Once a sportscaster, now calling balls and strikes
After an illustrious career as a national newscaster, Steve Bartelstein has turned to professional umpiring as a second career (courtesy Steve Bartelstein)
Updated 1/19/2025 11:58 AM, 5:05 PM, 1/20/2025 7:25 PM
(Second in a two-part series detailing the careers and post-career lives on former Portland TV sportscasters. Part I can be read here)
It has been nearly three decades since Steve Bartelstein graced the local television scene as a sportscaster on KGW.
Bartelstein was at KGW from 1994-97, working at the station in the same era as Colin Cowherd and Joe Becker. The Chicago native had moved up the rung of TV markets in his decade in the business, going from Evansville, Ind., to Abilene, Texas, to Raleigh-Durham, N.C., to Wilmington, N.C., to Providence, R.I., to Charleston, S.C., to Indianapolis and finally to Portland.
Once he departed from Portland, Bartelstein got away from sports and became a national news broadcast figure, first at CNN, then at WABC and WCBS in New York City and finally at the CBS affiliate in hometown Chicago.
In 2011, Bartelstein left the industry for good and gravitated toward his first love — baseball umpiring. Steve went to umpire school in 2012, got his license and has worked professionally since, both umpiring and teaching young umpires the business.
“I love it,” Bartelstein, 61, told me from his home in Phoenix. “It has been good to me. I needed a landing spot after TV. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I have found that this is the right thing.”
Asked for memories of his short time at KGW, Bartelstein first mentions starting the high school football scoreboard show, “Friday Night Flights,” with news director Mike Rausch.
“It was the very first ‘Flights’ show in the country,” Bartelstein says. “Now everybody has it.”
Bartelstein caught the beginning of the “Jail Blazers” era.
“I was going in every day to find out what J.R. Rider had done the night before,” he says. “I had more 9 a.m. press conferences than I had ever had in sportscasting. It was a crazy time.”
At the time, Bartelstein was enamored of the area.
“I loved Oregon,” he says. “I said when I left that it would be the place where I would retire. I liked the people. I loved all the nature. One day I had a chance to shoot the breeze with (former mayor) Vera Katz, just sitting and watching a baseball game. I told her, ‘Portland is such a livable city.’ Now it’s so disappointing to see where the city has gone, to see all the hard work that was done back then just dissipate.”
Bartelstein has had three bouts with cancer — he is cancer-free now — but that is not why he left television. He was not pleased with his situation at his last TV stop in Chicago.
“It was not a great television station,” he says. “We had a mutual parting of the ways. And that was it. I got tired of it. The business was changing. A lot of good people were leaving at that time. Diane Sawyer, who I worked with, Charlie Gibson … everybody was leaving. (Broadcast television) was going the way of the newspaper. They were hiring people who were certainly not as talented for a lot less money.”
Bartelstein hung out in Charleston for a year, then dived into umpiring. He had always loved baseball. A southpaw, he had pitched in high school and for one season at Evansville.
“From the time I was in high school, I wanted to be an umpire,” he says. “I did Little League games and high school games. Then it got put on the back burner, because television worked out so well in the beginning.”
At 49, he started an entirely new career.
“Wish I had done it when I was 22 or 23,” Bartelstein says. “You’re in the system then, and I would have gone to the big leagues, or at least had a chance to.”
When he got his license, “I was one of the oldest guys they had hired,” he says. Since then, he has worked steadily in independent pro leagues — one season in the Pecos League, five seasons in the Frontier League, four seasons in the American Association and one in the Atlantic League. The only season he has missed was the last one, as he recovered from his third bout with cancer. He will be back in the Atlantic in 2025, the highest level of independent leagues.
In 2023, Bartelstein also umpired in the Northwoods League, a college wood-bat summer league. “One of the best-organized leagues in which I have worked,” he says.
For several years, Bartelstein has called games during major league spring training. Most of his games have been of the split-squad, Triple-A or Double-A variety.
“I have loved it,” he says. “I have seen a lot of major league guys who are really good while they’re coming up. I did a game in fall instructional league and saw (Cubs outfielder) Ian Happ hit three home runs — one the farthest I have ever seen a ball hit.”
Bartelstein says two of his mentors have been Dale Scott and Jim Joyce, Portlanders who enjoyed lengthy careers in the big leagues. Bartelstein and Scott ran a pro umpires school together in Palm Springs from 2019-21.
Now a veteran, Bartelstein has been a crew chief “for a good while now.”
“Relationships (between players and umpires) have changed throughout the years, just like the game has changed for umpiring,” he says. “My crews have had very few ejections. I hope to say that I helped change the way we interact with players a little bit.”
Bartelstein says he is doing plenty of teaching on weekends, working with young, aspiring umpires “who are unaffiliated and on the rise. Hopefully I will put a stamp on guys who get to the big leagues some day.”
“Bart” says he returns to the Portland area every year for about a month in the spring to work with high school coaches and call high school games “just before the start of my pro season. It is my way of giving back, because that’s where I started umpiring.”
He says he stays in touch with former Wilson coach Mike Clopton and West Linn coach Joe Monahan, whose Lions have won three straight 6A state championships.
Bartelstein stays active with umpiring and teaching umpires year-round. When we talked, he was heading to Palm Springs and the California Winter League.
“I will (umpire) seven games over the weekend,” he says. “Then I will come back to Phoenix and watch (umpires) work anything from high school to travel ball to college.”
How much longer will Bartelstein keep up this kind of schedule?
“I am winding down,” he says. “Probably two, maybe three more years. Then I will be done.”
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CARL CLICK, KGW, 1983-89
Click worked sports at KGW for only six years, but his presence in the Portland television market spanned more than three decades. He worked in the KGW news department from 1989-2005, then moved to KATU, where he did morning news and helped host “AM Northwest” until 2014.
The Washington State grad considered becoming a print journalist. He did an internship at the Spokane Chronicle in 1981, then an internship at KGW in 1982. TV seemed the better option to him. Click was hired full-time by the station a year later, working with Scott Lynn and Al Keck.
“Those guys went to bat for me to get me hired,” Click says.
Click has had a number of side gigs. For about 15 years, he called radio play-by-play for OSAA and WSAA state championship sporting events. For the last 11 years of his time at KATU, Click also coached basketball and tennis at Columbia River High in Vancouver, Wash. After retirement, he taught middle-school video production in Vancouver.
For the past seven years, Carl and wife Jil have lived in Sisters, where they play golf, hike and kayak.
“It is a beautiful place to be,” Click says.
He also keeps busy doing standup comedy.
“I started doing a bit of it a little bit in the ‘90s at the ‘Last Laugh,’ ” says Click, 64. “I have done some in Portland and Seattle and I am doing some in Bend (at Craft Kitchen and Brewery). It’s another way to write creatively. It’s nice to write material and get up in front of people and see how it works.”
Carl and Jil have been married for 38 years. They have two children and three grandsons.
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LOU GELLOS, KGW 1977-81, KATU 1992-95
The Central Catholic High and Washington State grad got an early start to a broadcasting career, holding a summer job as a floor director at age 20 between his junior and senior years at Wazzu.
“I was working with some of the true originals of Portland television — Doug LaMear, Richard Ross, Jack Capell and Ivan Smith,” Gellos recalls. “I didn’t just get to meet them. I was working with them.”
After graduation, Gellos was hired as the third sportscaster behind LaMear and Steve Grad. He started just in time to get in on coverage of the Blazers’ championship season.
“That was a fun period,” he says. “The final game was on Sunday and I did the reporting that day. The magnitude of the moment for Portland was not lost on us. It was pretty big for local reporters who were fortunate to cover it. While we maintained our journalistic integrity, there is nothing to compare to that time. Sadly, the newscast on the day of the final game was never recorded. Somebody in the studio missed pushing the button.”
Gellos left in 1981 for Seattle, starting as a sports producer at KING-TV. He worked for 11 years as a reporter and weekend sports anchor there.
In 1992, Gellos returned to Portland to serve as sports director at KATU. He stayed for three years, working with Ron Carlson and Jerry Murphy. During that time, Gellos continued the Friday night prep football program his predecessor, Steve Arena, had started.
“We would send a fleet of photographers region-wide to shoot highlights of a couple of games each, then return to the station where everything was put together to create a package of a dozen games or more,” Gellos says. “We expanded it a bit by inviting a high school band in the studio to play to open the segment and in and out of commercials.
“For the first show, I asked (Blazers radio voice) Bill Schonely if he would be up to joining us, and he said yes. Coming out of commercial, the band was playing and Bill introduced me. I came out from behind a curtain and Ron and Jerry were ‘guests’ on the couch with Schonz to share highlights and scores. He later told me he would have done that every Friday if I had asked.”
Gellos well remembers the frenzy the Tonya Harding incident started.
“Everyone was trying to get the inside story,” he says. “Early one morning, I got a call at home from Barbara Walters, wanting help on lining up an interview with Tonya.”
In 1995, Gellos returned to Seattle to take a job with a public affairs firm that helped get the new Mariners stadium built. He worked there from 1995-2000, lobbying the Washington state legislature for Paul Allen to buy the Seahawks. Gellos then took a job working communications/public relations for Microsoft. He retired in 2017.
Lou and his wife of 35 years, Linda, live in Seattle. They have one daughter.
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PAT HELLBERG, KPTV, 1979-81, KOIN, 1981-88
Hellberg got his start in the business working under the legendary Jimmy Jones at KPTV. Then he got hired at KOIN, joining what he calls the “Dream Team” with Rick Metsger and Ed Whelan.
“It was so much fun,” he says. “There was a lot of flying by the seat of our pants. Technology was just getting to the point where you could kind of rely on a live shot, but they were never really a sure thing.
“I remember we covered a Civil War game at Autzen — I think it was the Toilet Bowl in 1983. We had to hustle to the highest hill we could find in Salem so we that we had a line of sight for our satellite dish to beam back the highlights and my commentary to make the 5 o’clock news that night.
“You had no idea when the technology was going to work for you or fail. There were no dull moments when you were trying to do broadcasts back then. In that game, we were scrambling to find highlights when there were no highlights.”
Hellberg left KOIN in 1988 for a career at Nike, where he started as a producer in internal films and video and eventually became the director of the department. After 20 years there, he went out on his own and did video production for about nine years before retiring.
These days, Hellberg writes a wine blog, alerting readers to “good wine, good price, easy to find.” He and wife Nancy have two sons and a daughter. They live in Northwest Portland and have a second home in Tumalo, between Sisters and Bend.
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ERIC JOHNSON, KGW, 1989-93
Johnson started his TV sportscasting career with stints in Spokane and Boise. His time in Portland was short but high on quality, working alongside Scott Lynn and Joe Becker.
“Portland was a great time in my life,” Johnson says. “I met my wife (Monique) there, at the Veritable Quandary. It was a golden era for the Trail Blazers, with two trips to the NBA Finals. What an amazing team that was. During that time, I had a one-on-one sit-down with Michael Jordan. This basketball god and I shot the breeze, had a conversation about race, sports and greatness. It was fascinating.”
In 1983, Johnson moved on to Seattle and KOMO-TV. He worked there for 31 years — the first 20 in sports, the last 11 in news — and retired just six months ago.
“I covered a ton of sports during my career and had a blast,” he says. “I stretched my creative muscles and just loved every minute of it.”
Johnson has written a novel — “some of it autobiographical, some of it not.” He has done some public speaking and a couple of commercials.
“I m trying to figure out how to use the story-telling abilities that I have honed over the years,” he says. “At KOMO, I had a successful run with a series called ‘Eric’s Heroes,’ focusing on stories about human decency. There was a hunger for that kind of thing. I would like to keep that going.”
Eric, 63, and Monique have been married for 29 years. They have two children.
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AL KECK, KGW, 1980-83
Keck worked with Scott Lynn at KGW.
“We came in the same year,” he says. “I did the early and 11 p.m. shows. It was a blast. I had a lot of fun.”
When the Blazers’ Bill Schonely had a heart attack in 1981, Keck filled in for him during recovery.
“I think it was from the beginning of the season to January of that season,” Keck says. “I had always been a huge fan of Bill’s, so that was fun for me.”
Keck left Portland in 1983 for a job in San Diego, where he spent five years. Then it was on to Tampa, where he worked at two TV stations until 2010. Keck did play-by-play for University of South Florida football and basketball.
“I called the first football game in their history,” he says. “I also did Buccaneers broadcasts for two years, with Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura as my analyst.”
Keck is retired now, living in Woodland, Calif. He continues to do some free-lance work, lending his voice to commercials and infomercials. He does public address for high school football and basketball and helps out at a local elementary school.
“I’m 70 but feel like I’m 30,” he says. “That gets me in trouble at times.”
Keck, who is single, has three kids and three grandchildren.
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SCOTT LYNN, KGW, 1980-89
Lynn started at KGW as the weekend sports anchor under sports director Al Keck. When Keck left for San Diego in 1983, Lynn became the sports director. In 1989, Lynn moved to KEX radio.
“I wanted to do play-by-play, and KGW wouldn’t let me do it,” Lynn says. “I went to KEX with the understanding that I could do free-lance play-by-play.”
For years, Lynn worked for Prime Sports Northwest, which became Fox Sports Northwest. He called college football and men’s and women’s basketball on FSN through 2003. On radio, Lynn hosted “KEX Sportsline” and also the Blazers’ “Fifth Quarter” post-game show from 1989-95. He filled in for Blazer play-by-play man Brian Wheeler for 33 road games during the 2017-18 season when Wheeler was physically unable to travel.
In 2009, Lynn wrote a book about basketball at his high school alma mater titled “Thornridge: The Perfect Season in Black and White.” After he was laid off from KEX in 2013, Lynn and wife Sharon moved to Largo, Fla., in 2014. The next year, he published a second book: “Sports Idols’ Idols.”
Lynn, 70, has kept his hand in broadcasting, doing Division II play-by-play for Eckerd College’s men’s and women’s basketball for one year and for University of Tampa baseball through 2023.
The Lynns still live in Largo and survived the recent hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“The structure of our house is fine,” he says. “We didn’t lose a shingle to our roof, which is amazing.
“Sharon loves living here. We are a mile from the beach. She rides her bike to the beach. The warm weather suits her well. I love the winters. It’s heaven. But the summers are hot, muggy and buggy, and the threat of hurricanes is real.”
The Lynns have been married 47 years. They have two children and one granddaughter.
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AJ MCCORD, KOIN, 2017-2022
I was fortunate enough to appear on some newscasts with AJ, with KOIN and the Portland Tribune’s working relationship during that time. She was a pleasure to work with.
McCord came to Portland after a stint with the ABC affiliate in Fayetteville, Ark. She worked with Adam Bjaranson and former NFL player Stan Brock during her tenure at KOIN.
“I enjoyed working with both Adam and Stan,” McCord says. “Adam is a pro’s pro. Stan crushed it as well as he could have. It is a transition going from the one playing to the one talking about those playing. He did a really good job.
“I am very grateful for my time at KOIN. I learned a lot while I was there. I was given the freedom to find my voice and what I wanted to do in this industry. Most of the time, there was a lot of support for me.”
McCord, 33, moved to Arizona in 2022 and has kept busy in the broadcasting scene doing freelance work.
Since 2022 she has been the host of the weekly “Talking Beavers” TV show about Oregon State athletics.
The San Diego native and renowned surfer is a reporter and studio host for the World Surf League.
“I have done 10 events a year for the last two years, and it looks like we are on track for that again in 2025,” McCord says.
AJ covered the surfing competition at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, an event that was held in Tahiti. She has worked as the lead play-by-play announcer for the Association of Pickleball Players, the best pros in the sport. “We have had live windows on CBS, ESPN and Fox,” she says.
“I have done a lot of work with Red Bull and covered the women’s first division for the Red Bull Rampage, the premier free-ride mountain biking event in the world,” McCord says. “I have done a series called ‘Girls Who Rip’ in partnership with a woman who owns a bikini brand.”
In two weeks, McCord will be in Aspen to make her debut as host and reporter for the X Games.
“I am having a blast,” she says.
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RICK METSGER, KOIN, 1977-92
Metsger spent 15 years at KOIN, the last 13 as sports director, working at different times with Brian Drees, Bill Schwanbeck, Pat Hellberg, Ann Schatz and Ed Whelan.
“I hired Ed, who was working on the news side at KOIN, first to handle weekend sports,” Metsger says. “Ann replaced Hellberg. We hadn’t thought much about the fact she was a woman sportscaster, but in fact she became the first on the West Coast in terms of major markets. We got a lot of phone calls and mail from viewers early on, complaining, ‘What’s a woman doing in sports?’ But Ann was good, and she has the same enthusiasm today that she had 30 years ago.”
Metsger says in retrospect, the hiring of Schatz and Whelan is a proud moment for him.
“I had the opportunity to hire the first woman and one of the first African Americans to the sports staff of a TV station in a major market,” he says. “This was before DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), but it had nothing to do with that. They were just the best two people for the jobs at that time. We were the ‘Mod Squad’ — Waylon (Whelan’s real name is Waylon Boot), Schatz and me.
“It was a great time. ESPN was in its infancy, not a major player. For us, it was mostly about local sports. You went out and did it. You didn’t pull it off the cable TV or the major newswire. You covered it yourself. That was fulfilling. Local media was much broader and in depth than it is today.”
For five years after he left KOIN, Metsger ran a public relations company. Then he really made a name for himself, serving 12 years (1999-2011) in the Oregon State Senate. From 2013-19 he was a member of the National Credit Union Administration board in Washington D.C., serving as chairman the final year. Metsger is currently legislative director for the Pac West Lobby Group in Wilsonville.
Rick, 73, and wife Janet live in Salem.
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JERRY MURPHY, KATU, 1990-96
Arriving from a TV job in El Paso, Murphy worked with Steve Arena, Ron Carlson and Lou Gellos during his time at KATU.
“In those days, we were a dominant station in terms of size of audience,” Murphy says. “We dominated the ratings. It was fun being part of that. We were doing something right. I got to town right after the Blazers lost to the Bully Boys (Detroit Pistons) in the ’90 NBA Finals.”
Murphy says he beat out Mark Schwarz — who later came to prominence working for ESPN — for the KATU position.
“In some ways, I got there at the height of Blazermania,” he says. “During the 1990-91 season, they started so hot (11-0 and 27-3) and won 63 games. That was a very good team, a fun team to follow. I was there in Chicago for Game 6 of the ’92 Finals. To go on the road and cover those kind of big moments — it was unforgettable.”
Murphy left to become news anchor in his hometown of Columbia, Mo., from 1996-99. After that, he worked in the insurance business until he retired in 2021.
Murphy, 64, and his wife of 37 years, Paula, live in Columbia.
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MICHAEL O’BRIEN, KPTV, 1981-97, KATU 1998
O’Brien came to KPTV when Jimmy Jones was still sports director. O’Brien took over that duty when Jones left for Seattle in 1983. During his time at the station, O’Brien worked with Phil Cassidy and Dan Christopherson.
“We had great people there,” O’Brien says. “I really loved the people I worked with at the station and still feel close to them. There was a great spirit among us. We were underdogs in a sense.
“We used film for a long time — probably the last station on the planet to be shooting film. I came from Eureka, Calif., which was about market No. 185, and Portland was 22. We shot videotape in Eureka. The engineers at KPTV didn’t want it. It added all kinds of interesting dynamics.”
During the Pokey Allen era, O’Brien called radio play-by-play for Portland State football. He also called play-by-play for the Single-A baseball Portland Rockies for three seasons and did horse racing announcing at Portland Meadows.
“That was a life-long dream of mine,” O’Brien says. “As a kid growing up, I would watch horse races at my grandmother’s every summer.”
After he left KPTV, O’Brien worked for three months doing weekend sports at KATU. Then he branched out into other areas. For several years he worked in sales and as a trainer with Dale Carnegie Training. Starting in 2007, he served as a salesperson and account manager for Corporate Executive Portland, working with C-level executives. He then moved on to a company called Exec Online, doing training with Fortune 500 companies from 2018-21.
“We had partnerships with elite business schools,” he says. “I helped get executives from all over the world to take classes from top professors. It was a great company with good people — a fun way to go out.”
Michael and his wife of 46 years, Joanie, live in West Linn. They have three sons.
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RON PIVO, KGW,1998-2007
After stints working TV sports jobs in Roseburg, Medford and Eugene, the Los Angeles native was hired as the No. 3 sports reporter on a staff headlined by Colin Cowherd and Joe Becker.
“Colin was terrific,” Pivo says. “Joe is awesome. Brian Warner was our sports photographer, a great guy to work with. We had such a fun time together. We made each other laugh every single day.
“I came aboard right when the NBA had a lockout. I was all excited to cover the Blazers, and then the start of the season was delayed for a few months. Once we got going, it was fun. I really loved my job at KGW.”
After Cowherd left for ESPN in 2002, Pivo became sports director. He stayed in that position until being laid off at the end of 2006.
“I hung around Portland for a couple of years,” Pivo says. “Our family has been in commercial real estate business in downtown LA for some time. In 2011, we decided to move down there to learn the industry. For a long time, I was really upset I had lost my dream job. But I was able to help my dad through an illness and learned the family business, which I help run even today. So in a way, it worked out OK, since I got to spend a lot of time with him before he passed away.”
Ron, 58, and wife Joanne have one daughter. They live in Westlake Village, Calif.
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ANN SCHATZ, KOIN, 1989-98
Schatz came to KOIN after working at its sister affiliate in Omaha, Nebraska., her hometown.
“I took Pat Hellberg’s place — huge shoes to fill,” she says.
The sports director at the time, Rick Metsger, says Schatz was the first woman TV sportscaster at a major market on the West Coast.
“I think that’s accurate,” Schatz says. She worked with Metsger, Ed Whelan and Brian Bushlach during her near-decade of service at KOIN. She says she got a great reception from the professionals in Portland.
“It was an interesting era for me, both personally and professionally,” Schatz says. “I knew a lot of people in Omaha, but when I came to Portland, it was a city I knew nothing about, and I didn’t know a soul. Being a mama’s girl, it was pretty tough.
“The folks in the newsroom and the guys in the sports department were unbelievably kind, generous and warm. They went out of their way to make sure I was set up for success. And the people with all the other affiliates could not have treated me better. I was stunned by that.”
And maybe stunned, too, at the vehemence from some of the public.
“From the viewers, I got it,” she says. “They hated me. They took the time to mail letters and make phone calls. Thank God there was no social media in those days.”
What were the complaints like?
Schatz: “You’re a fraud. You look like a hick, you dress like a hick, you sound like a hick — you’re a hick. Go back to farm land.”
“If anybody liked me,” she says, “I didn’t know it. The folks who didn’t took the time to make sure I knew they did not like me at all. It took awhile to win them over.”
The working environment at KOIN helped her grow as a sportscaster, she says.
“I would like to think our department was the best in town,” she says. “I would like to think I became as good as anybody in town. My relationships with coaches and athletes were as genuine and true as I could hope for them to be. When I decided to leave, it was on such a high note with those relationships, it meant the world to me.”
After departing from KOIN, Schatz started out as a freelancer, doing some producing work for Nike. During the 1999 NBA season she served as sideline reporter and studio host for away games for the Blazers, and also did work for their “Action Sports Northwest” cable operation. From 2000-02, she was TV analyst for the Portland Fire of the NBA.
In 2005, Schatz began calling play-by-play for College Sports TV Network. Since then, she has done play-by-play for a variety of different networks, most notably for the Pac-12 Network since its inception in 2011-12.
“Last May I called the final Pac-12 Softball Tournament,” Schatz says. “Now Pac-12 Enterprises has kept the fire burning with the Cougars and Beavers. I am calling women’s basketball and men’s and women’s soccer. I will do softball and some Big Ten Network games.”
For the past four years, Schatz has also called some University of Portland men’s and women’s basketball on streaming services and the CW.
“I have been in the sports broadcasting business since 1980,” says Schatz, 67. “I have never been happier, never had more fun, never been more fulfilled, never felt so connected. I get to watch young people do their thing, shine and work with each other and figure out challenges and rise above and get their asses kicked and still come back.
“NIL and the transfer portal have changed some things, even on the women’s side. But for what I’m doing? I am in heaven. I am so grateful to be so involved with Oregon State and Washington State. I have always loved underdogs. I love the folks at those two schools.”
Schatz plans to continue working indefinitely.
“It beats sitting around,” she says. “I have a lot of gas in the tank.”
Ann and her wife, Lisa, live in a coastal town in Oregon.
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BILL SCHWANBECK, KPTV 1978, KOIN 1979-81
The Bellevue, Wash., native worked a few months at KPTV, then jumped to KOIN when Brian Drees left for Denver, serving as sports reporter and weekend anchor. Schwanbeck worked with Rick Metsger and Ed Whelan as the station’s sportscasting crew.
“I worked a lot with Gary Beck, our sports photographer,” Schwanbeck says. “We did some really good stories together. He is the best guy.”
Schwanbeck arrived in Portland after the Blazers’ championship season.
“When I got there, they were falling apart,” he says. “Everyone was breaking bones. Bill Walton, Bob Gross — the wheels were coming off with that team.”
Schwanbeck and Beck did a piece with Portland State quarterback Neil Lomax on the day of the 1981 NFL draft. Lomax expected to go early in the first round.
“We were at his house early in the morning,” Schwanbeck says. “He didn’t go in the first round — he went at the beginning of the second round (No. 33 to St. Louis) — so he was sweating bullets.”
After leaving Portland, Schwanbeck took a job as sports director at a TV station in Nashville. He worked there five years, then moved to a station in Dallas for 11 years.
“That’s when I got out of the business,” he says. Schwanbeck got his Masters degree and started teaching. In 2003, he and wife Karin moved to Hamden, Conn., where Bill served as adjunct journalism professor at Quinnipiac University. He retired in 2020.
“I worked 45 years — 22 years in TV sports, 23 years teaching journalism in college,” says Schwanbeck, 71.
During their time at Quinnipiac, Bill and Karin produced four documentaries, including the award-winning “Running on Empty: The Brain Drain in Local TV News” in 2012. It focused on how the loss of older, experienced news reporters has hurt the public service mission of journalism.
“It is not what it used to be, and not for the better,” Schwanbeck says. “Newsrooms have been decimated. They gutted them of manpower and got rid of many of the experienced reporters because they were making too much money. They hired young folks for a third of the price. It is all because big corporations took over and it became about the almighty dollar.”
Schwanbeck laments the time now given to sports in most local newscasts.
“At KOIN, we were given 7 1/2 minutes on the 5 p.m. news — a 1 1/2-minute segment and then a six-minute slot,” he says. “Now you see sports get one or two minutes at the most on the early ‘casts, and in some markets there is no early sports segment at all.”
The Schwanbecks now live in Spotsylvania, Va.
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DAVID SOLANO, KOIN, 2015-17
Before coming home to Portland, the Gresham High and Portland State grad had worked three years at a TV station in Detroit.
“That was the turning point in my career, this poor kid from Gresham trying to live the dream,” Solano says. “It opened my eyes to what a big sports market looks like, having to conduct yourself in a market with the Tigers, Red Wings, Pistons and Lions and Michigan football.
“I was there for (former Michigan football coach) Bo Schembechler’s final press conference before he passed away. I saw him smash the podium, he was so fired up about facing Ohio State. That’s when I was like, ‘Wow.’ ”
When Solano was offered a job by KOIN, “it was a full-circle moment for me,” Solano says. “Coming to KOIN was one of the most memorable moments of my career.”
Solano worked with Stan Brock and AJ McCord in Portland, but got an assist in the business years earlier from KOIN sportscasting legend Ed Whelan. In 2001, while Solano was at Portland State, KOIN had a news training program designed for PSU students who wanted to pursue a career in broadcast journalism. Whelan recruited Solano, who helped Whelan produce weekend sports shows as part of the program.
“I got to learn from a true Portland legend,” Solano says. “He gave me some tough advice but a lot of love.”
Solano says one of the highlights during his time at KOIN was covering Super Bowl V with Brock in Santa Clara, Calif. “The Broncos beat Carolina in Peyton Manning’s last ride,” Solano says.
Solano left Portland in 2017 for Seattle and a job at KIRO TV.
“I was working as sports director and also the weekend sports anchor,” he says. “It was a great opportunity to write the show with (Seahawks radio play-by-play announcer) Steve Raible.”
Solano, 47, calls his departure from KIRO in 2019 “a mutual decision to leave.” He spent two years doing global communications at Microsoft, and most recently worked as a senior communications manager for the city of Federal Way.
David and his wife of nine years, Liezl, have two children. The Solanos live in Edgewood, Wash.
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ED WHELAN, KOIN, 1980-84 and 1988-2007.
Whelan got his start in the broadcast industry as a radio DJ. He came to KOIN TV in 1978 as a news reporter and was there for about two years before moving over to sports at the behest of sports director Rick Metsger.
“In a lot of ways, I owe my career to Rick,” Whelan says. “I was trying to make the transition from radio broadcasting to television. It was like going from arithmetic to algebra. Plus, I was drinking. I was hungover half the time. I quit drinking, and Rick said, ‘I’ll take Ed in sports.’ ”
For most of the next quarter-century, he was well-known as the wisecracking sportscaster who delivers sports news and clips along with funny lines. Whelan spent four years in TV sports in Cleveland in the mid-‘80s but returned to Portland, where he was regarded as an institution to thousands of viewers who loved his unique approach to sportscasting. He was more a personality and entertainer than a journalist.
(Whelan’s given name is Wayland Boot. A boss during his radio days convinced him he needed to adopt a stage name. “I’m not on the air anymore,” he tells me. “I use my real name now.”)
Boot began each broadcast by telling viewers, “Hello, everybody. Nice seeing you again.” He took a light-hearted approach to his work. “Even Stymie couldn’t believe it,” he would say, cutting to footage of the character in “Little Rascals,” blinking in shock. Ed used another clip, of a toddler grimacing as he nibbled on a biscuit, and handed out his “Burnt Biscuit Award” to “the team or jock worse off than a plate of burnt biscuits.”
“I liked to operate outside the box,” he says now. “It was sports. Nobody’s taxes were going to go up, or their wheels were going to change. It wasn’t the State Department.”
It all ended abruptly in 2007, when Boot’s contract was not renewed by KOIN management and his job ended — without cause, he says.
Boot’s life went into a gradual tailspin through the years, compounded by the continual effects of a stroke suffered while covering the 1998 Winter Olympics in Japan. In 2017, he was thrown a lifeline, given a job as dispatcher for Gerlock Towing in Northeast Portland.
“Still working there five hours a day, three days a week,” Boot says. “It’s a whole different world than broadcasting. I enjoy it.”
Boot, who turns 77 on Friday, still lives in the house in Garden Home he has owned for about 30 years, but is in the process of looking for a place in a retirement home. Does he miss his old job?
“I miss the competitive part of broadcasting,” he says. “You work a story and have an idea that comes together — I miss that part. I don’t miss what TV newscasts have become. There is not enough time for reporters to sink their teeth into a story.”
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STEVE WICK, KATU, 1981-87.
The Benson Tech and Oregon State grad interned at KATU in the fall of 1980, moving into a full-time role soon thereafter.
“I was a broadcast major and that’s what I wanted to do,” Wick says. “I was very fortunate to not have to go to a small market to start my career. Steve Arena was my boss and Bill Boaz mentored me. I started as a reporter and Steve moved me to the weekend anchor role in 1984. Then Ron Carlson came in.”
Wick laughs with the recollection of Mike Schuler falling off his chair during his introductory press conference as the Blazers’ head coach. “That was hilarious,” Wick says.
Steve eventually grew disillusioned with the job.
“Toward the end, it was kind of the same old, same old,” he says. KATU “made budget cuts several times. And finally, my job got eliminated.”
Wick went to work in sales at KEX radio and stayed there until 1996. For the next decade, he worked in sponsorship sales with SRO Partners, a consulting group led by former Blazer general manager Jon Spoelstra. From 2006-16, Wick held a similar position with Tournament Golf Foundation. Then he retired at age 57.
Wick, now 66, lives in Tigard.
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