His face is virtually unknown, but Alan Roach’s baritone is familiar to fans of the Colorado Rockies. His are the round tones that introduced “DAN-te Bi-CHETTE” and “AN-dress GAL-a-RRA-ga.” It became so popular, fans rolled the names with him.
He’ll play it straight when he gets his “big break” Sunday as public-address announcer for Super Bowl XL at Ford Field in Detroit. The nation got a taste of his basso style when he introduced trumpeter Chris Botti to play the national anthem for the AFC Championship Game.
Describing how he’ll be his own spotter for the Super Bowl offenses and someone else will help him with the defenses, he falls into his bread and butter: “Mike Anderson … Gain of 4 yards. … It brings up first down at the 27-yard line.” That’s it. Nothing fancy.
He expects to be all business even if it means he “misses” most of the game. “It’s all focus and concentration. You have no time to watch the game. When it comes time to say the name, you have to say it right now. All I need to know is the number and name.”
He’ll be in Detroit this week leading up to kickoff and at the rehearsal on Friday before the game (“Ladies and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones!”).
“The Super Bowl is going to be the most fun,” said the man who announces 160 or more games a year, including the Rockies, the Avalanche and University of Denver hockey. “Football is more fun than other sports. There are so many things to say. I really enjoy football.”
The Super Bowl is something of a co-big break because the day after the biggest sporting event in the United States, he leaves for the world stage in Turin, Italy, where he will be PA man for the men’s hockey tournament, a chore he handled at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002. He’ll do 26 games in 16 days, but he’s not even a little nervous about some of those Eastern European players whose names are laden with “Z’s” and “Y’s.” “It’s not that difficult. I write the names down phonetically.”
With his voice, Roach, whose full-time gig for the past 14 years is as sports reporter on “Colorado’s Morning News” on KOA 850-AM, was destined to be an announcer somewhere.
His first radio job was at a small station in Minnesota. “I started when I was between my sophomore and junior years in high school. It was just the Twins’ games over the network. I would sit in the radio station and push knobs.
“About my third or fourth week, the Twins were playing in Milwaukee. Over a closed-circuit feed I hear, ‘It’s raining. We’re going to a three-minute live feed, then we’re throwing it back to you.’ It was a Sunday afternoon and there was no one else at the station. I called the station owner and said, ‘There’s no Twins game. What do I do?’ He said, ‘Play music’ but I had no idea how to do that. He said, ‘See those things behind you? Play them.”‘
He almost fell into his career as a public-address announcer. He was at a Sky Sox baseball game in Colorado Springs and was visiting the press box. He was talking to a Sky Sox official while the stadium announcer was reading the lineups. “I said, ‘I always wanted to do that. If you ever need anybody to fill in, let me know.’ He said, ‘As a matter of fact, he’s going on vacation next week.”‘ The other guy never got his job back.
Landing the job with the Rockies, on the other hand, was no fluke. He campaigned hard for the job, sending the team boxes of Cracker Jack and tapes of his voice. “I sent them a letter 19 months before their first opening day (in 1993). In early 1992, before they had any players on their team, I put together a mock starting lineup. In that lineup I had Bichette and Galarraga. We still laugh about that. It was because of their names and the syllables and how I wanted to say their names.”
He wasn’t sure how the Rockies would take to his embellishments. “I knew what I wanted it to sound like, but I didn’t know what the Rockies wanted. They never sat me down and asked me to say the names. When I did the lineup for the first time I’m sure I surprised a lot of people. I’m sure there were people who wanted me to sound like the greatest PA guy of all time, Bob Shepherd of the Yankees.”
Blunders? He’s had a few. The most memorable transpired in 1997 when slugger Mark Mc-
Gwire was traded from Oakland to St. Louis. “We were at Coors Field, playing the Cubs,” Roach recalled. “The press box was abuzz with ‘Mark Mc-
Gwire.’ Everyone’s talking about the trade. I open the mic and say, ‘First baseman … No.17 … Mark McGwire.’ Everyone was laughing and pointing. I had no idea what I had done. Of course, it was Mark Grace.
“I saw Grace last summer and introduced myself. He said, ‘You introduced me as Mark McGwire!”‘
The Broncos’ lopsided loss to Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship Game solved one of his scheduling problems. He has known about the Super Bowl assignment since September. “I was waiting to see what was happening with the Broncos. I kept waiting and looking and thinking, ‘What is my employer at KOA thinking?’ What if the Broncos got to the Super Bowl? What was I going say, ‘I’ve got something else going. I can’t make it’? They were incredibly gracious. I don’t know how many companies would let me do something that is for my personal gain. It’s been fantastic.”
Between the Super Bowl and the Olympics, Roach will be gone the entire month of February, away from his daughter, Katjana, 7, and son, D’Artagnan, 3.
About those names. “I don’t know. All I do is say names, and I came up with these. I guess I’m goofy.”
Staff writer Dick Kreck can be reached at 303-820-1456 or at dkreck@denverpost.com.
