WZON hot stove lineup changes

Talk about shuffling your lineup…

What would have been the fourth annual “Evening with Joe and Jerry” hot stove session is now basically the first annual “WZON Hot Stove Baseball Night.”

The name change for the popular offseason baseball hot stove event put on by Bangor all-sports radio station WZON (620 AM) was necessitated by the Boston Red Sox’ decision not to rehire Jerry Trupiano as Joe Castiglione’s Red Sox radio broadcast partner for a 17th season with Boston.

Gee, wonder what the first questions will deal with at Tuesday night’s program at the Bangor Civic Center?

“Yeah, we probably will have to address it early on because it has been An Evening with Joe and Jerry from the start,” said WZON program director and announcer Dale Duff. “It’s amazing how many people have come up the last few weeks asking if it’s for sure or whether Trupiano might be back. I think people are still hopeful he’s in the loop.”

Unfortunately for those fans and Trupiano, he is not. The Sox opted to replace him with ESPN announcer Dave O’Brien and major league announcer Glenn Geffner last month.

Trupiano will likely be prime talk fodder along with the arrival of Daisuke Matsuzaka and ongoing uncertain status of possible free agent addition J.D. Drew after doors open to the public at 5:30 p.m. and Castiglione takes the stage with Boston Globe sportswriter Gordon Edes at 7:10 p.m.

The audience will again be bigger as WZON has printed 500 tickets. Last year, 450 tickets were snapped up.

“The thing that’s the biggest challenge is finding more ways to let more people in and expand the whole personal exposure thing with fans,” said Duff, who noted the first event was attended by 250 fans.

“I’d say we weren’t looking long-term when we first did this,” he added. “We were just trying to pull that first one off and see how it goes. Shortly after, we said we had to do this every year because response was overwhelming. We got bombarded with people wanting us to let more people in.”

The featured guest duo isn’t the only change in the program format this year.

Portland Sea Dogs radio announcer Mike Antonellis will have the team’s 2006 Eastern League championship trophy. Also, two teams – the 2006 Bangor High School baseball team and University of Maine squad – will be honored for winning a state championship and earning an NCAA regional berth, respectively, along with current Husson College and former UMaine baseball coach John Winkin for earning the 1,000th win of his coaching career last year.

“The other thing we’ve constantly been tweaking along the way is increasing the personal contact with fans and adding a few more unique features for it to make it stand out from other hot stove events,” Duff said.

The initial concept of this offseason event resulted from periodic stints by Trupiano and Castiglione as guests on WZON’s morning and afternoon shows in 2003.

“We wondered if maybe they might come up in the offseason, maybe in January, but we figured the last place they’d want to be, especially after all their travel during the season, is Maine in January,” Duff said. “But we asked if they might want to come up, and they were very receptive.”

The session will be thrown over to fans around 7:30 p.m., when they will be invited to ask questions. The program is scheduled to end at 8:45 p.m. Fans will be allowed to remain to take photos or get autographs.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net