The night after the MLB All Star Game is the slowest sports night of the year. So what better way to spend it than with four of the best sports I know. Or should I say best sportscasters I know- and I know a lot of them. While you were watching reruns of Modern Family or the ESPYS (are they still giving those out?) last night, we were eating steak and talking sports. The first annual “Talk of the Town” took place at Kirby’s Steak House in Southlake and man it was a great time.
The sports “talkers” were the four radio play-by-play announcers from the four major professional sports in North Texas – Rangers, Cowboys, Mavs and Stars. Actually we could have had a ScoreBoard editorial meeting since that of course meant Ralph Strangis, Chuck Cooperstein and Brad Sham were all there, with me serving as emcee. 
In fact, the only one among us who has not written for this esteemed publication was Rangers voice and new Baseball Hall-of-Famer Eric Nadel. When you’re in the Hall of Fame you pick your writing assignments carefully. Apparently Eric is not so careful with his friends. The five of us got together on Wednesday and talked and laughed and told stories and then we looked up and realized there was an audience there watching our every move. It would have been creepy except we invited the audience.
It was the first annual “Talk of the Town” charity event. The four announcers had dinner at Eric’s house last year and decided they should convene again and raise money for charity. That was last July. So they all pulled out their calendars and realized it would be almost a year until each of them had a scheduled night off. Not surprisingly it was on the slowest sports night of the year. But there was nothing slow about the action in Southlake from Ralph reminding us of some remarkably insensitive things Brett Hull had said on the radio, to Brad calling Chuck out about his least favorite sport, to Eric selling his scorecard from the night the Rangers beat the Yankees to win their first trip to the World Series – this night was perfect.
It actually took so long to clear the date that the committee that planned the event had only a few months to throw it together. Still we raised over $100,000 for charity. I can’t tell you the punch line to Ralph’s line about Hull. I can’t show you Brad ridiculing the other three for dressing inappropriately, and I can’t remember all of the funny lines. But they were flying all night long. Hopefully next year you’ll have a chance to see and hear for yourself. This time around each announcer had four big money guests sit at a table with each of them. Next year we plan to blow it out and grow it, and make it more affordable so more people will be able to enjoy the night. As I sat there asking the questions to our featured guests, I was struck by how blessed I was to be there, and how blessed North Texas is to have four play-by-play announcers who are so fun, so funny…so good!
See you next year at Talk of the Town.
