Albany Patroons Memories: Your New Announcer, Chuck Miller

I saw the notice on the albanypats.com website.

The Albany Patroons will not be in operation during the 2009 – 2010 season. Thanks for your support.

Of course, on that same webpage you can click to order tickets for the 2009-10 season… if it ever gets played…

Yeah, I’m bummed that the Patroons aren’t coming back.  I was there when they returned to the Continental Basketball Association in 2005, after more than a decade in Hartford (first as the Hartford Hellcats, then as the Connecticut Pride).

For the first two seasons of the Pats’ re-emergence, I was the team photographer, among other duties.  But during the 2007-08 season, I ended up becoming – by necessity rather than by anything else – the team’s PA announcer.

Back in the WABAC machine we go.

At the time, the Albany Patroons were about to start their third game of the regular season, and all of a sudden someone noticed that the people who normally staff the scoring table had not shown up (there were some issues regarding who was getting paid or how much or whatnot). There were no scorekeepers, there was no timekeeper, and there was no announcer.  At the time, the Patroons’ general manager scrambled to staff the table, essentially grabbing everyone who actually did show up and asking if they knew how to keep score and run the clocks and the like.  Without a staffed table, the Patroons would forfeit the contest.

At that moment, I stepped to the plate – er – to the microphone, and became, for a while, the team’s public address announcer. Mind you, I had some prior radio and broadcast experience, so there was no problem with me taking the mic in that situation. However, I should let you know that the Patroons’ home building, the Washington Avenue Armory, has enough echo throughout the building that if you talk very fast into the microphone, the audience will only hear your voice – and not the words that you’re saying. That’s me in the center of the broadcast table, in the photo to the left.

So I did the PA announcing in the style of Philadelphia Phillies announcer Harry Kalas – slow and deliberate, making sure every player’s name on both teams’ rosters were pronounced correctly. I didn’t drift into the Ray Clay Chicago Bulls territory, but I did get the crowd revved up for the game – even when Albany’s local player, Lucious Jordan, drained a 3-pointer or two – after his third 3-pointer, I said that the shot came “all the way from Lark Street,” the cross-street adjacent to the Armory.

I did about 12 games as the substitute PA announcer that season for the Patroons, until they eventually hired another announcer to take over the microphone (I would later act as his replacement when his schedule had conflicts).  There were some great moments that season – Jamaal Miller nailed a three-quarter shot as the clock wound down in one game; in another contest, we coughed up a 20+ lead to the Oklahoma Cavalry and then, point by point, crawled back to even the score, and eventually won the game on a Lucious Jordan 3-pointer.  Yes, it was all the way from Lark Street.

Although we did win several early games under my announcing run, they were mostly against teams that either had replacement squads mid-season or were barely able to win a game of pick-up ball.  As soon as powerhouse teams like the Yakama Sun Kings came to town, the Patroons were clobbered like the Thing beating on the Yancy Street Gang.  At that time, the Patroons’ coach was former NBA player Vincent Askew, whose only qualification as a coach was that he played for the Patroons during the late 1980’s.

But despite all that, there were some great memories which I will always treasure.