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Before last weekend, Mike Boyer’s interaction with radio consisted of listening, talking back to it, and occasionally calling in to talk to the hosts.
Saturday afternoon, the Boston native-turned-Brewer resident went from listener to announcer as he got a turn behind the microphone, compliments of Bangor all-sports station WZON (620 AM).
“I never broadcast a game before. I annoy the guys on the afternoon show a lot, but that’s about it,” Boyer said. “I listen and call in almost every day.”
Put up-or-shut up time came late Saturday morning as Boyer handled play-by-play duties during the third quarter of WZON’s live broadcast of the Eastern Maine Class D boys championship basketball game at the Bangor Auditorium.
“My biggest concern was letting the focus be on the kids playing ball and not screw it up for them since they’d been playing all year to get there,” said the 28-year-old Boyer. “Before I sat down…. I was nervous as anything, but the people there are some of the most helpful and nicest I’ve been around.”
Boyer did some pregame preparation by attending a couple of games early in the week courtesy of an all-tourney pass he received from WZON. He also bought a tourney program and tried to memorize some player names and numbers before the game.
“He understands the game and he described it very well, but it was hard for him to lock in the names and numbers … like most people,” said WZON program director Dale Duff. “His description of play was very good, so what we’d do is Bruce Anderson and I would chime in with the names.”
Duff said this is something he’s thought about over the years. Now he’d like to make it an annual thing.
“Everyone wants to do this when they’re home … by themselves,” Duff said. “Then you get here and you see the crowd and the microphone and it’s a lot more difficult.”
Problems aside, everyone involved said they had fun.
“I called Brock Bradford’s name a lot since he had the ball a lot. It was a lot harder than you would think,” Boyer said. “Even so, if I had another shot at it, I’d jump at the chance to do it again.”
Boyer got his first shot via a Sports Zone contest in which listeners were invited to follow either of two scripts or make up their own and call the action for a game. Duff received 25 audition tapes, reviewed them all, and then had one randomly drawn to determine the winner.
Boyer called a fictional game involving players like Larry Bird, Jerry Sichting, Cedric Maxwell and WZON announcer Scott Sassone.
“I did it sort of like Johnny Most and said Scott had been thrown out for starting an anti-Boston chant and mentioned that the game was delayed when Duff ran out on the court to get Bill Cartwright’s autograph,” said Boyer.
Boyer and wife Laura, a big football fan, have two sports-minded sons: Paul and Jake. Being from Boston, the Patriots-Red Sox-Celtics-Bruins fan hadn’t paid tourney basketball much mind since he arrived in Brewer six years ago.
That was before Saturday’s overtime thriller, won by Calvary Chapel Christian Academy 86-80.
“It was an amazing basketball game. I have no allegiances to those teams, but watching that game gave me a new perspective and respect for the quality of high school ball here and made me a fan,” he said. “I think for the first time, I’ll go over to the auditorium and catch some A games this week. I’m hooked at this point.”
Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net
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