Cleveland Sportscaster Memories

Cleveland has had its interesting share of sportscasters over the decades. Some names are long forgotten, while many more are remembered as legends. Not all actually called games, some only went as far as delivering sports segments on radio or tv, or hosted sports-oriented talk shows. Most had an ‘inside’ connection with sports figures and sometimes less than savory characters. This caused some to fall from grace both from their bosses and listeners. And many were real characters behind the scenes.

 

 

MIKE TRIVISONNO

Mike holds the fort for WTAM 1100 AM in Cleveland. His gravelly voice and personality usually have him winning ratings for the station in afternoon drive.

Mike was born in East Cleveland, and got his start by being a frequent caller of the Pete Franklin Show in its WWWE 1100 days. Pete Franklin liked Mike the caller, and station management took notice of Mike’s style. Pete Franklin stopped liking Mike on the day Pete was shoved aside by WWWE and replaced by Mike himself.

Before that Mike worked as a sportscaster at WNCX FM in 1989-1990 as part of the morning team known as Those Guys in the Morning, along with Rick Rydell and Todd Brandt. He later worked mornings on the same station as a sidekick with Jerry Shirley until the station picked up the syndicated Howard Stern Show in August 1992.

Mike works well with a team around him and some of the names of the sidekicks on Triv’s show included Mike Snyder on sports, along with news director Darren Toms, newsman Carmen Angelo and traffic reporter Matt Bean.

On April 28, Triv lost two sidekicks to his show with the dismissal of executive producer ’Big Daddy’ Marty Allen and producer/writer Paul Rado, who did a mean impersonation of former Cleveland Browns owner, Art Modell. Both were dismissed in recessionary budget cuts at the Clear Channel station. Other sidekicks from the past included Kim Mihalik, ’Sky Chief’ Rick Abell, and a young lady by the name of Allison.

Triv has also fenced with anchor Sharon Reed on CBS affiliate WOIO TV 19’s newscast at five in a segment called Triv TV, discussing various news subjects. Triv has taken on other topics besides sports on his afternoon show, earning him the nickname, Mr. Know-It-All.

One note, Mike has never called a game. With the cuts of Marty Allen and Paul Rado, Mike has picked up the ire of some listeners by his less-than-candor attitude towards the layoffs of two individuals who helped forge and continued his listener popularity among the Greater Cleveland radio audience. According to assorted online blogs, some say, Mike forgot his friends.

 

PETE FRANKLIN

Pete Franklin was acerbic, he was gruff, he was a curmudgeon to be reckoned with.

Pete ’King’ Franklin worked as a sports radio talk show host in the San Francisco, New York, and Cleveland radio markets. His brash style didn’t always go over well with team owners at times, nor was he always kind towards those who called-in on his show. To put it mildly, he was not a team player in some senses. However, audiences loved him for his cantankerous personality.

The high point of the sportscaster’s career was doing WWWE 1100’s Sportsline from 1972 to 1987. Pete didn’t suffer fools gladly; if a caller was not knowledgeable about the subject matter, he’d flush a toilet via sound effects as the call ended. Pete would also give a ’rim’ job and a funeral dirge near season’s end for a dismal year of Cleveland Indians baseball.

Pete was not afraid to take on then-Cleveland Cavaliers basketball owner Ted Stepien for mismanagement of the NBA team. Pete referred to Stepien as ’T.S.’—Too Stupid! In retaliation, the Cavs team owner fired play-by-play man, Joe Tait, when he and Franklin questioned Stepien trades, and Stepien ended his contract with WWWE in the broadcasting of Cavs games.

Pete left WWWE in 1987 to join WFAN, and after much controversy over his rude ’on-air’ antics, was later fired in 1989 by the station. He would return briefly to re-branded WTAM 1100 in Cleveland to take over the reigns of Sportsline, doing the show from a studio in his California home in 1998, only to be booted by WTAM 1100’s owners for Mike Trivisonno.

As mentioned earlier, Pete was pissed. Pete died on November 23, 2004.

 

KEN COLEMAN

Ken Coleman was born April 22, 1925 in Quincy, Massachusetts. He came to prominence by calling play-by-play for the Cleveland Browns games between 1952 and 1965.

From 1954 to 1963, he also covered the Cleveland Indians. Coleman would later move to Boston, replacing Curt Gowdy, covering the Red Sox.

Coleman participated as a sportscaster on NBC’s coverage of the 1967 World Series, where the Red Sox lost against the St. Louis Cardinals. Ken Coleman would co-narrate along with Don Gillis in a special called "The Impossible Dream," a retrospective of the Boston Red Sox in 1967 over WHDH TV 5.

Coleman is also the father of another Cleveland sports casting legend, Casey Coleman.

 

CASEY COLEMAN

Casey was born Kenneth R. Coleman, Jr. on March 24, 1951 in Cleveland, Ohio. Casey started his sports casting career in Boston where his dad worked as a sportscaster over WHDH TV 5.

This writer had met and worked with Casey Coleman in 1978 at WERE AM 1300, when he took over sports duties for Charlie Steiner who moved on to ESPN.

Casey learned the business from his father, holding Ken Coleman in high esteem. Even with Casey’s credentials, he was down-to-Earth in the newsroom. At the time, my duties included working with Casey as a desk assistant at the station, downloading network sports feeds, carting up the sound bites, ripping copy from the wires and posting it on the appropriate stakes on the newsroom wall. Or sometimes chasing Coleman down at Cleveland Municipal (this was before cell phones) Stadium should the news director need to reach Casey.

Casey was easy to work with, friendly, and low key with a bright smile. However, as sometimes happens among news-types, Casey got into drinking, starting in college, and increasing his intake over the years. His choice of potent liquid was vodka.

Casey and the rest of us would get together at The Theatrical on Playhouse Square, or at ’Party-In-The-Park’ on Fridays during the summer at the end of drive time duties. To be honest, I really couldn’t tell Casey had a drinking problem—he hid it quite well.

Coleman would tell you he had a great childhood, but there were times in his growing years that he felt he didn’t fit in from time to time. Casey would be tried on DUI charges which were later dropped. Part of the problem Casey mentioned in dealing with his self-esteem issues were at the hands of strict nuns in his parochial school days. Casey would later go into a 12-Step Program via Cleveland Clinic in dealing with his alcoholism.

When Casey went on vacation one year, he entrusted me to work with MLB pitcher Mudcat Grant, teaching him the technical details in putting together his sportscast. Mudcat was filling in for the vacationing Coleman, and thinking of becoming a sportscaster himself.

After a time, Casey left WERE Newsradio 1300 in the 1980’s to join WJW as a sports anchor. He was very popular, but his alcohol problem kept dogging him.

Casey served as the Cleveland Browns play-by-play man during its last years under Art Modell, before the team moved to Baltimore and was re-named the Ravens.

Coleman, after being let go at WJW TV 8, eventually found himself back in radio. He finished his last days working as a sportscaster at WTAM 1100 as Wills, Webster & Coleman in morning drive.

Casey was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer while working at WTAM, and even in the late 1970s, he would have circles under his eyes. However, as his cancer progressed, so did the circles. A few weeks before Casey’s death, I had a quick chat with him. Even in his last days, Casey was upbeat.

Casey finally passed away on November 27, 2006.

 

GIB SHANLEY

Gib Shanley entered the world on August 6, 1931 in Bellaire, Ohio. Gib attended a radio broadcasting school in Washington D.C., and while recovering from appendicitis during his last two months of school, managed to land his first radio job in Cambridge, Ohio.

His interest was sports, but as Shanley explained, the smaller the station, the more you did. When Shanley was 30 years old, he finally landed in Cleveland and built his reputation on sports at WGAR, doing play-by-play of Cleveland Browns and Ohio State football games. With the start of Eyewitness News at WEWS in 1967, Shanley was its sports director and reporter/anchor. However, Shanley held down his Browns gig into 1984.

I first met Shanley in the newsroom in 1969. He was reserved behind the scenes, quiet, mostly occupied in covering all the bases for his upcoming sports segment—generally a friendly, if not outgoing, kind of guy. Dorothy Fuildheim, a famed commentator at TV 5, had a hard time getting up the elevated platform for her spot in the 6 p.m. weekday broadcast, and Gib would give her a hand up to the set.

I once brought a friend by the name of Kathy and her young children to WEWS TV 5 to see how a television news show came together behind the scenes. Later, Gib would chide me over the years, “Boggs, you’re the only guy I know who would bring in a studio audience for a news show!”

Gib gained a bit of national fame when he burned an Iranian flag during his sports segment in November 1979 to protest the hostage situation taking place in Iran at that time. He drew a lot of heat for losing his objectivity on the air during a news broadcast from Scripps-Howard management—however, viewers highly approved—and well, after all, he was Gib Shanley.

Eventually, Shanley went out west, giving up his lucrative $100,000 a year salary in what he hoped would be a step up to greener pastures in a larger pond. However, LA proved to be a bad decision, at least for Gib. An expected ‘play-by-play’ position for the Rams never materialized, and Shanley soon returned to Cleveland.

However, on his return, sportscaster Nev Chandler had secured his spot as the Eyewitness News sports director, Gib found himself the odd man out, both at TV 5 and as a ’play-by-play’ announcer for the Cleveland Browns.

However, two years later, Gib was back on Cleveland TV in 1987, this time for WUAB TV 43’s 10 p.m. newscast.

I bumped into Gib once more at Channel 43’s studios in Parma, Ohio. Remembering me from Channel 5, Gib pulled me aside, saying he recalled hearing how I advised weather forecaster Don Webster that it might not be a good idea to leave Scripps-Howard Cleveland and his established popularity for greener, but uncertain fields in which he wasn’t known. “Andy, I think you should have given me the same speech.”

My response, “Gib, knowing you, I doubt you would have listened.” Gib did return briefly to WEWS TV 5 as its weekend sports anchor, and added a job as a guest commentator on Cleveland Browns "Countdown To 1996," anchored by Casey Coleman.

Gib Shanley passed away on April 6, 2008 from complications from pneumonia.

 

NEV CHANDLER

Nev Chandler was a WEWS TV 5 sports reporter/director/anchor from 1985 to shortly before his death on August 7, 1994 in Rocky River, Ohio. Nev was the Cleveland Browns play-by-play man from 1985 to 1993.

Before his TV 5 days, Chandler was a sports director at WWWE AM 1100. Chandler was noted for the excitement of his voice in calling games, and a voice for several NFL Films productions. Chandler passed away of colon cancer.

 

WRAP

There are several more Cleveland sports casting notables, including WKYC’s Jim Grainer, Herb Score, Joe Tate and many others that deserve mention, but there is not enough space in this article.

Cleveland fans are dedicated to their teams, good or bad, and they are also dedicated to the many voices and writers who keep them aware of what goes on—on the field and in the locker room. Some have gone on to network duty, others have moved to different markets. Each of these broadcasters are individuals with their own styles.

As my friend Casey Coleman would say at the end of the day, “I’m rounding third and heading home!”