Good Sports: Erik Sean is living the dream

Erik Sean (left) emceeing the Semoball Awards at River Campus, Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, July 14, 2018

Southeast Missourian file

Good Sports is a column featured weekly in the Southeast Missourian and on semoball.com. It is primarily designed to showcase people who have impacted the sporting life of Southeast Missouri, so that readers may get to know them more fully. Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Today: Erik Sean, 52, has worked for River Radio for 23 years and is now director of sports operations. Erik is best known for being the play-by-play announcer for Southeast Missouri State University football, baseball and men’s and women’s basketball. He also is the voice of Jackson Indians football and Charleston Fighting Squirrels baseball.

Where is home for you?

I’m from Macomb, Illinois, born and reared. After high school, I was an enlisted man in the U.S. Navy and mustered out an E-4, a petty officer. I was stateside during the first Gulf War period.

College followed your military service.

College is why I joined the Navy. I was able to get an Illinois Veterans Grant. If you join the service, stay in four years, get an honorable discharge and come back to Illinois afterward, the grant will pay the cost of an undergraduate degree. With the grant plus the G.I. Bill, to which I was entitled as a veteran, I was in pretty good shape when I matriculated to SIU-Carbondale and finished up there in 1996.

How did you get introduced to broadcasting?

I was working a part-time job while I went to SIUC and it so happens the guy who worked next to me, flipping burgers, happened to be the announcer for Carterville High School games. I asked him if he could help me get an interview at the radio station.

And one thing led to another?

Yes. The overnight guy on the station quit and I went in and got the job.

Take us through how you started calling sports.

The guy I worked next to – the one who called the games for Carterville? He got laryngitis one day and presto, I’m calling basketball for the school. My first game behind the microphone was Carterville at Anna-Jonesboro, 1995.

You can’t make this stuff up.

It was in Carterville that I got the bug to do play-by-play and I decided that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I believe, all these years later, that I’m supposed to be a sports broadcaster.

Erik Sean, voice of Southeast Missouri State University football, basketball and baseball plus the play-by-play announcer for Jackson Indians football and Charleston Fighting Squirrels baseball, in a photo early in his career at River Radio.

You call a multitude of sports. Which is your favorite?

Baseball. The rhythm and pace of the game allows for conversation, unlike football and basketball, where the action is faster. It’s tougher to carry the broadcast in baseball because there’s more time, so I prepare extra info.

Your preparation is excellent. I’ve sat with you in a press box. It’s noticeable.

Thank you. My philosophy is, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” I think about the listener when I get ready to do a game. For example, for football, I’ll produce a depth chart and do a deep dive on player metrics. I like to have six or seven data points for each athlete. I’ve got a biography sheet of every player on every roster. It’s easier to get this information in college because people are paid to provide it to the media. In high school, it takes more time to prepare. I probably use half of the info I gather in a broadcast.

For most of us, our favorite sports get imprinted on us early in life.

When I was a kid, as a Cubs fan, we’d play baseball in the afternoon. At that time, many Cubs games were still played in the afternoon, so I’d jog home to watch the Cubbies. Jack Brickhouse, Harry Caray, great announcers. I remember thinking what a cool job it would be to call baseball games for a living.

Did you think early on that you wanted to concentrate on America’s pastime?

I like what I do, love this area and love River Radio. Folks have been great to me. Taking a baseball job is tough if you have a family. I’ve got three kids and didn’t want to uproot them. Several years ago, I applied to be a pregame host for Cubs baseball and didn’t get it. But hey, do you know how rare it is for one guy to do play-by-play in all three major sports for a university?

Do you think about it, though?

I would love to call major league baseball. That’s a gig I’d love. But to get there, most people must work their way through the minors and I could have worked at that level. But in the minors, there is no money and if you’ve got a family, you don’t see them.

Try not to hear this as a pejorative but are you a “homer” broadcaster, a cheerleader for your team?

I’m a partial homer. If you broadcast for a school, people know it, but if I see an opponent make a great play, I’ll say so. Unabashed homers won’t say anything positive about the other team. I stay away from the word “we,” if that helps answer your question. I try to call a game down the middle, as impartially as I can.

Jackson went all the way to the state final game last December. You’ve called Indians football for awhile. Who is the best Indians player you ever saw?

I wasn’t the regular play-by-play man when running back Mario Whitney was playing for the Tribe, but I saw him in some playoff games. Whitney was the best I’ve ever seen in high school. He was at another level.

Tell us a little about your family.

My wife, Dawn, is an emergency room nurse and we live in Ste. Genevieve. The children are Chloe, 16, Josie, 12 and Christian, 6.

Your kids love sports, yes?

They’re not big sports fans, as it happens. They get bored at games.

I must ask you about your name. It’s got three syllables, perfect for radio.

Erik Sean is my real name. It’s my first and middle names. A radio station owner back in Illinois suggested I use them and not my surname on the air.

If a young person wanted to go into sports announcing, what classes should he or she take?

The best class I ever took, meaning the most useful, was a full year of typing in high school. I use that skill every day.

How strange is it to work in sports when sports have, for all intents and purposes, been sidelined by COVID-19?

For the first time in 20 years, I’m not calling baseball games in the spring. This is all new territory in our industry and we don’t know what’s ahead. I host “Sports Huddle” with Jess Bolen every weekday and it’s a challenge to fill the time with no active sports. We’re doing the best we can to keep it interesting and hold an audience.

Assuming sports resume in the fall, will you mask while you work?

I’ve got multiple masks and my wife, being in health care, also has a face shield. It doesn’t take that much effort to wear a face covering. It would be safer to mask. What I don’t know yet is how I will sound if I try to work with cloth over my mouth.

Let me drill down on the first part of the last question. Do you think we’ll have fall sports?

I was a lot more positive a couple of weeks ago, frankly. I think we’ll have college football in some fashion, although SEMO probably won’t play Ole Miss. If that game goes away, it’ll be a huge hit to the Redhawks athletics department. The “money games” are important for Southeast.