GRUELING HOURS, BUT PLENTY TO LOVE

By Kevin Stevens
Press & Sun Bulletin

The alarm sets his day in motion at the perfectly hideous hour of 4 a.m., and the final item may not be scratched off his to-do list until, 10:30 or so at night. Which is why, in part, Roger Neel will tell you, “I have bad days, I get grumpy.”

His word will have to suffice, as a corroborating witness is unlikely to surface. The man is as affable as a department store Santa, makes Katie Couric look downright ogreish.

Yet Neel — Binghamton-area radio personality for just short of a quarter-century and public address voice of the Binghamton Mets since the franchise’s inception in 1992 — just in case, carries with him a motivational memory refresher for when one of those allegedly grumpy days arises.

Two photocopies ride shotgun in Neel’s vehicle, and another is a fixture in his briefcase. One is from Westminster Magazine, the other from USA TODAY, each focusing on the late Dr. Harold E. Burry, football coach under whom Neel learned toughness, stick-to-itiveness and attention to detail at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa.

“I carry this stuff around to look at it when I get really beat, tired. I look at them and say, ‘Oh, I can get through this,’ “ said Neel, three-season starter at offensive tackle before his 1973 graduation from Westminster.
“Stuff I learned from them (Burry and his successor, Joe Fusco), it was much better than what I ever got in the classroom. Working a 16- or 18-hour day, knowing you passed the algebra test doesn’t do it for me. Knowing I went through two-a-days and stuff like that, that does it.”

Most any sports-minded individual who has spent any appreciable time in Broome County has no doubt heard Neel’s voice through the radio speaker. He spent time as the play-by-play voice of the Broome Dusters, then Binghamton Whalers. These days, he can be heard calling Binghamton University men’s basketball and a smattering of high school football. As a free-lancer for Buffalo-based Empire Sports Network, he has worked ECAC football and hockey, the American Hockey League’s game of the week, the United Hockey League All-Star Game and the B.C. Open.

To regular Binghamton Mets baseball attendees, his is a voice as familiar as the seventh-inning stretch. It is a voice as strong as it is clear, at once smooth and enthusiastic. His style, both on the air and at the stadium, is straightforward, his delivery predictably accurate, his pronunciation unfailingly on the mark.

All told, the man is a consummate professional in his field.

“He’s got a great radio voice, and I love that in an announcer,” said R.C. Reuteman, former Binghamton Mets general manager who hired Neel. “I liked him so much that I hired him though he was with a competitor of our flagship station.”

Neel, who makes his home in Endicott with wife Beth, was born and raised in Butler, Pa., where sports is serious business. There, the master of sports radio masters was Bob Prince, veteran voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“He was the idol of every kid who had any desire to do broadcasting around Western Pennsylvania,” said Neel, 50. “He could make his broadcast one you wanted to listen to whether the Pirates were up 10-0 or down 10-0. You listened as much to hear him as you did to hear the game.”

From Prince, Neel said he learned, “Try to look at it as a new game every day and try to find something exciting in it, because the person who listens doesn’t want to think that you’re tired or bored or hate the game. That’s the biggest tune-out you can have.”

Neel relocated to Binghamton in October 1978, hired away from WJAC in Johnstown, Pa., to become voice of the Dusters. By that point in his burgeoning career, he’d come country miles from the time he’d endured the harshest of baptisms into the ways of hockey announcing.

WJAC had a revered veteran calling games of the hometown Jets vacate the position, and his would-be successor hopped ship in favor of a job with the local television affiliate. Hockey season was just around the corner.

Though he’d never before called the sport, Neel was chosen to be the new hockey announcer.

The Jets returned from their Canadian training camp venue a day before the season opener. Neel visited Johnstown’s arena that day following the team’s practice session — on-air duty precluded him from attending practice — for a meeting with the franchise’s general manager.

“He immediately thinks I’m a jerk because I didn’t go to practice,” Neel said.

That day, Neel requested a program so that he might bone up on the players’ names — a request summarily denied, something about the programs being at the printer. The station’s program director offered a helping hand on opening night — which, Neel said, amounted to a hand plugging in equipment and a nod to the section in which he’d be seated.     

Neel was accompanied by a color commentator, who kindly and repeatedly fetched the greenhorn cups full of soda.

“Well, the worst thing you can do is drink a lot of soda because you start burping like crazy — ‘And down the right wing to ... BELCH! ... ‘ “ Neel said, laughing now at his inauspicious debut. “It was not a very memorable debut, believe me. I was awful, yeah, pretty bad.

“I look back and I figure, ‘Man, can’t get much worse than that.’ "

He went on to call four seasons of professional hockey in Johnstown, and he was to do a fifth before the infamous Flood of ’77 ravaged the Johnstown arena’s ice-making equipment and wiped out the season.

That winter, he called Division II basketball as the radio voice of Pitt-Johnstown, where he furthered what had already been a deep appreciation of college athletics.

These days, Neel is program director, sports director and morning show host for WNBF radio, the station for which he calls all Binghamton University men’s basketball games, home and away. Particularly busy are his spring and summer, as Mets home games mean early-evening arrival at the ballpark following a full day’s work.

In terms of degree of difficulty, the PA announcer’s job description does not rival that of the play-by-play man’s. However, the PA man’s job has a list of prerequisites all its own — impeccable pronunciation and unwavering concentration to go with a delivery that is as accurate and timely as it is pleasing to the ear.
He has missed, on average, about five Mets games per season, most because radio-station business calls him away, he said.

Neel intends to continue in his Mets position, he said, “As long as my full-time job permits it and my health doesn’t suffer from it, because there are some long days and nights. I love baseball — I’d still play baseball today if I could get the bat around.”

He was a two-sport man at Westminster, fitting in three seasons of baseball to go with his position on the football team’s offensive front. Only recently did he carve recreation-league softball from his routine, something about too few hours in a day.

Asked what he finds most intolerable, what is quick to push his crazy button, Neel was quick with a response.

“I think the biggest thing is laziness,” he said, not surprising given his bottomless pit of energy. “At some point there are physical and ability limits for everybody. But laziness can’t be tolerated. I’d rather fail at something and admit that I failed