Pure Magic

I cannot overstate the importance of the Orlando Magic in the arc of my career.

The team’s inaugural season was 1989-90; I graduated from high school in the spring of ’89, so I was already on campus at Cornell when the Magic started playing games in the shiny new Orlando Arena. The NBA awarded the franchise to my hometown in 1987, so Central Floridians had a good two-years-plus to get right frothy about finally becoming a Big League City.

My dad had gone in with a couple of his partners on season tickets, so when I came back for Thanksgiving and Christmas break in the fall of '89, we attended a few games. It was during one of those nights at the O-rena that we discovered the Fantasy Play-by-Play.

This in-game promotion was pioneered by a gentleman named Fred Greene of Greene Creative Services in Oakland, California. His concept was to create a “booth” at professional stadiums wherein a fan could act as a play-by-play announcer for his home team, calling a portion of the game, and take home a VHS copy of his performance as a souvenir (for a price, of course). The first Fantasy Play-by-Play booth went up at Oakland A’s home games in 1987; by 1989, a handful of other teams had picked it up, including the Magic.

In Orlando, the “booth” was on the skybox level. Would-be announcers would sign up on the concourse -- paying for half a quarter, or perhaps a full quarter -- and then take an express elevator into the rafters. The booth consisted of two chairs, a small television monitor, and a point-of-view camera aimed at the announcers‘ faces. An attendant was off-camera, switching the monitor’s feed back and forth between the game action down on the floor and a “2-shot” of the announcers high up in the booth. It was a unique souvenir of the game, and it was all in fun.
For me, however, it was an audition.

I had learned that each month, the Fantasy Play-by-Play staff would select the best ‘guest announcer’ for an invitation to a future Magic game and a few minutes on the air with a real announcer -- in this case, David Steele, the team’s radio play-by-play man. Furthermore, at the end of each season, the best Fantasy Play-by-Play announcer of the year would be flown from Orlando to Miami to appear on the Magic Television Network during a Magic-Heat contest.  

This became my mission in life. I was going to win that contest, and I was going to parlay that into a job with the Magic.
This required careful planning. During my senior year at Cornell, I noted that the Magic were hosting the New York Knicks during our winter break. I recruited my fraternity brother and former roommate, Stuart Roth, to come to Orlando over the break and act as my color man.

Stuart grew up in Westchester County, New York, about fifteen minutes away from the Knicks’ practice facility in Purchase. He knew the Knicks like I knew the Magic. Plus, he was a former high school point guard who had played briefly on the JV team at Cornell, so he knew his hoops. He was a perfect choice. Like I said, careful planning.

We prepared for that night as if it were Game 7 of the NBA Finals. We had rosters, updated stats, the whole nine yards. The Fantasy Play-by-Play attendants, who were far more accustomed to hosting 12-year-old kids or drunks, had sort of figured out what I was up to, and I think they were actually excited for us.
And, it worked.

Our performance was indeed judged the best of the month. We never got our five minutes on radio with David Steele -- the academic schedule wouldn’t allow it -- but the Magic’s marketing department was kind enough to enter our tape in the year-end competition. Which we also won.

When I received word from the Magic in the spring of ’93 that the team of Watson and Roth had been judged the best Fantasy Play-by-Play duo of the ’92-’93 season, I immediately called my parents. There was no way I was missing five minutes of TV time with my hometown team -- especially when there was a job on the line (in my head, anyway). Stuart couldn’t make it, so I was on my own. Initially, my mom and dad balked at the idea of flying me to Orlando just so I could get on another plane to Miami. No problem, I said. I’ll just drive straight through from New York to Florida. My mother wisely chose not to call my bluff. She told Dad to buy me the damn plane ticket.

My five minutes on the Magic Television Network was less than memorable. Chip Caray and Jack ‘Goose’ Givens, the TV voices of the Magic, were pleasant enough. Chip magnanimously offered me the chance to call a few minutes of live game action at the Miami Arena. I sucked. Didn’t matter. I was up-front with the Magic staff about my intentions, and casually mentioned that I’d be graduating in a few weeks and moving back to Orlando.

A few months later, having returned to Florida, I got a call from the Magic’s marketing department, asking if I’d be interested in interviewing for a season-long internship. I accepted the offer, and asked if I could interview for other departments as well. Like, say, Broadcasting. John Cook, the man who conducted that interview, happened to be the director in the truck in Miami on the night I chatted on-camera with Chip and Goose. He offered me the internship on the spot. I interned for the entire 1993-94 season, and was hired full-time as an associate producer the following summer.

And that’s how I joined the Orlando Magic in the first place. The Fantasy Play-by-Play, and a left-handed Jewish point guard from Rye Brook, New York named Stuart Roth. That internship launched my professional career.
It wasn’t the only thing that can be traced to the old Orlando Arena.  

Once I was hired full-time as an Associate Producer and Radio Reporter, I settled into a regular schedule of conducting interviews and writing copy for the Magic TV Network. On game nights, I would hover behind the benches to do updates on the radio broadcast. On one such night, I was approached behind the visitors’ bench by a dark-haired girl in a polo shirt. She was a Magic intern in the Marketing department, assigned to game night operations. She asked me what the microphone and earpiece were for. I thought she was pretty cute.

And that’s how I met my wife, Tracey. At the wedding, Stuart was one of our groomsmen.