Editor’s Note: The following story is being republished with permission.
By Josh Patterson
Journal Gazette
WARSAW — When Roger Grossman first spoke in public about his goal of becoming a broadcaster, he heard laughter from his first-grade classmates at Argos Elementary School, about 30 minutes west of Warsaw.
For a kid with a speech impediment, who struggled to differentiate between the sounds of s, th and f, the reaction was not unexpected.
“Well, of course they laughed,” Grossman said when recounting that experience. “Why wouldn’t they laugh?”
But Grossman had the last laugh, as his 35-year broadcasting career at WRSW in Warsaw, where he has called more than 3,000 high school sporting events, has earned him induction into the 30th class of the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame.
Founded in 1946, the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association created its Hall of Fame in 1996. This year’s class, which also includes former News-Sentinel Colts beat writer Terry Hutchens and Vince Welch, who has broadcast state championship events and the Indy 500, will bring the Hall of Fame to 153 members.
A total of 10 individuals will be honored at the ceremony on April 12 in Greenwood. Also joining Grossman in the class are Anthony Anderson, who spent 30 years at The Elkhart Truth; Hutchens; Rick Morwick of the Johnson County Daily Journal; Jim Russell, who spent 13 years with The Indianapolis News and served as the IHSAA sports information director from 1994-2001; and Welch.
In addition, Rob Blackman of Purdue Sports Network will receive the Marv Bates Sportscaster of the Year award, Josh Cook of the Jeffersonville News-Tribune will receive the Corky Lamm Sportswriter of the Year award, Indianapolis Colts Vice-President of Communications Matt Conti will receive the Bob Williams Helping Hand Award and retired WCSI Columbus broadcaster Sam Simmermaker will receive the Ron Lemasters Lifetime Achievement Award for his 64 years in broadcasting.
As the son of a tractor mechanic, Grossman grew up on 8 acres of land with a large vegetable garden. He and his mother spent plenty of time in the garden picking and preparing the harvest. As an avid sports fan, young Roger tuned in Cubs games on the radio, which served as the background noise, and also Grossman’s inspiration for the future.
“I thought, ‘What a cool job! Those people make me feel like I’m at Wrigley Field or Dodger Stadium or Shea Stadium, or wherever they were’,” Grossman said. “I would throw Wiffleballs up in the backyard and hit them. I practiced home run calls. I had a basketball hoop in the driveway and I used to do the play-by-play of all that.
“My first audience was bees and butterflies.”
Through six years of speech therapy – “Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1 o’clock, for anywhere from an hour to two hours,” Grossman said – he was able to eventually work through the lisp. As he approached graduation from Argos, Grossman applied to several colleges with the goal of enrolling in broadcasting. He was accepted to what was then known as Manchester College, even though he wasn’t totally impressed with their situation at the time.
Grossman also applied to Butler and was accepted, but not within the school’s radio and TV department, noting that the department said, ‘We don’t think you’ll make it, and we’re not going to make room for you’.
But Grossman’s high school English teacher was a Butler alum, and she made a phone call to the university. At the end of July, Grossman received another letter.
This time, there was an opening for him.
“They said, ‘Would you be willing to accept our invitation to come down here? It’s going to take a lot of work, and there’s some things we need to get done with you, but we’d like to try it’,” Grossman explained. “It was 3½ weeks before orientation. I called down there and said yes.”
With acceptance in hand, Grossman’s father loaded up the bed of the old family pickup truck, covered his belongings with a tarp, and made the trek from a town of less than 2,000 people to the campus just north of downtown Indianapolis.
Country bumpkin, fish out of water – whatever descriptor is used, that’s exactly how Grossman felt upon arrival.
“I’d never been to campus before,” Grossman said. “I’d never taken a tour. I had no idea where the dorm was that I was going to be living. We drove down through the middle of campus and there were people everywhere. I didn’t have the first clue where I was going.”
During orientation week, the 144 students enrolled in the radio and television department attended a meeting. At that meeting, Grossman was called out specifically, with instructors asking him to stay after. They told him they didn’t think he was ever going to make it as a radio announcer, but wanted to take him on as a personal challenge.
“They said they didn’t want to offend me, and I said, ‘Look, all I want to do is just broadcast one basketball game’,” Grossman said. “‘If that’s all I get to do here, that’s all I get to do.’”
Eventually, Grossman got his shot, calling a midweek Butler women’s basketball game. After the broadcast, they offered him the opportunity to call another women’s game on Saturday.
After graduation, Grossman moved to Warsaw, where he interned at WRSW. As his internship concluded, he was offered the opportunity to do color commentary for Tigers football and serve as the play-by-play broadcaster for Warsaw’s girls basketball team, making $10 per football game and $25 for basketball.
And he just stayed. For 35 years, and more than 3,000 broadcasts, Grossman has stayed at WRSW, building a life in Warsaw.
“I’ve had a couple of chances to try other places, and I just didn’t want to go anywhere else,” Grossman said. “I just like this place. I like the fact that I’m raising a family here. It was totally the right decision. This place loves high school sports. Other places like it sometimes, and that’s what I would have been walking into. I would have been walking into places where my exuberance and passion for it would have wore people out.
“I stopped making goals. The goal was to do one. I wanted to have a team that was mine. I wanted to be the voice of a team. Everything that’s come from that first game at Butler, everything that happened after that, is just beyond a blessing.”
