Dom Amore's Sunday Read: Zany tales? This CT sportscaster has a bunch; fresh hoops content, more

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It goes something like this: Syracuse radio, LA television, not renewed ... WNEP in Scranton, WJAR in Providence, back to Scranton ...The Big Apple, not renewed, to Scranton a third time, walked out the door in 1991 ... WFLD in Chicago, back to Syracuse, the Fox affiliate, then NBC.

And finally Hartford, Channel 3, for longer than anywhere else.

This is not a Harry Chapin song, not the Johnny Cash classic. It's the resume of WFSB-TV sports director Joe Zone. He's been everywhere, man.

"You should be a person who tells stories about people, about athletes, about coaches, about events," Zone said. "There's something that hasn't changed in 50 years. I'm a local guy, get into a market, find where the buttons are, and push."

Zone, who recently picked up the National Sports Media Association's Connecticut Sportscaster of the Year, has zany stories from town to town, up and down the remote. The Six O'clock sports anchor was expected to spew venom when he began, strong opinions. Then it became fashionable to hire amiable ex-athletes. Then schtick became king. Joe Zone, 73, keeps reinventing himself and, in a profession where some claim to be 29 eternally, he'll even tell you his age. "It's a badge of honor," he says.

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"The Red Sox once had a farm team in Scranton, so there were Red Sox fans in northeast Pennsylvania," Zone recalled. "I come in, rah, rah, Yankee fan. The station was getting feedback and they loved it. It's '78, Yankees-Red Sox, Bucky Dent hits the home run. I get a pair of red socks, go outside the station, dig a hole, throw the socks in and throw dirt on it. I got hate mail, a 13-year-old girl wrote, 'You have no idea how much I hate you, Joe Zone.'"

To redeem himself, Zone offered to let Scranton's Sox fans dig a hole for him if they finished ahead of the Yankees in 1979, which they did.

"Four guys come down. ... I'm wearing a Yankees shirt, I'm in a hole, live sportscast, and they're shoveling dirt on me ... on live TV," Zone said. "I realized you could have fun with this. You still got to give them their high school sports, but you can entertain them."

Yes, his real name is Joe Zone, he'll show you his driver's license, though he didn't think to copyright it when Michael Jordan coined his famous phrase. Yes, he knows, he looks taller on TV and, yes, the hair is all his. The color? Off the record.

Zone grew up in upstate New York and a girlfriend got him to go to a Syracuse Blazers hockey game. The team was in the same league as the New Haven Blades and played that brand of hockey that inspired the film "Slapshot." Zone was working in a haberdashery near the arena and he was asked to try doing team reports for a local radio station.

He got the gig, and, with a year at Onondaga Community College, a little training from the Columbia School of Broadcasting, he was in the business. A talent scout from Los Angeles saw him on a Syracuse TV station and hired him work under Bryant Gumbel at KNBC, where they made him up to look older.

"My all-time favorite, in the 80s, the University of Scranton women's team, Division III, always highly ranked," Zone said. "This was before people were paying a lot of attention to women's sports. They were complaining I wasn't sending a camera to their games on the air so I said, on the air, 'Even you don't go to your games.'"

Zone made an offer they couldn't refuse. If they sold out the next game, he'd play their best player, 1-on-1 for charity. It was standing room only ... and Zone lost 21-2. "I loved that story, because it helped get people into the game," he said. "And people loved it when I looked like an idiot. You can't be afraid."

In Providence, he covered the America's Cup, "Though I didn't know a spoon from a spinnaker," Zone said. Later, he was weekend anchor at wacky Warner Wolf's station in New York. Super Bowls, World Series, Final Fours, he's been there and done those.

His last go-round in Scranton, he promised to kiss the ground the Pirates played on if they beat the Mets for the NL East crown. They did. And Joe Zone, no welsher he, flew to Pittsburgh to smooch home plate.

His wife, Maria, worked for Court TV and in 2000 was held hostage by an inmate in Plattsburg, N.Y., a pen held to her throat. Joe, who drove her to the prison, and was waiting outside, ended up filing live reports for his Syracuse station until his wife was released after four hours. "And she went to work the next day," Zone said. "If this isn't a movie, I don't know what is."

Zone, in fact, would like to compile his career's worth of stories into a book, maybe a script. He and Maria and their three children settled in Hartford 20 years ago, but Joe knows he's left his a mark in many places. A year ago some friends of his were playing golf in North Carolina and when one of them told a stranger he was from Scranton, the guy said, "Scranton? You know Joe Zone? I hated that guy."

His best advice for aspiring broadcasters: "Be yourself, don't copy anyone," and be willing to start at a small, local station, even if you have to get a second job.

"You know what it is? I love the buzz," Zone said. "I love the energy, I love being around young people. What am I going to do at home? For a lot of people I've met, it's always about the destination. 'I've got to be someplace by this time, or I didn't make it.' For me, I had no idea where I was going next. It's about the journey."

"I was going to a lot of basketball games in the area," Price said, "and the love of the game. I'd been writing a blog, and I saw there was a white space in the market. 'If we're the basketball capital of the world like we say we are, why don't we have a magazine?' So it started with an idea, like most entrepreneurs have."

Price has established CT Hoops Magazine, available direct-to-consumer online, via theminibooks.com. "The publication can be ordered online, Price said, "but the product is not available digitally as of yet."

His first edition, last year, featured Jim Calhoun on the cover, and he's been at it since. Price aspires to have a staff, a print edition and eventually publish monthly, but for now he is mostly a one-man operation, particularly in the writing and business areas.

Most everywhere basketball is played in Connecticut, he's likely to show up -- at UConn, all the other state colleges, Connecticut Sun games, the Greater Hartford Pro Am, high schools -- asking enterprising questions, which I would define as off the topic du jour, but big-picture relevant, of the state's leading basketball figures.

"I'm not an X's and O's writer, there are plenty of writers who do that," said Price, who went to Post University and grad school at UHart. "I'm trying to get a fuller picture of who people are and how they think. ... You have to have a stomach for this, not getting a steady paycheck, dealing with the challenges. We're not ESPN, we always don't have the entre into a place because of our name, but I like that. It keeps me pushing."

UConn golfer Bradley Sawka, the 2023 CIAC State Open champ from Ellington High, was disappointed in his sophomore collegiate season. He has rebounded this summer, as runner-up to Westport's Adam Friedman (Florida Atlantic) at the state amateur in June and, this week, top amateur finisher at the Connecticut Open.

"I finished up school and I didn't think my swing was where it should have been," Sawka said, after his fourth-place, 7-under performance over 54 holes at Black Hall Club. "So I went to my coach down in Darien, Matt McCullough, and I pretty much told him, 'You can screw me up, I'm willing to sacrifice some bad golf for a month,' and he helped me out a lot. My irons, especially my 4-wood, I'm hitting it phenomenal, my iron dispersion is better, distance control definitely has gotten a lot better. It's easier out there."

*Alex Rodriguez, always fascinated with business while he was playing baseball and now part owner of the Timberwolves and Lynx, had high praise for UConn's Napheesa Collier, a founder of the Unrivaled league and major player in labor negotiations. "Napheesa is an incredible example and role model for other athletes, both men and women, that you can take something in sports and not take your eye off the ball, but yet build something really equally as special on the business side," A-Rod told The New York Post. "So, hats off to her."

*Dexter Lawson Jr., 25, who played at Bloomfield High and CCSU, has signed with the CFL's Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He played in the league in Hamilton's secondary last season.

*Wisconsin native KK Arnold joined the list of UConn women's basketball players to throw out MLB first pitches at a recent Brewers game. She brought the national championship trophy.

*Announcer Verne Lundquist, who appears in Happy Gilmore 2, said on the latest Awful Announcing podcast he doesn't care for scripted calls. As an example, groaned in citing Jim Nantz's sign-off after UConn's 2004 men's championship: "The mecca of college basketball is Storrs, Connecticut," a play on Emeka Okafor.

*Staring up at the list of Connecticut Open champs last week, one name leapt off the board: Jimmy Demaret, the 1941 winner at Race Brook with a final-round 65. Not only did Demaret win the Masters the year before, and go on to win all the majors -- he appeared as himself in a classic "I Love Lucy" episode.

Mindful of the way Dave Roberts managed the Dodgers' insanely deep bullpen through the playoffs in 2024, the Yankees (David Bednar, Jake Bird, Carlos Camilo Doval) and Mets (Ryan Helsley, Tyler Rogers) did well to horde relievers, while also adding position players at the trade deadline. This could prove more beneficial in October than adding a middling starter. The Red Sox (Steven Matz, Dustin May) are being criticized for not adding more, but they were 25-15 from June 12 to July 31. The Yankees, 18-24 in that span, and Mets (17-23) had much more to fix.