin Scully and Tom Seaver in New York for the Yankees’ game against the Minnesota Twins. Its No. 2 team of Bob Costas and Tony Kubek will be in St. Louis, where the Cardinals play the New York Mets.

About 30% of the country, including the West Coast, will not get those games. Instead, it will get the Oakland Athletics at Chicago, with Ted Robinson and Bobby Murcer reporting, at 10:15 a.m., followed at 1 p.m. by the Dodgers and Houston Astros from Dodger Stadium.

Robinson, a former A’s announcer now with the Twins, has been used by NBC before. Murcer, of course, is the former Yankee outfielder.

NBC needed one more team, and Slowes and Larry Dierker, the former Astro pitcher now working for the club as an announcer, got the assignment.

Slowes is a graduate of Fordham, the school Scully attended, but not quite at the same time.

Slowes worked for a while at KMOX in St. Louis, where Costas once worked and where Jack Buck and Dan Dierdorf currently work.

And Slowes worked briefly for the Tidewater Tides, the Mets’ triple-A club, before heading for Washington in 1986.

Originally from Yonkers, N.Y., Slowes sounds a little like Marv Albert.

A headline on a column by Washington Post TV-Radio columnist Norman Chad read: “Slowes: Best Announcer You Have Never Heard.”

Surprised as he was by NBC’s calling him, Slowes has had good things happen to him before.

In 1985, on short notice, CBS Radio hired him to work a national game, one in which the Kansas City Royals beat the A’s to clinch the American League West title.

And last season he worked a Mets-Cincinnati Reds game for local radio. In that one, Darryl Strawberry hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the 10th to give the Mets a victory.

Now, it’s on to the Dodgers and network TV, even though NBC’s timing is a little off. It should have had crews at four games last weekend. One of NBC’s two telecasts last Saturday, the Dodgers at Atlanta, was rained out. The other, Pittsburgh at Chicago, was played after a long rain delay.

Dodger announcer Don Drysdale unintentionally put Matt Williams, San Francisco’s third baseman, into the Obscurity Hall of Fame the other night.

When Big D saw Ernest Riles move into the on-deck circle instead of Williams, the scheduled hitter, he casually noted that Riles was going to hit “for what’s-his-name.”

Since CBS has chosen to televise an Atlanta-Detroit NBA game on April 23 instead of the Lakers and Seattle at the Forum, it appears that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s final regular-season game will not be televised unless the Lakers switch the time of their game so it can be televised locally.

The Lakers are considering moving their 12:30 p.m. game to that night so that it could be televised by either Prime Ticket or Channel 9.

But what should be even better than another Farewell-to-Kareem ceremony is the one-hour special Channel 9 will show Saturday night at 6, “The Summer of ‘42: Kareem’s Final Farewell.” It airs the day before the retiring center’s 42nd birthday.

Producer Ted Green and announcer Roy Firestone have put together an excellent show that takes a look at the many facets of Abdul-Jabbar’s life, from his early years in New York to his UCLA days to his pro career, including the Farewell Tour.

It also examines the hard times. “This isn’t a golly, gee-whiz show,” Green said. “There are parts that Kareem won’t like.”

It hasn’t been announced yet, but look for CBS to pair Bill Raftery with Brent Musburger during the NBA playoffs. That means you’ll be seeing less of Tom Heinsohn. Please, no tears.

Don Ohlmeyer, former executive producer of NBC Sports, had this to say about the surprise appointment of his longtime friend and former colleague, Dick Ebersol, as the president of NBC Sports:

“I’m glad they were able to talk Dick into taking the job. He offers the combination of a sports and entertainment background. He’ll lend a fresh eye during these changing times in sports television.”

Might Ebersol lure Ohlmeyer back to NBC? “No,” Ohlmeyer said. “I did my stint with the networks.”

Guest Commentator: The June 12 Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns fight at Caesars Palace will be shown live on pay-per-view television, and word is HBO will show it a week or so later and use Michael Nunn in Leonard’s normal spot as a commentator.

TV-Radio Notes

NBC was the big winner at this week’s Sports Emmy Awards dinner in New York, getting 12 awards, including seven for the Seoul Olympics. . . . A lot of NBC executives were on a high until the next day, when they were stunned to learn that their popular president, Arthur Watson, was being demoted and replaced by Dick Ebersol. Watson, 58, reportedly is taking it well, however. He was planning to retire in a year or two anyway. . . . Bob Costas and John Madden won the top two individual awards for the second consecutive year. NFL Films won for best-edited special, “Road to the Super Bowl ‘88,” and HBO won for program-area feature with the Mike Tyson feature that was aired before his fight with Tony Tubbs on March 20, 1988. . . . The dinner was taped for syndication by Raycom Sports of Charlotte, N.C. The show will be carried by Channel 7 Sunday at 3 p.m.

People and Properties, a sports production company based in Greenwich, Conn., is producing coverage of the AI Star Centinela Hospital women’s golf tournament at Rancho Park in West Los Angeles. Channel 2 is showing it locally--from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday and from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday--and FNN/SCORE will pick up the action at 3 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday. The announcers are Phil Stone, Mary Bryan, Mary Bea Porter and Byron Day.

Top Rank Boxing begins its 10th season on ESPN next Tuesday night with a Robbie Simms-Doug DeWitt fight. The second installment of the Superstars competition will be on NBC’s “SportsWorld” Sunday at 1:30 p.m. The commentators are Fred Roggin, Ahmad Rashad and Jimmy Cefalo. . . . Rashad will be the guest on “Later With Bob Costas” next Tuesday night. . . . . A reminder: Z Channel will carry SportsChannel’s coverage of the Boston Marathon live Monday morning. Bud Collins and Larry Rawson are the hosts.

Sunday’s Long Beach Grand Prix will be televised nationally by ABC, but blacked out in Los Angeles. It won’t be shown here until Channel 7 televises it on April 29. . . . KMPC and UCLA have entered into a new seven-year agreement. USC and KNX earlier announced a new five-year deal. . . . The Kings’ Luc Robitaille will be on “Hollywood Squares” next week. . . . Recommended viewing: The Paris-Roubaix bicycle race Saturday on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” which also offers delayed coverage of the Bluegrass Stakes. . . . “Super Sports Follies,” a new half-hour series produced by Berl Rotfeld Productions, makes its debut on Channel 4 Sunday at 12:30 p.m. It follows another new half-hour show, “The Other Side of Victory,” with Arthur Ashe as host.