Rays' TV voice Staats truly found his calling

He was born in a small farm town in Missouri, grew up in Cardinals and Cubs territory in southern Illinois, and became a diehard fan of the, uh ... Houston Colt 45s?

"I was 9 years old, and I was piddling around with a little green plastic radio that I had, and I could hear all these baseball games, especially at night," Dewayne Staats offered over lunch last week in Atlanta.

"I listened to the Cubs, and of course the Cardinals were right next door, with Harry (Caray) and Jack (Buck). And suddenly, I found the Houston Colt 45s. For a 9-year-old kid who was already obsessed with baseball and the Wild West, this was the greatest thing ever."

So began a romance with baseball and the art of bringing it into our living rooms that has taken Staats to Houston, Chicago, New York, ESPN and Tampa Bay as a major-league baseball TV announcer.

The only lead play-by-play broadcaster the Rays have had, Staats will do his 5,000th game tonight when the Rays open a homestand against the Padres.

"For someone who never played the game at the major-league level, and that's not a knock or anything, he is one of the smartest guys I have ever been around on baseball," said Rays relief pitcher Dan Wheeler, Staats' son-in-law.

"He's helped me out so much in just talking baseball. It's an easy thing to do with him."

Dick Crippen, a 40-year veteran of broadcasting Tampa Bay sports and a senior adviser for the Rays, says Staats lent professionalism to the Rays' broadcasts from the outset in 1998.

"He came in with what I call the ideal broadcast voice for baseball," Crippen said.

A few that stand out

Staats, 57, counts among his most memorable games Nolan Ryan's record fifth no-hitter in 1981 with the Astros, Pete Rose tying Ty Cobb's all-time hits record at Wrigley Field in 1985 and one-handed pitcher Jim Abbott's no-hitter for the Yankees in 1993.

He helped call the first night game at Wrigley Field in 1988, although it was rained out after a few innings, and the 1999 Devil Rays game in which Wade Boggs got his 3,000th hit - a home run, no less.

Staats has called two perfect games - both against the Rays, of course - and he was there for all of the Rays' dramatic moments in 2008, including Dan Johnson's ninth-inning, game-tying home run off Jonathan Papelbon on Sept. 9 at Fenway Park.

"That truly could be the biggest hit in the history of the franchise," Staats said of a game the Rays won 5-4 en route to beating the Red Sox for the American League East title.

Decades earlier, Staats grew up listening to the game by night on radio and playing it every chance he could.

Broadcasting was Staats' way into the majors, and the impetus was the encouragement he got from teachers "who drafted me into debate and speech contests" in a strong public school system in Wood River, Ill.

Staats started as a sports reporter for WSIE radio while a student at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville and, two years later, became the radio voice of the minor-league Oklahoma City 89ers.

Still in his early 20s, he earned an Emmy nomination for his work as sports director at KPLR-TV in St. Louis.

All the while, Staats had been cultivating a relationship with Gene Elston, the Colt-45s-turned-Astros announcer he had listened to through the green radio.

Through Elston, Staats got a shot. The Astros were auditioning announcers for an expected opening. On Aug. 26, 1976, at Wrigley Field, Staats found himself in the booth with Elston and fellow future Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Prince, the former longtime voice of the Pirates.

In a game the Astros won 5-3, Staats did play-by-play and analysis.

"I'm a 23-year-old kid who couldn't hit a curveball in high school, and I'm supposed to be an analyst on a major-league team," Staats said with some of the incredulity he must have felt at the time.

He got the job. He became the TV voice of the Astros from 1977 to 1984, then called radio and TV with Caray and the Cubs and TV for the Yankees with Tony Kubek.

It was with ESPN that Staats first worked with Kevin Kennedy, one of his current partners in the Sun Sports/Fox Sports Florida booth, with Brian Anderson.

"Just very smooth, easy conversation - no heavy lifting. That's how I think of it when I work with Dewayne," Kennedy said. "That's the first thing. He's very personable.

"And his work ethic is incredible. I mean, he's usually the first one there. He's very organized. He lets you, as the analyst, prepare the way you've got to prepare, and he tees it up for you and lets you hit it."

A true family man

Friends talk about Staats' genuineness, and it comes across in a 90-minute lunch - more than half of which is spent talking about upbringing and family.

Staats' hero was his paternal grandfather, Perry Francis, who "raised nine kids on a farm" and passed away when Dewayne was a senior in high school.

"That was probably the first time I understood what a severe loss is," Staats said.

Perry Staats, Dewayne's father, was a pragmatic "food, shelter and clothing" man who was skeptical of his son's immersion into baseball. And yet there were trips to the old Sportsman's Park/Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

Dewayne lost his first wife, Dee, to lung cancer in July 2005. He talks of a loving marriage that produced daughters Stephanie and Alexandra, and of how Dee prepared everyone and told Dewayne he was young and should remarry.

Stephanie married Wheeler, the pitcher, and the couple have two young sons. Five-year-old Gabriel is so locked into baseball, Staats says with bursting pride, that he told his preschool teacher recently that two-plus-two equals a "tied game."

Staats has since married the former Carla Berry, whom he describes as a loving, intelligent and accomplished woman "with a bunch of letters behind her name and a master's degree in counseling."

Between the two are a grandstand full of siblings and nephews and nieces and grandchildren and extended family. In fact, a small horde of them spilled out of the broadcast booth after a game last week at Turner Field.

Eats, breathes, sleeps it

Staats is an encyclopedia of names, numbers and baseball history. Former broadcast partner Joe Magrane nicknamed him Alex Trebek, after the "Jeopardy" host, and Staats could, in fact, pass for a younger Trebek.

It should come as no surprise that Staats has saved all of his scorebooks, even those from Oklahoma City, or that he once created a fire hazard by stockpiling issues of The Sporting News in his parents' attic.

"He is so involved with baseball, it's 24/7," said Thom Hastings, Staats' longtime director for Rays telecasts. "He lives, eats, breathes and sleeps it, so he is always prepared."

Staats prefers to look at his obsession as a man who is getting to live out a dream.

"I'm just a guy walking down the street who has gotten to do what I wanted to do for a living," he said. "I've come up a winner in the mate department; you get two daughters who are great, and a son-in-law who's super and two grandsons and a granddaughter coming.

"That's pretty good. That's pretty good stuff."