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Hernando Today

Getting In The Game

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By MARTY MILLER

Hernando Today correspondent

Published: July 8, 2008

At sometime in their life, almost every kid has picked up a ball and either threw it against a wall or tried to hit it with a baseball bat.
And while he or she did that, they suddenly became Phil Rizzuto or Harry Carey or Bob Prince and announced their exploits in winning the imaginary World Series.
This week in East Lakeland at the Dixie Youth League AAA Minors (ages 9-10) Baseball Tournament, Robert Williamson is enabling all those kids who dream of hearing their name called on the radio playing a baseball game come true.
Williamson, who has worked in radio for 32 years and lives just across the Florida border in Alabama, has come up with an Internet website called jockjive.com.
And with the help of two other broadcasters, Williamson is doing play-by-play of every game in the tournament. The set-up he uses is just a lap top computer, a head set and a microphone.
"It's a sports-based web site that actually was spun off a couple of web sites that I run exclusively for radio stations in Alabama," said Williamson.

New spin

But jockjive is something different.
Williamson has been doing Internet broadcasts of Alabama and Florida high school sports for a
few years. But this summer, he found that at this time of year, there aren't many events to air.
"I live a stone's throw away from Paxton, Florida and they were holding the pitching machine Dixie League state tournament last week. I thought why not cover some of these state tournaments."
That resulted in Williamson getting an e-mail from the directors of the East Lakeland tournament so along with two other broadcasters; they are doing all the games of the AAA Minors and Ozona tournaments in Polk County. And the reaction he has gotten has surprised the Alabama broadcaster.
"I had so much response. We had over 20,000 hits on my web site and I was going mad because we were getting a huge amount of interest."
On the website, their is a list of all the games being broadcast live on that particular day and it also has an archived list of all the games that have been played.
"It's been phenomenal," Williamson said between a break in games Monday night. "The number of emails, the number of hits we're getting on the web site and the number of people who come up to us and thank us for doing the game."

Scouting through radio?

As surprising as it seems, even the coaches from the Spring Hill American team are listening to the games to see if they can learn anything about a future opponent.
"When I go home we listen to the broadcasts and I take notes on it," said Spring Hill American coach Jerry Myers. "We scout them to see where the batters hit the ball and try to get some sort of tendency."
The jockjive broadcaster who has been doing Spring Hill games is Bobby Fleming, who also lives in Alabama. "I did high school football this year but this is my first baseball tournament," he said Monday.
Fleming said he has gotten a lot of fans coming up to him thanking him for doing the games. He also said that even though the games can run up to three hours long, he doesn't have a problem filling up the time.
"I would like to do this for a career," Fleming pointed out. "But it's not hard doing these games because I could talk about baseball all day."
Williamson says that in the future, he hopes to do more games from Florida. "We've been asked about doing other state tournaments and right now I've been talking with the Dixie League about doing some of the national tournaments. But so far, it's just in the talking stage."
When asked if he thinks he might have stumbled upon something, Williamson just smiles. "I sure hope so. It feels pretty good having all these people listening to our games. I hope we can do more tournaments in the future."

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