Howard Eskin, a Philadelphia sports talk show host legend, ended his reign after twenty-five years in September. Most people including me, have been wondering what he has been doing with his free time. Besides filling in on WIP and NBC-10, I figured he had to be up to something. Well I was filming a concert last week and thought the conductor looked a little familiar. I'll let you be the judge tho.
I'm not sure if it's just me, but I think strangers always look like people I know. Even though you never see his face, I believe Howard has a twin. Most people are thinking right now why is he writing about Howard when there are other sports topics to cover. Well, lets start this story a couple of years back, when I was just a kid.
All the way back in 1998, when I was a whopping ten years old. My dad took me to my first football game ever and it was the Eagles vs Cardinals. We were in the parking lot starting to walk up to the stadium when a golf cart goes by and my dad tells me, that is Howard Eskin. I remember hearing him vaguely on the radio, but at the time I really could care less who he was.
Fast-forward to 2010, I was interning at NBC-10 and he walks into the room. Since I'm into sports more then I was back then, it was a shock at first. Seeing someone on television and hearing them on the radio for so long is shocking at first when you seeing them in person. After awhile we started talking and he was just like any other co-worker. One night we happen to be walking out to our cars and I asked him if I could sit in on his radio show to see what it was like. He said that he had no problem with it. It was awesome to see how everything worked at the radio station and see what it was like on the other end.
I learned a lot from Howard over those three months in the summer. The biggest thing that I learned from him was how to select highlights. As an intern at NBC-10, I watched Sixers, Phillies, and Eagles games almost every night. I then cut highlights for the producers to eventually use in the news broadcast. One weekend when the main sports producer was out, we had a news producer, Howard and me to run the sports segment. I was looking at highlights like I always do and logging them into the system. This night we were going to showcase how Roy Halladay was dominating the game by having a strike out montage. I logged all of his strikeouts and the producer put them all together.
As Howard was looking through the highlights he asked us why we put Halladays strikeout of an opposing pitcher in the strikeout montage. I didn't even think about that. As Howard says "I think I could strike out a major league pitcher". That is one of the many things that I have learned from him.
Sorry for the Howard crush if it seems like that, but I will always be a fan of him and wish him well at everything he gets into.
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