Kansas City Profiles Presented by Easton Roofing-Royal Voice of Kansas City Summers-Denny Matthews Revisited

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Welcome to the Danny Klingscale,

reasonably irreverent podcast.

Insightful and witty commentary,

probing interviews, and detours from the beaten path.

Welcome to Kansas City Profiles presented by Easton Roofing,

and it is an absolute pleasure annually to revisit

our conversation from a few years back with Danny Matthews.

The baseball Hall of Famer has been broadcasting for

the Royal since their inception in 1969.

Behind their microphone, providing the sights and sounds of

summer, the Kansas City baseball fans just

as he has done for decade after decade.

Doing it now as a newlywed, he was married at age 83

in November.

Danny doesn't do all the games anymore,

but he does many, and he is a familiar sound of summer

for baseball fans who kick back, relax, and listen to the

dulcet tones of the remarkable Danny Matthews,

who grew up in Illinois, was a fine athlete,

played college football after never having played

organized football before then.

Broadcast is very first baseball game in the major leagues

in 1969 with Buddy Blatner, and continues on year after year

through championships and hard times.

He has a dry, understated humor that drifts through

much of his audience undetected, and I love listening to him.

Some people find his broadcasting style a little flat.

I don't, and I don't care.

I love to listen to Danny Matthews to this day.

He retains his fastball as it were,

and it'll be a pleasure once again to hear the sounds

of baseball through the words of one Danny Math,

the stories of his career, just remarkable,

and many are told here in his own inimitable style.

Kansas City Profiles, on opening day,

Danny Matthews, presented by Eastern Roofing.

More of Danny's reasonably irreverent podcast after this.

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We're here at the 23rd Street Brewery with Matt Luel

and the owner of said Enterprise and the weather is finally broken.

We're headed for springtime

and that means good times on your great patio.

Oh yes, and the waterfall that we put in last summer

is flowing, it's been flowing all winter.

But now that springtime, it just gives people a reason

to go sit out on the patio.

You can bring your dogs out on our patio.

Just whatever reason you would have to come and sit

on a nice patio with a water feature,

gives you another whole, another whole other reason

to come to 23rd Street Brewery.

And of course, the main reason is the great food.

Great food, great beer, served by wonderful people.

We'd love to have you here.

Come on out, bring your pup, stay out on the patio

at the 23rd Street Brewery.

It's a 23rd and castled in Lawrence.

Come on out and have a great time.

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Look forward to hearing from you.

Danny, you were born in Jacksonville, Florida,

but moved early on to Bloomington, Illinois.

What are your very first memories

of being little Danny Matthews?

I don't remember anything about Florida

because I was taken away by my parents

who grew up in Illinois, so I was there six weeks.

There you go.

Very few memories of Jacksonville.

I would say not.

So what are your first memories of Bloomington?

Well, my dad was in the service.

He was in the Navy and he came back after about a year.

Of course, I had no idea who he was, why he was there,

but lived with my mom, my grandparents, her mom and dad.

And I remember those flashes of memory

from, oh, probably three years old, maybe two and a half,

three and a half, my grandfather worked on the railroad.

He was an engineer in the yards in Bloomington.

And there, once in a while, my grandmother

would take me down to the train yard

and he was a switch engine engineer.

He would come across the tracks, pick me up,

take me back to the engine and hand me up to the fireman

in the cab of the diesel.

And I'd ride around with him for an hour.

And of course, when you're four or five, six years old,

that's the big leagues.

Absolutely the case.

When did you start to get your interest in sports?

Well, when my dad came back from the service,

and again, four and a half, he was a basketball and baseball player.

Excuse me, at Illinois State University.

In fact, he was the first all-American baseball player

at Illinois State University,

and had a chance to sign with either the White Sacks

or the Cincinnati Reds,

but then something called World War II came along,

and that kind of took care of that.

And obviously he was a very good athlete,

so he passed some of that along to him.

So was it a natural thing for you?

Did you like it?

Did he, I'm not say for sure,

but did he encourage you?

Yeah, very much.

Baseball, basketball, everything in season.

And three younger brothers, and he taught really all four of us

how to play the game, especially baseball.

Baseball and basketball were his two specialties.

And so all four of us grew up in a sports atmosphere,

so to speak.

And he was very supportive, he was, as you say.

And I wish I could have seen him play.

Right.

He was impossible, but a good athlete to play at a college

of that stature in both baseball and basketball,

and really be praised for his baseball acumen and ability.

Both of your parents worked for State Farm Insurance.

How would you describe their relationship?

Well, they met my dad grew up in Danville,

Illinois.

I came to Bromington Normal for college in Illinois State.

At the time, it was Illinois State Normal University.

Bromington Normal, our twin city, separated by only a street.

And much like the state line here in our area,

but they met when he was in college.

My mom was, I think, three years younger and married.

And I was the first of four to come along, old boys.

But they had a great relationship.

My mom was always very blunt.

And for the point, my dad was stern enough, but very supportive.

They both were supportive, obviously, of all of our endeavors.

And it was really a very enjoyable childhood, I would say.

Obviously, it's college town.

That's pretty big school.

They're probably obviously not quite as big then,

but what was it like growing up in the 40s in Bromington?

Well, Illinois State was in Normal, Illinois, Westland,

where I ended up was in Bromington.

And again, separated only by a boulevard.

And a city division street of all things.

Someone very cleverly named a division street

to separate the two little towns.

And that's pretty creative, right?

Yeah.

But Illinois, Westland, Illinois State

had a great rivalry in all sports, then subsequently in the 60s.

When I was involved a year after my final year of football

at Illinois, Westland, where they didn't play football anymore.

Illinois State was about 26, 27,000.

And Illinois, Westland was still about 1300 students.

So here was quite a difference.

I still played basketball and very competitively.

And to this day, he's still competing baseball.

You did something pretty darn unusual.

You played college football, and you didn't even play high school football?

Is that correct?

That is correct.

I played baseball and basketball in high school.

But I just felt like I was too small to play football.

And as I got into college, I became very good friends with

Dick Armstrong, who was a quarterback at Illinois, Westland.

And by that time, I had kind of grown out of my childhood

in a sense.

And I was, oh, five, ten, one, seventy.

And I used to watch college and pro football on TV.

And I always liked to watch the White Receivers.

Illinois, Westland never had a White Receiver offense

until Dick, but a great arm, was a quarterback.

And he and I worked together at State Farm Employees Park in the summer.

We had our summer job, three month job, and we talked.

And played catch with a football.

And he told me one day, we're going to go to a White Receiver offense.

And when we play catch, you catch everything.

And why did you come out?

And in the back of my mind, oddly enough, before he had even said that,

I had taught that, that it might be fun.

It might work, who knows.

Like you said, I never played high school football,

so there was no basis of comparison.

I had no idea what it would be like.

But I did went out and Dick and I had a great relationship,

if anything, I think 11th.

In passing, I was eighth in pass receiving small college.

And it was a good tandem.

It worked out.

It was great fun.

And I still could play baseball.

And I started to broadcast some sports on the Oracle radio station

in between football and baseball seasons after my,

or during my sophomore year in school, in college.

How would you describe yourself as a baseball player?

Pretty good.

I was left-handed in field or second base with my position.

I worked out after my first year in college

with the San Francisco Giants Farm Team in Decatur, Illinois.

Gene Thompson was the area scout for the Giants at the time,

and he scouted our games in the Central part of Illinois,

and he invited me to come down to Decatur in August.

I went to the center of the summer and worked out,

which I drove down to about an hour drive,

and worked out.

And there was another player there working out

who went to school indicator, St. Teresa High School Decatur,

who later became a big leader.

His name was Dell Unser.

It was a good outfield and played in the big league for a number of beers.

And they worked both of us out,

and Dell subsequently signed

a professional contract.

I went home and treated and invited me to come back and work out.

This was in mid-August of the summer,

and I had decided to play football.

That was my sophomore year.

I was going to go out and play football or drive for the first time.

And my dad said, well, he said, look at it this way.

You're all dressed up about playing football,

so it'd be silly to sign there at the end of their minor league season.

And anyway, if you play baseball at Illinois Westwood,

and you're good enough in three years from now,

if you're still a decent player,

and they think you are,

why you might have that chance.

So that was fun.

That was an interesting.

There were two guys that I worked out with who were playing

for the Giants Farm Team that year.

It was...

He was an outfielder pitcher,

a great big guy named Ali Brown,

who was a good big leader,

and then Tito Fuentes,

who was a long-time big league infielder.

And I worked out together at the second base.

We had no idea, obviously,

that he was going to be in the big leagues eventually.

But the one thing that stood out for me working out with Tito

was he had about 112 pounds of change around his neck.

And when we were fielding ground balls,

I was saying, for gangling and rattling,

and I'm thinking,

how can you field ground balls

with all the jewelry around you and all those noises?

And he turned out to be pretty good.

And I never did get any neck chains.

Your college sort of mate in the middle infield

was Doug Raider, right?

Is that correct?

Yeah, after two years,

Doug played short,

I played second,

and he signed with the Houston Astros

after his sophomore year.

And yeah, he was a terrific college player, obviously.

Big tall guy.

He was kind of skinny at Westland,

but he sure grew into that body.

He was about 6'3",

could run well.

Great arm.

And a good hitter, I know.

We played over at Notre Dame one Saturday afternoon.

He got hit on the wrist,

and it broke his wrist.

So that was kind of a blow.

But yeah, they were all over him,

all the scouts from different teams.

I knew all about him.

And it was just taken for granted

that after that second year at Westland,

he was going to sign with the Astros.

So you mentioned that between playing football

and baseball,

you spent some of those short months

doing some broadcasting.

How did that develop for you?

I know, you know,

for in reading a lot of stuff about you,

that you just love listening to the radio

and being in the Midwest,

you could hear all kinds of different broadcasts,

particularly at night.

And was that something that,

was there ever an inkling that was something

you wanted to do with that development college?

Yeah, that came in college,

because I think when you're in high school,

I'm even into college.

You're more concerned with playing than you are with broadcasting.

I mean, that was well down on the list, probably,

but the athletic director,

at Illinois Westland,

Jack Cornberger was very good friends

with the sports and news director at WJBC,

the very good vocal radio station in Bloomington,

and Jack Codon Newberg,

that he thought that

I might be interested in broadcasting,

and there were four high schools

and the two colleges in the Twin Cities at the time,

and they did a lot of basketball at high school,

and of course the two colleges,

and they didn't have a large staff,

and they were always looking for two or three people to kind of fill in

on the basketball broadcast.

They might even have as many as three games in one night

they'd do one live,

and then they'd record the other two,

play those after the live broadcast.

And so,

Don Newberg came out to Westland,

and we sat down,

and he said,

Jack Cornberger told me

that you might be interested in broadcasting,

and I said,

yeah, yeah, that'd be fun, I guess.

I'm thinking about it.

But, sure, I used to listen to all the baseball games

and I'd flip around during night time hours,

and in that locale in central Illinois,

we could get a lot of the broadcast,

but WJBC, the hometown radio station,

was a cardinal affiliate,

had been for a while,

and to this day they still are.

And so, it was Jack Buck,

Harry Carey,

he'll drive you over for a couple of years,

and I had some or night,

I'd play by the radio there in the living room,

and just listen to the games,

and at really no thought of broadcasting,

but later on,

I realized that I was getting a pretty good education.

Subliminally, I guess you could say,

just listening to those guys describe baseball.

And so,

it was almost like having a college course,

I think,

laying there and listening to the games,

all I have to do any homework,

that was one good thing about it,

but I think I was learning some pretty good lessons

from some pretty darn good broadcasters,

and we could get the Chicago guys to,

so yeah, it was good,

and we were in a good location for that.

When you finished college,

you still did have an opportunity to play professionally,

but at this point,

you had to make sort of a life decision, I guess,

and it's a funny story eventually

that Buddy Blattner told you that you actually

had a better chance to play professional baseball,

and be a major league announcer,

because of the amount of jobs,

but how did you decide to make the decision at that point in time

and maybe not pursue professional baseball,

at least for a little while?

Well, at that time,

I was pretty enamored with broadcasters,

and I figured,

you know, that might be kind of a cool job

if you could broadcast for a major league baseball team.

I had no idea, I was so naive,

that there were hundreds of guys trying to do the same thing,

I guess,

but as luck would have it,

the royals were born in 1969,

and I went back to work at State Farm

after I got out of college for a few months,

and then I had a chance to go over to WNBD radio and TV

in Peoria,

which is a bigger market

and only about 40 minutes from Bloomington,

and then from Peoria,

after I spent a few months there,

I went down to St. Louis,

and did some TV on the weekends at KMOX TV,

and while I was there,

I got the job with the royals,

so that was kind of the quick transition

from college to State Farm

for a few months to...

I was still doing part-time at WJBC,

but then I went full-time in Peoria,

full-time, well, not totally full-time.

I did weekends at KMOX TV

before coming out to Kansas City.

The story of you getting that job

is a pretty remarkable thing,

including the fact that you had a very creative way

to send your packaging of your interview,

and also the fact that you really hadn't done an actual baseball game

when you did some recording.

When you did the recordings

that would eventually net you a major league job.

Yeah, at the time, Danny,

the booths in both Wrigley Field,

Kamisky Park, Chicago,

and in the stadium in St. Louis,

doing table TV or anything else,

and most big league clubs at that time

did radio only,

and once in a while maybe weekend TV games

and so there were a lot of empty booths,

and WNBD in Peoria,

as well as WJBC in Bloomington,

both being Cardinal Affiliates.

Well, I had that in,

and I wrote the Cardinals

and asked them if I could bring a friend

and a tape recorder down to St. Louis

and do a game,

as I was auditioning or going to for another job.

And they said,

here, come on down,

so my friend Charlie Brown

and then I went down to St. Louis

and set up the recorder,

and I did a game,

and then took a home,

listened to the whole game,

and then I took,

I don't know,

two or three half-innings,

which I thought maybe were representative of the way

I would broadcast the game.

I did an inning,

where there was a couple of runs scored,

I didn't pick out an inning

where nothing happened,

and I had to kind of fill in,

and then another half-inning,

which I thought might be okay,

and then I sent that to them

in a package,

the people that were screening the applicants

for the number two job with the royals,

and that's how I started that process.

Why don't you tell the audience what the creative way

that you tried to get some attention

with the packages that you sent to them?

Pretty corny,

but it worked.

And it was kind of the brainchild

of a friend of mine who lived in Peoria,

and he said,

you know, those little metal craze

when you go into a bar,

and the waiter,

waitress, will bring a beer,

whatever your, you know,

chips over in a,

in a tray that has,

in this case,

Schlitz beer was the number one sponsor for the royals,

and so I asked a local bar,

if I could have their little tray,

and they had more than one,

and it had Schlitz logo on it,

and appropriately enough,

and so I took my tape

and I put a picture in,

and I,

resume on the tape,

wrapped it up,

and I had a little note about,

I hope you don't think this is,

this is really corny.

I don't think,

don't think I am a brush,

U-S-C-H,

leager, meaning a minor leager.

Don't think I'm a brush leager

for having done a cardinal game,

but this is my last pitch

for the Kansas City Royals job.

And that's something,

wouldn't I, great?

Well, it's like you say,

it works.

Yeah, it did work.

I don't know,

but then I had a,

I had an interview with Buddy Blander,

and they had,

he told me at one time they had about,

right around 250 applicants,

and for the job,

and they kept whittling them down

through the summer,

through the fall,

and then now we're into the late fall,

and he called,

and he said,

would you come down to St. Louis,

and we'll sit down,

and he had a real nice,

finished basement,

with a little bar,

and he said,

we'll have a,

some pizza and just sit around

and chat,

and I said, yeah,

it sounds like fun,

and he said,

why don't you come down around,

get down here,

run for us,

about a two-and-a-half-three-hour drive

from Bloomington.

He said, get down here,

about four,

and we'll just go down to the basement

and we'll have a,

you know, chat.

Sounded good,

so I told my dad,

I said, all right,

and he was, you know,

excited about it,

who wasn't, I was,

kind of thrilled,

but I had known about Buddy Blander,

obviously,

he was a national broadcaster,

no ill repute,

and so I told my dad,

I said, okay,

I'm going to help me

down there,

about four,

and then I figured

we'd talk for, you know,

two, three hours,

and I said, I'll be home by 10,

and went down,

and we sat there,

and we talked,

and we talked,

and we talked,

and it was four or four-thirty

in the morning,

and Buddy said, well,

I said, well,

I guess about,

I better be going,

he said, well,

you know, I'd just stay here,

and you know,

get up in the morning

and drive back,

and I said, now,

I'll go back,

so we talked for a while,

and I talked for a while,

longer, and then about seven,

in the morning,

I finally sat,

and I jumped in my car,

and made the,

two and a half-three-hour drive

back to Bloomington,

and they pulled

into the drive,

and I said,

I can't boost them,

so I've been the drive,

and I got on the car,

and I said,

I told you,

I'd be home by 10.

I told you,

I'm not,

not Saturday,

or not Friday night.

You must have felt like

you had a pretty good chance

at the job then,

if you spoke to the man

for 12 hours,

or more than that.

Yeah, yeah,

we just fitted off,

and I obviously

admired him,

and he was a great storyteller,

and I said,

I said,

all that much,

and he sat there,

and listened to some great stories,

and we had some laughs,

and it was a,

it was an evening,

of course,

into the wee hours

of the morning,

I'll never forget,

but you're right,

I had a really nice feeling

about it when,

when I got home on that,

Saturday morning,

and then Tuesday night,

why they called

from the agency,

wasn't buddy,

but they called

from the agency,

and the guy said,

I guess you know,

he got the royals job,

and I said,

no, I didn't know that,

but thanks for telling me,

it's good to know.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, about two weeks later,

I came out

and signed the contract

with the royals,

and the way we went.

The rest is history,

as they say.

Do you have,

did you,

did you at the time,

have any sense,

how amazing,

it was,

that you got that job,

overall,

all those,

all those contestants,

at your age,

in those circumstances,

it's amazing.

Yeah, and no,

I didn't,

I had no clue.

Like I said,

I was pretty naive

about the whole thing,

but I just kind of did it

on a mark,

I thought, well,

make a tape,

and the buddy said,

I asked him later,

when we were working together,

and you know,

we really knew each other.

I said, why did you pick me?

I know there were a lot of guys,

and he said, well,

we had applications

from everywhere.

So guys were doing recreations

in their basement.

Guys were making things up,

or going out

and doing a high school gate.

So we had tapes

of every time,

from everywhere,

and he said,

but two or three things

really stood out,

when we listened to your tape.

He said,

number one,

you were applying for a majorly job,

and you took the time

in the trouble to go to St. Louis,

and tape a majorly game.

And he said,

number two,

he said,

I knew you had played.

He said,

I could tell that you knew the game.

He said, even scriptatically,

in talking about different plays,

why that play worked,

why that play didn't,

that you had played,

and you had a good feel for that.

And he said,

number three,

he said,

you were very young,

and he said,

it's a brand new team.

He was my dad's age,

and he said,

I just thought it would be good

to get a young guy,

and his idea was to work

for another four,

five, six years.

There wasn't a definitive number,

but he was looking at retirement,

and he said,

I can kind of, you know,

show you the ropes,

introduce you to people,

bring you along,

and he was screwed to his word,

and he taught me a lot

about the fundamentals

of putting together

a majorly baseball broadcast.

And he was a great teacher,

he was a great tutor,

and we got along great,

and I obviously tried to learn a lot

from him,

and hopefully I did.

It was a time when,

basically,

one person would do,

you know,

the innings,

and the other person

would do the innings,

and there, you know,

there wasn't a lot of talking back and forth,

but he liked to have you listen there, didn't he?

Yeah, we'd go out and have pizza.

This is spring training now,

my first year,

and once,

we'd go out and have pizza,

and talk,

and he said,

there's one thing that you have to do,

and he said,

that is concentrate.

He said,

you have to listen to everything,

I say,

because I'm going to do the first two innings,

you'll do the next two.

And I didn't want you repeating exactly what I said,

and the first two innings,

and you're two innings.

He said,

that would sound awful.

And he said,

I want you to develop your own style,

I want you to do the game,

the way you want to do it.

He said,

don't think you have to do a,

an imitation of me,

because if you try to imitate me,

what we'll get is a crummy imitation of me.

He said,

I want you to do the game of the way you want to do it.

I thought,

you know what?

That makes a lot of sense.

That sounds pretty good.

So,

he also said,

if you want to talk back and forth

during your innings,

we can do that.

If you want to jump in,

when I'm on the air,

doing play by play,

please do.

He said,

you'll see things that I don't.

I'll see things that you don't,

and we can compress that

into a nice informative broadcast.

But his basic rule was,

I'm here for you,

but I'm going to stay out of your way.

When it's your pre-innings,

I did pre-4 and 7.

When it's your innings,

if you don't want to talk to me

or you don't want to have a conversation,

fine,

if you want to,

fine,

but I'm not going to press you.

I'm not going to,

you know, jump on every other thing,

you say,

I'm going to get out of your way,

let you develop the way you want to develop,

and do the game,

the way you want to do it.

And I thought that was a pretty good strategy.

Did you feel,

like when you think back,

that you basically had your style,

pretty much from the start,

did you, obviously,

you're going to refine things

and learn things.

There's no question about that.

But did you feel like pretty early on,

that you had a handle on how you wanted to broadcast,

a baseball game?

That's a good question.

I don't know.

I never thought of that.

I think what evolved was,

over time,

you do evolve into

what you do,

and it changes.

I mean, there's going to be subtle changes.

I think we all go through that,

and every aspect of the business,

I'm sure you will say the same thing.

You've evolved in the way you do things

from the time you started,

and I think that was true with me,

and you get into a comfort zone.

You do it the way you feel most comfortable,

and where you can be the most informative.

Obviously, the thing I've always focused on

is just absolutely detailed,

describe the play.

That's the main job of what we do,

is to describe the play on radio,

paint the word picture,

and be as accurate as you possibly can.

There are several elements that follow that.

You have to,

buddy, always said,

you have to entertain,

but he said,

if you're going to be a real good radio baseball broadcaster,

not only do you have to tell the audience what happened,

now you have to tell them how it happened,

and why it happened.

In other words, he was telling me,

you not only have to be your play by play guy,

you've got to be your own analyst.

And aside from bud,

with rare exceptions,

I have never worked with anybody who had played baseball that much.

Certainly no matrily player in the broadcast booth.

Now, John Wathen very briefly worked on the radio side.

Paul Splittorff, I did some of the royals playoff games,

starting in 1985,

we did some of the royals broadcasts together,

but aside from that,

I've never had an ex-player sitting beside me in the booth,

so I've had to not only do the play by play,

I've also had to analyze,

not only tell them what happened,

but tell them how and why.

What was life for you like away from baseball,

and you're a young man,

you're in your 20s,

and the royals got good pretty fast,

so that's an aspect we don't really have to visit.

You didn't have to do a lot of bad baseball,

that would come later.

But what was it like moving to Kansas City as a young man away from baseball?

I was great.

I was the same age as the players.

In fact, quite a few of the players were older than I when I started,

and so I developed very good friendships and relationships with them.

Rather than hang out with the manager and the coaches

who were much older,

but he was my dad's age,

and they would socialize,

but he was great friends with some of the royals managers

and a lot of the coaches,

and they'd go out and do their thing,

and I'd go with the players,

and do our thing.

And the funny thing happened though,

after about 20, 25 years,

so I got older,

but the player didn't.

All of a sudden,

I'm where buddy was when I started,

and that changed,

and so on.

But it was great when I was that age,

and away from home for the first time,

and no worries in the world,

and I'd been to a couple of the big league ball parks,

but not many,

but West Coast East Coast.

I got to see all those for the first time.

It was a great ride for a lot of years,

and I had had some wonderful relationships,

and friendships with a lot of the players,

Marty Patton,

who pitched for the Royalty,

and I knew each other from high school,

college,

and junior league and summer ball,

because we had played against each other quite a few times.

And of course, I knew Marty,

and we became really good friends,

and there were so many of the guys

who were basically my age,

really formed a nice friendship and bond with.

What did you like to do away from baseball

as a young man for like hobbies,

or things that, you know,

how did you spend your time?

Well, offseason,

I was involved playing hockey.

I was really playing hockey when I got into college,

when my buddies in college got me into playing hockey.

It's a little bit late to start that,

but I got to the point where I could play reasonably well,

so I'd play hockey in the wintertime,

and watch hockey,

and I had chances to do some football,

basketball,

and hockey came with X called,

and asked me if I wanted to do some of the blues games on radio one year,

and I didn't.

I wasn't interested.

And I remember buddy saying,

well, now you're going to work your tail off for seven months

with your baseball job,

you're not going to have any holidays off in the summer,

you're not going to have any weekends off,

and he said,

your offseason is your vacation,

it's your time.

He said,

you've given the Royal Seven Bunts almost daily,

or nightly,

and he said,

you do what you want to do,

and in the wintertime,

he said,

if you want to do other sports,

radio TV,

I'm all for you,

if you don't,

I don't blame you,

because he didn't do it either,

and so I took that to heart,

and I thought, yeah,

it's a long grind,

the baseball season is a grind,

no matter how you slice or cut it,

and it was nice to have time off,

and not have to worry about catching a bus,

or getting on an airplane,

or being at the ballpark

at a certain time every evening,

so it was a nice break from that,

and that was important to recharge the battery,

and get away from it,

and then,

it's a different training comes along,

and you're ready to go again,

and that's always an exciting thing.

The Royals, as I mentioned,

became a good baseball team very quickly,

and an incredible story for an expansion team,

and they were competitive within just a handful of years,

and so you would go on a long run

of doing really important baseball,

and they were good all the time,

and this city really reacted to it well,

and attendance was great,

and no doubt,

especially in a time when there were very few,

games on television,

I mean, you were the eyes and ears of thousands

and thousands of fans,

and that must have been a cool feeling.

Yeah, for Karen,

we had a nice big network all over the Midwest,

and the Royals were good from year one,

actually, the Royals,

it's easy to remember,

in 1969,

the Royals first year,

they won 69,

69 wins and 69,

and that's how they launched that ship,

and, uh,

excuse me, fell back a little bit in year two,

and then by year three,

you could see that,

a secondary callus who was the general manager,

made some really good trades,

and almost exclusively with national league teams,

which was very smart,

because national league was quite frankly better,

a better league than the American league at that time,

and he got some really good players

out of the national league teams,

and the Royals,

all of a sudden,

after year three,

you could see the development of the Royals,

and they were starting to chase the Yays,

and it only took another two or three years

before they did chase them down,

and, uh,

go to the playoffs for the first time in 76,

so, yeah, it was, uh,

it was pretty good from the very start.

And it culminated with the World Championship,

obviously, in 1985,

and, you know,

the roles it had in the World Championship,

and, uh,

it was pretty good from the very start.

And it culminated with the World Championship,

obviously, in 1985,

and, you know, the,

the Royals had had a lot of disappointment.

They've been a very good team,

but their post seasons had been filled with disappointment.

There was, you know,

it wasn't multiple layers of playoffs then,

and, you know, you do,

you won your division,

you played somebody else,

and, uh, you know,

you know, oftentimes it was the Yankees,

and, uh,

the big bad Yankees beat him to,

so, when they get,

when you got to 85,

and, uh,

the Royals had now been a championship caliber team

for a decade,

and then, finally hit the mountain top,

maybe in the most unusual fashion,

sort of like, you know,

the Kansas City Chiefs,

maybe with fallen behind all those times,

in the, uh,

in the Super, in the playoffs last year.

But what was it like when,

you know, you went through the disappointments,

and your friends with these guys,

obviously,

and then they won it all.

Yeah, it was pretty sweet, obviously,

and, uh,

as I say, you can really see it,

feel it coming,

and, uh,

why do your Herzogs

have been named a manager

by that time,

and he really,

put the team together beautifully,

his, uh,

his managerial skills

were second to none.

Whitey was always,

I felt, two or three innings ahead of the other manager,

and, uh,

he was,

the type of guy who made

every one of the 25 players on the roster,

feel like they were the most important guy on the roster,

and he had his starting nine,

and starting eight in the pitcher,

and then his bench guys,

the extra guys,

and he might have had five or six of those,

he would spend time with them,

and make them feel like they're,

hey, you're really a big part of this thing,

and they were,

he just had a great way of making everybody feel

like they were a very important part of that team,

and one thing that Whitey could never get enough of

was a left-handed pitcher in his bullpen.

If he could have had 37 pitchers,

left-handed in his bullpen,

he would have picked this.

Because the Yankees think about this,

the Yankees had those great left-handed hitters at the time,

and they had a,

it seems like they had about 12 guys in the dugout,

who were all left-handed hitters,

they'd run them out there in the seventh,

eighth and ninth inning,

he's bench hitters,

so, um,

and he had the short porch

at the old Yankees stadium, too,

so that's why the Yankees are so,

predominantly left-handed hitting,

not only starting lineup,

but also bench,

and Whitey always wanted to counter that

with, with left-handed pitch,

out of the bullpen,

and he could never get enough,

but those were great rival,

that was a great rivalry from the mid-70s to 1980,

and of course the Yankees

prevailed three times,

and Whitey always said,

if he'd had rich gosh-age in his bullpen,

it would have worked worse,

or any guy who was a power picker

out of the bullpen,

why the royals,

instead of losing all three to the Yankees,

would have won at least two of those,

and so obviously,

when they finally beat the Yankees in 80,

it was getting the monkey off the back,

but people don't remember well,

a few people don't remember the great games,

the royals and the Yankees played,

not in the playoffs,

necessarily,

but during the regular season,

my goodness, they were classics,

they were some great, great games,

great regular season,

and of course,

most people remember the details

of all the playoffs,

but yeah, that was very heated,

a very great rivalry,

royals and Yankees for quite a few years.

The royals would become a different kind of franchise

after they won the championship,

they'd spend more money

and bring stars in,

things like that,

but still an extremely relevant team

drawing incredible crowds,

and coming close to selling out the games,

it was really a glorious time for the royals.

Yeah, you're right,

they did start to spend

a little extra money on free agents,

but it's interesting,

the free agents that they got,

usually didn't work out all that well,

but that was true,

not only for the royals,

but with other teams.

For a while,

there was a free agent

who really contributed

to whatever team he happened to be on,

but the royals were still very good

for a long creative time,

and then of course,

everything in sports seems to be in cycles,

and then the royals hit the downskids,

a little later on starting

but early to mid-90s, I guess,

and took a while to dig out of that.

More of Danny's

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Denny Matthews

is our guest

he's a baseball

Hall of Famer.

Obviously,

Royals Hall of Famer

accolades.

I think one of the

lines is your dad told

you, if you hang

around long enough

and you do your job

reasonably well,

you're going to start

to get a bunch of

awards.

Certainly, you have

and you've deserved

every bit of them.

Halls of Fame

left and right as well.

I want to ask you

when that transition came,

the strike came,

basically the Royals

sort of declined

as a team,

sort of coincided

with the baseball strike.

They were having

a very good season

of the strike came

and then it would be

a long stretch of

non-competitive

baseball.

After all those years

of winning and doing

relevant games,

how much of a challenge

was it for you

after really a couple

of decades of good

baseball to call

bad baseball?

I always felt

that if the team

wasn't real good,

I had to be

a little better.

That was my first

when I would go

to the ballpark

every night.

And actually,

even though

the team wasn't

very good,

and you weren't going

to win the pennit,

well,

out of 162 games,

whether it was going to

be quite a few

that were really

good games.

Win or lose.

And so I would always

go to the ballpark,

hopeful that both teams

played well.

It was a very

interesting game,

obviously,

hoping the Royals

would win,

but even if they didn't,

and both teams played

well, and it was a good game,

it was a good broadcast

play.

Hey, I had no

control over

over it.

I didn't feel the

ground ball.

I didn't throw a pitch.

I didn't swing the

bat.

So I was beholden

to what happened down

in the field.

So you try to make

it as interesting as

possible.

You try to have some fun

with it.

And so that was my

tack when the team

wasn't all that good.

I would show up

at the ballpark,

hoping that both teams

played well.

Now, there were times

when you go to the ballpark,

one team would play

really well,

and one team

wouldn't,

and the final score was

eight to one.

So that was exactly

a classic.

And then there were

a few other times when

neither team could get

out of their own way

in a game.

And the final score

would be eight to six

or something.

And you had some fun

with that,

because there were going to

be some goofy things

that happened no doubt

that the neither team

played very well.

But yeah, both teams

are playing well

by that.

Those are fun to do.

Obviously, by this

time you've been doing it

a long, long time,

and at one point,

I think you maybe came

back from a flight and

you get stuck in traffic

or something like that,

but the fact that you might

want to retire

when you were 50 years old,

obviously that didn't

happen.

But was that in any way

shape or form serious?

All right.

I guess if you go through

life, you have some

funny thoughts

and time to time.

But yeah, I thought

after some long road

trips, and now it's the

end of August,

and you're pretty well

worn down by the long

baseball season team.

It might be kind of

nice to not have to

do 162 games

this next year.

And I think Ryan

and I were talking about

it one time, and we decided

that you shouldn't consider

retirement either at the

start of the baseball

season or at the very end

of the baseball season.

For obvious reasons.

So I think that's a pretty

good rule of thumb,

and I think we both

agree to that, but

neither one of us

is retired yet.

Your style is one

that I just really love.

It's a very matter of

fact, you do the details

of the game.

You don't often get very

excited, but you get

excited at the proper

times.

If anything has ever been

criticized about your work

in some people's eyes,

it's the fact that maybe

sometimes you should get

a little bit more excited.

I don't think that in

any way, shape or form.

Have you ever thought

about what your style is

and how people's reaction

to it is?

I know that you enjoyed

the fans at FanFest

because that's the

really the only kind of

feedback you can get in

and they love your work

generally, but

how do you feel about the way

you present a baseball

game?

Well, as Buddy told me

in the long ago,

do the game the way

you are most comfortable

doing it.

And, yeah, I figured,

well, how come you don't

get more excited?

Well, how do you know

how excited I am?

We all share

excitement in different

ways, right?

Right.

And how does, you know,

Sam know that I'm not

excited.

You know, you don't

sound excited.

Well, I am excited.

Now, sometimes, if

there's something really

exciting, you'll know.

And I will be.

And it will show.

But, you know, I can be

really excited about

something that may not

sound quite like that.

That's me.

That's just my personality.

That's my style, I guess.

When I played sports,

I didn't get overwhelmed by

something that happened

that was very positive.

And I didn't get really

distressed and down about, you know,

a bad game.

And I remember talking,

I did an interview with

Carlis Kremsky a long time ago.

And he said,

in the long baseball season,

to get through it,

you can't get too up

or too down.

You have to have an

even keel.

And you'll make it.

But he said,

if you're sky high today

and down in the dumps two

days from now,

hey, by the,

all start break,

you're going to be a mess.

And so, you know what?

You said,

I'm thinking about that.

There's a lot to that.

No question about that.

But, after,

finally, after a lot of years

of bad baseball,

the royals would,

once again,

become relevant.

And you obviously hung

around for the entire

ride of it.

You're still doing it.

Or did it make it extra

rewarding for you

that maybe you,

you could have walked away

at a couple of three points

and finished in a time

when the royals had been bad

for quite a long time.

How rewarding was it

when they started to be good

again?

Well, it was terrific.

And you could see it coming.

You could,

you could see it.

You could hear it.

You could smell it.

You, uh,

yeah.

From maybe two years before

they won the World Series,

and then there'd be one year

when they've got

to the World Series

and the Giants prevailed.

But the year or two

before that,

the royals went

from a team

that you could beat them

pretty easily.

They make one mistake

or two mistakes.

The other team had jump

all over it,

and you lose,

and you lost 93 or 4 or 5 games.

Well,

two years before they got

to the World Series

for the first time,

during that season,

the royals were

a lot more difficult to beat.

And there's a big difference

between being easy to beat

and being hard to beat.

All of a sudden,

being very, very hard

to defeat the royals,

you can see them

improving in all areas.

The next year,

they were really,

really good.

I mean, they didn't make

to the World Series,

but boy,

they were right on the break.

And then, of course,

it came the next two years,

you play in the World Series,

you lose that one,

and then you play the maps

and you win it.

But it was a process.

And you could see

the evolution beginning

four, four and a half years

prior to the night where

everybody was jumping

around at the ballpark

in New York

after having beaten the

maps in the World Series.

But yeah,

it was really fun

just to see that

that transition

from not really very good

to, you know what?

We're getting to be

pretty darn good.

To now we're tough to beat

and now we're winners.

And yeah,

that was a four or four

and a half year process,

which was fun to watch.

Just before the

Royals started to get good again,

you get the ultimate

honor for baseball,

the Ford Frick Award,

being named

to the baseball hall of fame

and the broadcasting wing.

That's an incredible honor.

Obviously,

it's maybe one a year,

not always even that.

But what was that like?

What was it like to get up there

in front of all those people

at a beautiful place

like Hooperstown

and get the ultimate honor

that a baseball

announcer can get?

Well,

before I went

and to George Brett had

gone in a few years before,

I asked him about the experience

and he said,

it will go,

he said it will be four

of the fastest days of your life.

It will be four

of the most exciting days of your life.

And he said,

if you can do it,

slow it down

and just

ingest every bit of it

that you can.

And I tried to do that

and I think I did pretty well.

I did go fast.

It was right.

But it was just full of great people,

incidents,

conversations,

events,

playing in the golf tournament

with Carlton Fisk

and Whitey Ford.

They were my partners.

Wow.

Sitting around

with Harmon Killaboo,

Johnny Bench at breakfast

and hear them tell jokes

and stories.

And then

the day of the induction,

which was a Sunday afternoon,

and because

Cal Ripken was one of the inductees,

Baltimore and Cooperstown

aren't that far apart

and a lot of people

they had.

They were judged to have

the biggest crowd ever

for an induction.

They had 95,000 people.

And it's an outdoor stage

and you can see people

way, way off in the distance,

maybe a half mile

and then there's a gentle

rolling hill.

And this is up in New York,

which you can see

and there were people

at the very edge of that hill.

That was a half a mile

when they said

there were 95,000 people.

And so then

you have to get up

and do your speech

and you're sitting there

with 85

hall of famers

behind you on the stage

and 95,000 people

in front of you.

And your family

and friends

and it's a daunting experience.

Tom Sieber introduced me

and we talked about it

before the event

and he said,

how do you feel about this?

He said,

well, I said,

I'll tell you what,

I played college football

and there's a process

where you go

from Monday to Saturday

and the emotion,

the excitement builds

from Monday's practice

until you hit the field

on Saturday

and it's game day.

And I told Tom Sieber

I said,

it's game day.

That's how I felt.

You have always

for somebody

who's in such a public position

you've always been a very

private person

and I think that

you probably are less known

when people probably

know less about you

than they do

about many other

famous people

in Kansas City

or maybe anywhere else.

It was that

just a personal choice

of yours

and it just so happened that way.

It's okay.

You know, yeah,

it's fine.

I don't need to be on

camera, on mic,

on stage,

every Thursday or night.

No, I just,

you know, I do what I do

and internally enjoy it.

I enjoy the fans.

I enjoy the listeners.

I get a lot of feedback

from royal fans

all over the area.

People will sometimes recognize me

when I'm out running errands

in public doing different things

and chat with them.

But yeah, I mean,

I don't have this great desire

to be on.

I'm on plenty.

Once people

install starts

and I really don't need

to keep reinforcing that.

So, and you're right.

I'm pretty, pretty private.

And that's my choice, I guess.

And I don't think I'm all that

exciting.

I don't know what people

would find exciting about me

and I was like, you know,

playing hockey

and somebody in the lip

for the shot or something.

But no, I just have

chosen to, you know,

be myself

and I think I'm pretty enough

and I don't have

a lot of fun people

and I think most people

are like, I get, I meet

and get along with me fine

and this, everything.

So yeah, it's just one of those things.

I don't really think

about it that much.

Well, now you've done this

for over 50 years

and, you know, some people

didn't mention Vin Scully

and things like that.

You obviously went way past

50 years.

When do you,

and you've been able

to now tailor your schedule

a little bit

and not travel as much

and of course last year

was completely different

and we hope we don't have

to replicate that again.

But when do you think

about, you know, each year,

like you say,

you don't think about it right

at the end of the year,

you don't think it at the start

of the year,

but you must think about it sometimes.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, I think everybody

has a, you know,

a plan in front of them

whether it'll work or not

or even eventually,

who knows,

but yeah, you think

about those things

and the old story

about this guy's day

to day or week to week,

why I think it's just

season to season

or probably day to day

if you really can't

want to get right down to it.

But, you know,

just continue on

until it becomes a burden

and you have to force it.

But, yeah,

cutting back

has really helped,

as they say,

it's 162

and making every trip