Pickle Barrel
IT’S THE NBA’S Eastern conference
semifinals, game five, and seven-foot
superstar Kevin Garnett, of the Boston
Celtics, has the second toughest
assignment in the building. He has to
guard seven-foot-three-inch Cleveland
Cavs centre Zydrunas Ilgauskas, as he
charges the rim. Surely a daunting
task. But not nearly as daunting as
that of play-by-play announcer Dan
Shulman, who has to correctly
pronounce the name Zydrunas
Ilgauskas three times in 24 seconds.
Thornhill’s Shulman might be the most successful Canadian sports broadcaster of all time. Not simply because the names of giant Lithuanian basketball players seem to roll off his tongue (even broadcasting vets surrender and refer to Ilgauskas as “Big Z”), but because he’s ascended to one of the most coveted jobs in the business, lead play-by-play announcer for U.S. sports media juggernaut ESPN.
If Shulman looks familiar, you’re either a diehard hoops fan (Shulman is also ESPN’s lead announcer for NCAA men’s basketball games) or you were a Blue Jays fan in the mid-’90s when Shulman served as the team’s broadcasting voice. Either way, his voice is unmistakable. Crisp, calm, clear and one of the best in North American sports. Not bad for someone who started his professional career as an actuary.
“I graduated from Western and gave being an actuary a try, but there was that bug in me,” Shulman says from his home in Thornhill, his trademark voice making the interview feel more like the third inning than the third degree. “I was 22, I wasn’t married.… It was the time to do it. I gave it a shot, and I started sending out tapes."
The tapes were of games Shulman had called for a variety of Mustang sports teams, a creative outlet he’d pursued as a distraction from his actuarial science course load.
“While I was at Western I was looking for an extracurricular to do, and I wanted to write for the Gazette,” he says. “This was frosh week, and the lineup for that was huge. Across the hall was the radio station, and they had no lineup at all. I walked in and asked them if they needed anybody. In a week, I was helping out at a Western football game.”
Shulman fell in love with the craft and, after graduating, didn’t last long as an actuary. The tapes he sent out landed in the hands of a decision maker at CKBB in Barrie, and he was hired, part-time, as a reporter.
A quick timeline of Shulman’s career arc after that first gig shows a determined young sports fan evolve into someone ESPN sports guru Bill Simmons referred to as “the single most underrated play-by-play guy in any sport.”
After his job in Barrie, Shulman moved back to his hometown to take up a job at CJCL, which eventually became The Fan 590. Shulman hosted Primetime Sports for a couple years and ceded the job to Bob “Bobcat” McCown when he took over Jays announcing duties for TSN in 1995.
What few Canadians realize is that, during his time at The Fan, he’d been moonlighting, doing games for ESPN and had earned an excellent reputation south of the border.
Before Shulman took the post with TSN, he’d been offered a job hosting Sportscentre, ESPN’s flagship show, and doing radio games. But he turned it down.
“I didn’t see myself as a ‘studio’ guy, and my wife was pregnant with our first son at the time, and we just decided it wasn’t the ideal thing for us at that time,” he says.
For the scads of announcing wannabes out there, the decision must have seemed ridiculous. But for Shulman, it was a matter of priorities. He had roots in Thornhill and he did not want to leave.
“I live in Thornhill now. I grew up around Steeles, and I don’t think I'll ever leave,” he says.
These roots and this loyalty to the area have everything to do with Shulman’s family. Shulman married his university sweetheart, Sarah, and he has three sons: Matthew, 14; Alex, 12; and Ben, 7.
“Actually, my 14-year-old, just last month, I made a deal with him … well, I guess it’s a bribe.,” Shulman explains. “If he aced his exams, then I would take him on a trip — though I probably would have taken him anyway. I took him to Boston and Detroit. The Leafs were playing the Bruins the night before. So we saw an NHL game, an NBA game, and I took him to a North Carolina vs. Duke game.”
To give a gift like that is every parent’s dream, but for Shulman, it’s a necessary part of balancing his job and his home life.
“I am away so much that it alleviates some of my guilt, and he usually comes with me once a year,” he says.
While not exactly Willie Loman, Shulman spends more time on the road than any other announcer in the biz. Shulman estimates he does close to 120 games a year, and as no NCAA and only a handful of NBA or MLB games happen in Toronto, every game is a road game.
For now, Shulman’s hoops duties are over. As the NBA playoffs chug to their conclusion, he’ll shift back to baseball where he calls Monday night MLB games for ESPN.
It’s a different game than basketball. The pace is slower, and it requires much more informative chit- chat to pass the time between pitches, but Shulman makes the transition look seamless, thanks to his time with the Jays.
“On my first play-by-play job back in 1995, Buck Martinez was my partner, and we envisioned a good broadcast as two guys sitting in a bar talking about baseball. I’ve always tried to be very conversational,” he says.
And do his actuarial skills ever shine through when commenting on the stat-heavy sport?
“I did a ton of stats in my education at Western, but as a broadcaster, I’m not a big stats guy,” he says. “It helps me a little bit. I actually used to be better at it. Like ERAs and batting averages, I used to be able to update them in my head from time to time. But if you don’t use it, you lose it.”
While he may not be the numbers whiz he once was, he certainly hasn’t lost any of the play-by-play skills his coworkers are more than happy to praise him for.
During the NCAA men’s basketball season, Shulman is paired with Dick Vitale, an energetic and unpredictable force of nature in the broadcast booth.
“I was just at Disney World a while ago with my kids,” Shulman says. “You know how there are signs that say, ‘If you are prone to motion sickness do not ride this ride.’ That’s [Vitale]. He’s a complete stream of consciousness, and I have no idea what he’s going to say next.”
As a result, the calm and collected Shulman is the perfect foil. “His rapport with the analyst is superb,” says Vitale. “He has total understanding of his role. He sets the tone with data about the who and what of the telecast — Who has the ball? What is the score? etc. He allows the analyst to tell the audience why a team is winning or losing.” Not that Shulman isn’t up for a joke. “We constantly tease each other about our BALD DOMES — it is a riot,” says Vitale.
The accolades don’t stop there.
“He’s one of those nuts-and-bolts guys who never overpowers the game,” adds Simmons. “He never suffocates you with information and says everything as concisely as possible.”
That’s exactly what Shulman hopes to achieve. “I’ve felt for a long time that I don’t have a signature call,” Shulman says. “I'm not a self-promoter. I just like to go out, do a game and come home to be with my family. The game is the thing. The announcer isn’t the thing.”
Perhaps that’s why, when Toronto Raptors mic-man Chuck Swirsky hung up his headphones last month, fans were dying to know if Shulman was interested in the gig. After all, it would be an easy commute, and he had done the job for TSN back in the day.
“As for Chuck’s job, it’s a great job,
but I’m very happy where I am right
now,” Shulman answers concisely and
professionally. “If I’m in Toronto, there
is an excellent chance I’m sitting in my
house with my kids,” he says. 
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