XTRA Sports 690’s lifespan as Southern California’s sports leader was relatively short — nearly 15 years before it ended as most listeners recognized it in 2003.
Last week, The Athletic published an oral history of the Southern California sports-talk radio station that covered a wide range of topics, including John Lynch’s vision for the station, the rise of Jim Rome, the dynamic between the station’s unique personalities and, ultimately, the station’s demise.
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The story was more than 6,000 words, but it was impossible to cover every interesting aspect of the station’s history in just one story. With that said, we’ve decided to follow up our with the best of the rest that didn’t make the initial story.
Rome’s Hacksaw impersonation
Rome’s relationship, or lack thereof, with Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton has always been one of the most interesting aspects of 690’s history. They were two of the station’s main pillars and were successful, but they couldn’t be any more different in terms of personality and how they approached their shows.
Even though Rome has had a nationally syndicated radio show for nearly 25 years, he still breaks out his Hacksaw impersonation every once in a while, which probably goes over the head of a vast majority of his national audience but serves as a nod to his past and to his longtime listeners.
Rome: I usually preface it by saying, “This is why I do this, and now when I do this, it usually takes a year off my life.” I’m not really good at impressions … but I can do the Butter Knife. I can do the Hacksaw. That one I do have. I’ll break that out on occasion. More than anything else, that’s a hat tip to the old school. That’s good-natured. I’m not carrying anything heavy. I’m into my 50s and have had this amazing run. I’m coming from a good place. That’s a shout-out to 690, my San Diego days and where I got my start. That’s more of that than it is, “I’m coming for the old guy.” I’ve got much bigger things on my mind right now.
Hamilton: It’s more of an inside joke than anything. It doesn’t bother me at all. Hey, thanks for listening. To me, it’s weird because it’s an inside joke. It’s not derogatory. He’s great.
Hacksaw’s Summer Book Tour
John Ireland (co-host, Mason and Ireland): (Lee’s) one of a kind. … We were the Chargers station. The quarterback for the Chargers was John Friesz. He was this big tall guy out of Idaho, and he was holding out because (Chargers general manager) Bobby Beathard didn’t want to pay him. So Brad Cesmat, who was one of our news guys, was at Chargers practice and said, “John Friesz just ended his holdout.” He just walked into practice and it was the biggest Chargers story everybody was waiting for, or else they were going to have to play some backup quarterback. Howard (Freedman, the station’s program director) walks into the studio and goes, “Lee, after this break I want you to go live to Brad Cesmat. He’s at Chargers practice and John Friesz just ended his holdout.” Lee looks at Howard and goes, “Not now, pal. I’m in the middle of my summer book review series.” Howard just started laughing. … (Lee) had everything very regimented.
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“The Coach” John Kentera
We didn’t dive into John Kentera much in the initial story, but he carved out a place at the station in the weekday night slot after Hamilton. He became a critical member of the lineup with his Friday night high school scoreboard show, which covered schools from San Diego to Los Angeles, and with his knowledge of the local sports landscape.
Lynch: The Coach was a character. We had him start this prep show on Friday night, and (it) really became really one of the most important influences in prep sports in the history of San Diego.
Jeff Dotseth (who began working in San Diego radio in 1991): Coach just fit San Diego like a glove.
Scott Kaplan (host, The Scott and BR Show): Sweet Coach. The guy who’s coached everybody, coached at the local high schools, who celebrates local high school sports.
Lee Jenkins (Clippers executive, San Diego native): On Friday nights with high school football, he would bounce you around to like El Camino, Vista, Torrey Pines. They would just go all around. I played baseball in high school. I was intrigued. Like, would Kentera mention me? What would I have to do to get mentioned on that show?
Jeanne Zelasko’s early experiences at the station
Sports-talk radio is a field predominantly filled with males, which made Jeanne Zelasko one of the rare female on-air personalities at 690 — a fact that wasn’t lost on her early in her time there.
Zelasko: When I first got there, it was pretty clear who wanted me there and who didn’t want me there. I won’t name names because I don’t think that’s fair. I will say Jim Rome was very accepting and very inclusive.
I remember this is when they had the old AP machine, the ticker. The scores would come across. Somebody could walk in the room and say, “Was that five yards or 10 yards?” and I could be the only one in the room and answer over and over and they would still go find the ticker to verify me. You just let it roll off your back. It’s part of the landscape. I understand I’m new, but it’s not right. It wouldn’t be smart of me to start fighting it. Chet Forte was extremely accepting, was very nice, was excited to have a female in the building doing sports.
Zelasko settled into a role doing updates, mostly for the Loose Cannons. She also went on to host Chargers talk with Kentera before she left to work on Fox’s national MLB broadcasts.
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Rome’s doubts
As noted in the original story, Rome’s smack-talking style, which grew exponentially large because of the “clones” and resonated with a younger audience, was something completely different than what sports-talk radio had ever heard at the time.
So, naturally, he had doubts about how management truly felt about his show. According to Rome, corporate officers at Noble Broadcasting Group, which owned XTRA Sports 690, had more say in the matter than one might imagine.
Rome: My wife, Janet, was a vice president of human resources at Noble. Noble owned 690. The really curious thing I thought about that is, you had all these corporate officers who worked out of the building where 690 was, and they all got to vote on programming. I came to find this out later on. You had people in HR. You had people in accounting. Maybe people in sales. And they could all say, “I don’t like that show. I don’t like that show.” And their opinion actually mattered. You could see where if nobody ever did a show like me before, and all these people are showing up and voting because they’ve never heard it and don’t get it, that could hurt my career.
So Janet, who is this amazing heart and this amazing person, grew up a Dodger fan. And I’m on the radio saying, like, “Fernando Valenzuela is going to be on food stamps by the end of the month.” She was mortified. She was like, “I don’t know who this guy is or where he came from. That is really mean-spirited. There is no place for that. We should fire him.” She was the vice president of the company now and John Lynch’s right hand. Luckily, luckily, luckily, Howard Freedman was a guy who believed in me. He didn’t really know sports either, but he knew radio. And he was like, “No, this guy, this is the next big thing. This guy is different. This guy’s great.” When I needed someone to believe in me, Freedman was one of the guys who believed in me.
The interns
The hosts were obviously the main draw for XTRA Sports 690, but the interns also went on to do some pretty big things as well, starting with Jenkins, the prominent former Sports Illustrated writer.
Jenkins: I wanted so badly to be a part of the station (that) I actually interned there. The guy I interned with, they put me on the late show, I assume after Rome. His name was Rick Schwartz. He would let his interns read at the end of the night, the home run list. That was a big thing. So I would get to go in and say at the end of the night all the guys in Major League Baseball who hit a home run. He’d invariably ask me a really awkward question. I’d say, “B.J. Surhoff hit his 12th of the year.” And he’d say, “What does B.J. stand for, Lee?” Stuff like that on the air. That’s how much I loved 690. I wanted to intern there.
Aside from Jenkins, Ben Maller, who hosts the late-night weekday spot for Fox Sports Radio, was an intern for XTRA Sports 690 at one time as well. And so was University of Texas football coach Tom Herman.
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The callers
Of course, the callers also played an integral role at XTRA Sports 690, which benefited from having a 77-000-watt transmitter. That opened up the conversation to all of Southern California and welcomed Chargers, Padres, Lakers, Dodgers, Raiders fans and many more.
Marty Caswell (producer for the Darren Smith show on XTRA sports 1360, and former 690 listener): The callers were great. It’s funny because, in many ways, you became as familiar with the callers as you were with the hosts. They were consistent callers. They were very creative. They were smart callers. … The callers, I think, were a very big part of sports radio back then.
Kaplan: It was a great time in sports radio. When you had that transmitter and when you could reach that market, the L.A. market and the San Diego market, and you have these natural rivalries, it was so easy to get the phones going, get people to mix it up on the phones. … You had the mayor of Poway calling. Everyone had a handle. Everyone had a nickname. The audience became part of the show and when they called, people would perk up. … The callers back then became a part of the fabric of the show.
Steve Mason (co-host, Mason and Ireland): San Diego didn’t really like Los Angeles, and Los Angeles didn’t like San Diego. On our show, we’d get calls from L.A. and they’d take shots at San Diego. We’d get calls from San Diego and they’d take shots at L.A. That’s what made part of it fun.
Dotseth: The ability for all the different guys, whether it was (Steve) Hartman, ‘Saw, John (Ireland) and Steve (Mason), to manage all of the different personalities and have fun working all the fan bases against each other without turning off any of the fan bases against each, man, that’s good. That’s not easy to do necessarily as a host.
Jenkins: I think it (Hacksaw’s show) definitely brought San Diego’s neighborhoods to life for me. Because it would be like, “Cardiff, what’s your problem?” I didn’t realize Cardiff’s a town of a couple thousand people and he’s screaming at them. … I did call ‘Saw plenty. But I think I would have felt like I would have to write out a Rome call, and at (age) 15, I wouldn’t have felt ready for that.
Jorge Arangure (then a XTRA 690 listener and now a New York Times metro editor): I think Ireland was hosting a night-time show at one point and I won one of the call-ins on it. It was like the greatest moment. I was like in high school … and I actually won. It was like one of those quips and he thought it was the best one. And it was an amazing accomplishment. … But I was never courageous enough to go toe-to-toe with Rome for the huge call of the day. I was never that bold. … It was just too intimidating to impress Rome. I just psyched myself out every time. “Do I have a really good take today?” I never even tried. It was too intimidating.
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Hamilton: I used to yell at fans, “Get off your ass and get on the phone.” … Raider fan would talk about, “I got all these rings.” I would say, “You’re in last place right now, look at what Al Davis has turned your team into.”
Ireland: Some obnoxious Raider fan, who thought he knew everything, called. Lee said on the air, “Why don’t you go into the parking lot, take out your gun and shoot yourself?” We all went, “Whaaaaat?”
Arangure: Now, obviously, with clips being posted immediately on social media — there were probably times there would have been suspensions (for Hamilton), for sure.
Steve Hartman (co-host, The Loose Cannons): It was unbelievable. It would never fly nowadays. In those days, Lee had a position of power, and they just let it slide.
Obviously, there is no more 690 to call into, but that hasn’t prevented people from still reminiscing about it.
Hartman: All the time. I get calls every single day, or texts. I do my national show for Fox Sports Radio on Saturdays and Sundays, and we were talking on Father’s Day about some Father’s Day memories. Some guy goes, “My Father’s Day memory is me listening to you and Chet on the radio with my dad.” I’m like, “Wow, you’re really making me feel old.” I get talked about 690 daily, whether it’s Twitter, the text line or phone calls. There’s not a single day someone doesn’t want to share a story about 690.
(Photo of Jim Rome: Michael Kovac / Getty Images for Radio Hall of Fame)
