Alexander: Ducks broadcaster Steve Carroll keeps on going

ANAHEIM — Steve Carroll has been the radio/audio voice of the Anaheim Ducks for 27 seasons. He’ll call his 2,004th game for the franchise Saturday night, on the club’s Ducks Stream platform, when the Ducks play the Kings in downtown Los Angeles.

And in recognition of not only his career here but 54 years in radio total as a disc jockey and play-by-play guy, he’ll be inducted into the Southern California Sportscasters Hall of Fame Jan. 13, an honor that floored Carroll when he first was told.

But consider: His career almost ended before it began.

His first job, Carroll recalled in a recent interview, was at a small station in Farmington, Mo, about 60 miles from where he grew up in St. Louis.

“KREI radio,” he said. “It’s in a small kind of country town, and I got hired to work the board, do news, weather, and I ended up doing Farmington High School games (and) Mineral Area Junior College, which was down in Flat River, the next town over.”

His first work day at the station, he was scheduled for a 6 a.m.-to-noon shift.  But he overslept.

“I set my alarm,” he recalled. “Well, I woke up and looked outside, and it was sunny. … I was supposed to be on the air at 6 a.m. to open up the station.”

KREI’s general manager lived across the street from the station, and he was waiting when a chagrined young Carroll arrived, petrified that what was supposed to be his first day at work would also be his last.

“I leaned around the glass door. I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ ” Carroll recalled.

“He comes up, right in front of my face. He says, ‘Son, you can’t afford to do this. This is your first day in radio. Let me give you some advice: Don’t ever be late for anything. You could have lost your job here, but I kind of like you. We had a good interview, and I’m gonna give you another chance.’

“They stuck with me. I ended up being there for two years.”

And the career that almost ended on Day One was off and running.

He worked in lots of different towns, in station formats that ran the gamut from rock to beautiful music. He DJ’d at local nightclubs on the side. And when he broke into sportscasting, the guy who as a kid would wait outside of St. Louis Cardinals (both baseball and football), Hawks and Blues games to get player autographs found himself on a trek through America.

Carroll called games in Des Moines, Iowa; New Haven, Conn.; Nashville; Huntsville, Ala.; Philadelphia (one season’s NHL play-by-play of the Flyers) and New Orleans. He has called games in 48 of the 50 states, missing only Alaska and Idaho.

Much of that experience in the minors involved non-broadcast duties, as is traditional with broadcasters at that level: Selling tickets or ad space in the game program, handling PR duties and game night operations, acting as traveling secretary, and all of the other duties that are split between teams of people in the big leagues.

“I did everything, every minor league thing from doing PR, sales, game night operations,” he said. “What I tried to do was learn as much as I could in those areas so when the job does come open, hey, here’s the resume, this is what I have to offer. I can handle three or four things.”

He even wrote a baseball column for the Nashville Banner during his years in that city in the 1980s and ’90s, while calling Vanderbilt University football and basketball, Nashville Sounds Triple-A baseball and Nashville Knights ECHL hockey. Idle time? Forget it.

Through all of that, he could probably teach a college class, or at least be a guest speaker, on the subject of persistence in pursuit of that dream job.

Among the lessons (besides, of course, being on time):

• Don’t get discouraged. “You’re moving around,” he said. “You don’t know what your future is, but you kind of stick with it until that break comes. And this one (in Anaheim) came at a good time because I was kind of doubting myself, (asking), ‘Will something like that ever happen?’ And it did. … That was the day that you worked all these years for.”

• Don’t be afraid to tout your skills and your background. It’s not bragging. It’s an advertisement for yourself.

“A lot of it was self-selling,” he said. “You start meeting people, so they’re going to maybe make a call on your behalf. But I initiated a lot of the interviews. … That’s how I got a good portion of my jobs – just selling myself and not counting on anybody else to do it for me.”

• Remember: Opportunities come unexpectedly. For example, there was the opening in Anaheim in 1999 to replace Brian Hamilton on the then-Mighty Ducks’ radio broadcasts. One of the people who helped put Carroll’s name and voice in front of the decision-makers was Roy Mlakar, who was then the Ottawa Senators president and CEO – and who had once hired Carroll in New Haven, which at the time was a Kings’ farm club.

Carroll only worked there for one season before taking the Vanderbilt play-by-play job in Nashville, but obviously, he made an impression.

“I’m almost positive – he didn’t tell me all about it – but he made a call to Tony Tavares (who ran the Ducks for then-owners Disney),” Carroll said, adding that Mlakar then called him to let him know Anaheim had an opening.

“Then I get a call and they said, ‘We want you to come out for an interview.’ Just like that. It happened with (my) not knowing anybody from here, to be quite honest. … So I knew that he had something to do with it. And, you know, at times you need help.

“One thing I learned was that you go up and meet as many people as you can, whether it’s the assistant GM, the coach of the other team, whatever. Introduce yourself just because you never know what’s going to happen. (And) always, what you try not to do is burn bridges. I don’t care if you hate your job or whatever, but keep (your mouth) shut because you never know who’s going to wind up where.”

Oh, and one other piece of advice: Don’t be afraid to have fun.

“If you’ll listen to any other broadcast, we have the most fun,” color analyst Emerson Etem said. “I think if you’re a listener just tuning in, I think the audience can relate to a relationship on air.”

“You have no idea what goes on up there during the commercial breaks,” Carroll quipped.

Etem, a Long Beach native who played in the NHL for five seasons and had two terms with the Ducks, joined the broadcasts for the 2023-24 season. He’s Carroll’s third broadcast partner in Anaheim, after former player Brent Severyn (2005-09) and former Orange County Register hockey writer Dan Wood (2009-23).

“I’ve been able to really learn a lot (from) what he writes down, what he doesn’t, what he focuses on, and I’ve been able to kind of emulate that but also create my own style because of it,” Etem said. “He knows so much, but at the same time, he doesn’t try to do too much.

“In this business, you’ll have guys who want the show, the whole broadcast, right? You’ll have guys that maybe don’t give the color analyst that time necessary to relay what happened on the last play. And we just have this perfect timing of him knowing when the big play occurs, calling the big play and then letting me really dissect it.”

It’s obviously more fun to broadcast a winning team, and the Ducks are back in contention (21-14-2, part of a logjam at the top of the Pacific Division at the Christmas break) after seven straight non-playoff seasons. The memories of the run to the Stanley Cup in 2007 haven’t completely faded, but that was 19 seasons ago.

But Carroll’s motivation, Etem said, is as simple as “knowing where he’s been and what it took to get to this spot. He never forgets what it took to make it to the top,  and I think that carries him each and every day.”

And Carroll will now be known as a Hall of Famer. USC broadcaster Pete Arbogast, the president of the Southern California Sportscasters Hall, gave him the news of his induction in the broadcast booth during a commercial break in a game broadcast a while back.

“I’m going, ‘You’re kidding me,’ ” Carroll said. “I’ve never thought about anything like that.”

As Arbogast explained it in the announcement of the honor: “When you tune in, you don’t have to ask what game you’re listening to … you know it’s Ducks hockey. Those are the kind of people that belong in the Hall of Fame.”

But being enshrined hardly means the end. Carroll, who recently turned 70, does not seem inclined in the least toward retirement, nor should he be.

“If you enjoy something, you love what you’re doing and you can still do it, might as well do it as long as you can,” he said.

Wouldn’t you?

jalexander@scng.com