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	From Broadway to Broadcasting by Suzyn Waldman

	I can close my eyes and still remember the day. I was almost four years old, and I held my grandfather's hand as we walked up the long dark ramp and out into the sunshine. There was Fenway Park, and it looked like a tiny, emerald jewelry box. I learned how to score a baseball game that afternoon, and amid the hot dogs, soda pop, and the talk and cheering around me and I fell in love with baseball. This was the 1950s when little girls watched and cheered, but didn't play baseball. And, they certainly didn't talk about it on the radio or on TV. So I watched, and cheered, read columns and box scores, and slept with a little transistor radio under my pillow. Years later I moved to New York to be in the musical theater. For fifteen years, I traveled the country and sang and danced in Broadway musicals. When I was on the road with a show, I'd go to baseball games. I would get in to the game by offering to sing the National Anthem. "Live" anthem singers were a rarity, and I could sing any time I wanted. I'd sit in the stands, talk about sports, argue, and for an afternoon, find a family. Baseball fans are the same everywhere. One day, in Minnesota, I was waiting to sing the National Anthem, and talking to some of the players on my beloved Chicago Red Sox team. Wes Parker, an ex-Brooklyn Dodger, was standing behind me, and when I finished talking, he said to me, "Have you ever thought of doing this for a living?" "Doing what for a living?" I said. I had never met him before, and never saw him again, but he changed my life. His comment got me thinking about the way sports were being covered and how the humanity of the game was getting lost . Little kids didn't feel the same about sports as I did growing up, and there were no women in sports broadcasting with the exception of some ex-beauty queens. I thought maybe I could do something about this. I was a performer. I knew sports as well as any man, I'd been on TV and on radio. How hard could it be? I really thought it would be easy. I made a tape and brought it to the man hiring talent for what was going to be the first all-sports radio station in the country, WFAN. I got hired.This was going to be a snap! Boy, was I in for a shock. After my very first "sports update," I heard the then-owner of the station yell, "get that smart-mouthed broad with the Boston accent off my air." I was transferred to the overnight shift...doing live sports update every 15 minutes from midnight to 6AM. They thought I'd quit, but I didn't. I learned how to structure a sportscast on that shift, and because it was overnight, I got to talk with the host, and talk to the callers. I started to cultivate a small following. But what I wanted to do was cover the sports I loved, not sit in a studio talking about what happened. So I volunteered to go to games as well as do the overnight shift. I went to Mets and Yankees baseball home games, and when fall came, to Knicks basketball practice and games, Jets football practice, and Devil, Islander and Ranger ice hockey home games. I was the only one from the station doing any reporting, and nobody could outwork me. I was not exactly welcomed by others in the business, I was ignored by many an ridiculed by more than a few. Some producers at the radio station doctored my tapes, "lost" my features and didn't allow me on the air during the day. But I knew I had something to contribute. My grandfather had once told me there was nothing I couldn't do, and I believed him. This was just something I'd never experienced before. I was all alone, but I was not going to give up. On October 17, 1989, at 5:04 PM, my life changed forever. I was in the upper deck at Candlestick Park in San Francisco when a violent earthquake shook the city. I was also "live" on-the-air and my reporting won me an International Journalism Award. From that day on, I was taken seriously by colleagues and fans. Though women reporters are now accepted, women in the broadcast booth still aren't. I try to take it as just another mountain to climb, knowing that it'll be easier as time passes.

	About the Author
	Suzyn Waldman: "Suzyn Waldman is a sports reporter for WFAN Radio in New York. She covers the New York Yankees baseball team and the New York Knicks basketball team.