Good to hear ya, Vince!

It's good to hear an Flower Mound neighbor back in business. For years, Vince Controneo was side-by-side with Eric Nadel in the Texas Rangers radio booth. Vince knows baseball up and down, and he has a very easy-going, conversational delivery that's well suited for baseball. The Rangers and Vince parted company after the 2003 season, and Vince has been out of baseball the past two years. In that time, he and I have developed a friendship and a broadcasting kinship. So when Vince called me earlier this year with big news that he had been hired by the Oakland A's for their radio broadcasts, I was really excited for him.

The Rangers are playing the A's this weekend in Oakland, which gave me great reason to dial up the A's radiocast on my XM car radio. It's good hearing a familiar voice and a new friend, back in the booth, doing what he loves best -- telling great stories about baseball. It's tough on his family, I know, with him traveling so much. But life in baseball is never an easy life.

Here's a good text interview with Vince, published after he was hired by the A's.

By the way, to fully appreciate how good Vince is, and how tough it is to be in the baseball broadcasting business, consider this. Each major-league team has a couple dozen players on its roster at any given time. That's more than 600 players in the major leagues right now. But most teams have only 2 radio broadcasters, so there are only about 60 (a few more perhaps) of those jobs available in the league. I'm thrilled Vince is getting on board with the A's -- Oakland fans are lucky to have him.