Broadcasting career
Prior to his job with the Angels, Smith was for 19 years the play-by-play broadcaster for the former New York Yankees AAA affiliate Columbus Clippers. From 1983 to 1997, Smith was also Sports Director at WBNS AM in Columbus, OH, where he was recognized three times by the Ohio Associated Press for his sportscasts. During Smith's tenure, the station was named the Outstanding Sports Operation in Ohio six times by the Associated Press. Smith was known as "The Voice," working as sports anchor, talk show host and play-by-play announcer for the Ohio State University Football and Basketball Radio Network from 1986 to 1997.
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one of two major league clubs based in New York City, the other being the National League (NL)'s New York Mets. The Yankees franchise began play in the 1901 season as the Baltimore Orioles. In 1903, Frank Farrell and Bill Devery purchased the franchise after it ceased operations and moved it to New York City, renaming the club the New York Highlanders. The Highlanders were officially renamed the Yankees in 1913.
The Columbus Clippers are a professional Minor League Baseball team based in Columbus, Ohio. The team plays in the International League and is the Triple-A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians. The team is owned by the government of Franklin County, Ohio.
Smith started his baseball broadcasting career in 1978, calling games for the Jacksonville Suns and later called games for the Memphis Chicks from 1981 to 1982. At Memphis, Smith also worked as the Sports Director on WHBQ AM, anchoring sports on the morning and afternoon drive shows.
Play calls
- "Struck him out!"
- "Good News!" - at the end of an inning if the Angels take or extend a lead
- "He hits one high and deep into (field)!"
- "He put a charge into that one!"
- "That ball is out-ta here!" - When an Angels player hits a home run
- "You can put a Halo over this one!" - when the Angels win, similar to Jerry Coleman's famous "hang a star" phrase.
Smith's announcing style is similar that of the late Harry Kalas - also from Philadelphia - using such lines as "That ball is out-ta here!" and "Struck him out!"
Harold Norbert Kalas was an American sportscaster, best known for his Ford C. Frick Award-winning role as lead play-by-play announcer for Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies, a position he held from 1971 until his death in 2009.
Personal life
Smith is a native of Philadelphia and attended Temple University, where he played collegiate club hockey, as well as Jones College in Jacksonville FL.
Philadelphia, known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U.S. state and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the sixth-most populous U.S. city, with a 2018 census-estimated population of 1,584,138. Since 1854, the city has had the same geographic boundaries as Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the eighth-largest U.S. metropolitan statistical area, with over 6 million residents as of 2017. Philadelphia is also the economic and cultural anchor of the greater Delaware Valley, located along the lower Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, within the Northeast megalopolis. The Delaware Valley's population of 7.2 million ranks it as the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.
Temple University is a public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell. In 1882, Conwell came to Pennsylvania to lead the Grace Baptist Church while he began tutoring working-class citizens late at night to accommodate their work schedules. These students, later dubbed "night owls", were taught in the basement of Conwell's Baptist Temple, hence the origin of the university's name and mascot. By 1907, the institution revised its institutional status and was incorporated as a university.
In 2002, Smith made his screen debut as a broadcaster in the baseball movie, "A Little Inside", which aired on HBO and Showtime. He has served as Honorary Chair of the Orange County Learning for Life's Exploring program.
Smith and his wife Sonia have one son, Jordan, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, and make their home in Ladera Ranch, CA.
Ladera Ranch is a master-planned community and census-designated place located in south Orange County, California just outside the city limits of San Juan Capistrano, Rancho Santa Margarita and Mission Viejo.
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