The Hawks were loaded with many of the Cubs top prospects: Dontrelle Willis, Angel Guzman, Sergio Mitre, and Felix Sanchez.  The team won 52 games in a 75 game season, but fell to Salem-Keizer in the championship.

Another off season of mailing demo tapes, flying to job interviews, and looking for a shot at the next level of the game fell short.  Peterson was hired on full-time by Boise, filling the multiple hats of the “Marketing/Media Relations/Broadcasting Director.”  The Hawks’ front office was a nice place to work, and, with the extra roles that he played, it wasn’t seasonal.   

“I really enjoyed the other aspects of it: designing the advertising campaign, executing the media buy, etc.  I essentially replaced an advertising agency that they had used the year before.” 

The 2002 Hawks were, not quite as dominant as the year before, but the end result was more rewarding – a Northwest League championship, coming in a sweep of Everett. 

“Now I’ve got a championship ring I never wear…but it’ll be something cool to come across 20 years from now, just as a keepsake.” 

Dan was no longer a rookie play-by-play guy. Five years in short-season ball, watching other broadcasters get their chance to move up.  It turned into blood-boiling frustration at times, but he stuck it out.   In 2003, at age 28, the call finally came from the Class A Charleston Alley Cats in West Virginia.

“We drew poorly.  Pigeons often out-numbered fans at venerable Watt Powell Park, but doing a full-season is like nothing else.  To cover a team wire to wire, from the cold rainy days of April through the tired, end of the road days of September…it’s something every broadcaster should do.”

The following season, Peterson decided not to return to West Virginia, where the radio deal was up in the air.  He was a top-three finalist for a job with theClass A Kane County Cougars that he had nearly landed two years earlier.  He was not offered the position.

So he hung up the microphone, and became a producer for a talk show at a sports radio station in Everett, WA, close to home, friends, and his boyhood Mariners. 

Dan hasn’t entirely abandoned the hunt for a seat in a major league broadcast booth. He’ll be networking with Major league broadcasters and decision-makers  at Safeco Field through his job. 

“I’m nearing 30, and have spent most of the past six years on a bus or with everything I own in the back of my car.  The romanticism of that was starting to wear off a bit… I wouldn’t rule out getting back into Minor league play-by-play if the right situation came about,” ponders the man who is a prism of emotions.  “I just feel that right now, this is a better way to advance my career, and equally important, my life.”

Game Shows & Easy Names

Many of the major league broadcasting hires these days are former players and local market sports talent, a stake through the heart and soul of the battle-tested, bus-riding, fast-food eating minor league broadcaster.

There is no template for reaching the major league microphone.  The disturbing trend in hiring has been away from the old-school of learning the ropes and paying one’s dues to the “safer” hires, who have some immediate name recognition with the market.

Just one broadcaster who spent a decade or more in the Minors, became a full-time Major league radio picture-painter. The Angels hired Terry Smith two years ago, following an extensive career with the AAA Columbus Clippers. 

What’s wrong with a general manager avoiding three hundred demo tapes, or hiring a local voice or a name that creates immediate good will for the team with fans?

They often don’t make great play-by-play guys.  Many spend too much time talking and not enough time describing the game, wholly unable to generate excitement and passion for the next generation of fans in a game rapidly losing interest to more high adrenaline sports like football, basketball, and even NASCAR.

The Dan Petersons of the world come from the Helenas and Charlestons, where their enthusiasm and skill have filled in for many a lackluster game. They have had to fill the airwaves with the play-by-play and color without the luxury of falling back on anecdotes about the good ol’ days when they were players, or doing sports-talk schtick that plays well in drive time but is a Dennis Millerian distraction to the game.

As it comes to many an aspiring broadcaster with a big dream, frustration claimed Dan Peterson.  Yet, every spring, another dozen or more bright-eyed college grads will be beating each others’ brains in for the opportunity to scale those rickety stairs, and begin the long stare into the harsh light of reality on a hot, sunny Montana afternoon.

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