By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
GREENWOOD — Roger Grossman has chronicled endless stories of perseverance of high school and college athletes, but his own career in radio broadcasting is also one of overcoming significant odds.
On Sunday, Grossman was inducted into the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame.
“I believe with all my heart that I am the most unlikely person to ever receive this award,” Grossman said Sunday at the Hall of Fame induction in Greenwood.
Undoubtedly, those listening to Grossman, as he called more than 3,000 games over the past 35 years on WRSW radio and News Now Warsaw, don’t realize he struggled with a serious lisp and stutter as a child.
He overcame that problem with six years of speech therapy, but still faced a few hurdles toward his childhood goal of broadcasting sports, even as he applied to Butler College.
“They initially rejected me, but my high school English teacher, Nancy Miller, got wind of that and made a phone call. I don’t know who she talked to, and I don’t know what she said, but on July 20th of 1986, I got a letter from the leadership of the radio and TV department at Buffalo saying they had the space for me in their program and it was open for me if I would want to take it,” Grossman said.
He took the opportunity and ran with it, and after graduating, accepted an internship with WRSW, which soon hired him as a full-time broadcaster.
In the past 35 years, he’s been named the State Broadcaster of the year three times by the Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association.
During his speech Sunday, Grossman thanked his Kensington Digital Media colleagues and wife, among others, and reflected on how it all turned out.
“To line up all the things that had to happen for me to be standing here is nothing short of a miracle, but there are too many coincidences to be coincidence. No, the only way that you could reasonably explain how all this could come together and bring me here today in front of you is to say that God was with me the entire way,” Grossman said.
Grossman is married to Holly Grossman, a teacher, and they have two children.
Grossman was one of six inducted on Sunday, including Anthony Anderson, a long-time sports writer for the Elkhart Truth whose work continues to appear in the Times Union.
Others included Terry Hutchens, a longtime reporter with the Indianapolis Star; 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, and Vince Welch, who has broadcast state championship events and the Indy 500.
