Andrews Living His TV Dream

Damon Andrews figures his debut as Channel 5’s weeknight sports anchor Monday should go better than his on-air debut 10 years ago in Kennewick, Wash.

After butchering some names, botching a few scores and generally messing up, Andrews wasn’t sure what to do.

“I was sweating profusely, so I picked up my script, wiped my brow, looked straight into the camera and said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s going to get better than this,’ ” he recalled.

It did indeed get better.

Andrews, now 36, spent nearly two years honing his skills at KVEW in Kennewick, which coincidentally is the same station where Fox Sports Net’s Lindsay Soto got her start.

Here’s another coincidence: In 1995 while still at KVEW, Andrews was discovered by a television consultant who recommended him for a job at WPTY in Memphis, Tenn., and that consultant is Jeff Wald, now the Channel 5 news director.

So Wald was quite familiar with Andrews’ work before hiring him to replace Tony Hernandez, whose contract with the station expired in April and was not renewed.

Sports anchor Leila Feinstein has been working weeknights but will resume her former weekend slot.

For Andrews, going from Kennewick, which is part of the Tri-Cities area in southeastern Washington, to Memphis was a big step.

“I went from the nation’s 167th largest market to the 43rd largest,” he said.

After three years in Memphis, it was on to Baltimore and then FSN Chicago.

Andrews, who grew up in Cerritos, is still pinching himself to make sure that he is really returning home to a dream job.

“I’ll tell you how exciting it is to be working in this market,” he said during an interview Wednesday. “I was sitting in the press box at the Dodger game last night and our weekend sports producer, Tom Klimasz, introduced me to Vin Scully.

“I don’t know if I should have done this, but I just had to sneak a call to my dad in Cerritos and tell him, ‘Guess who I just met?’ ”

During the interview, Andrews talked a lot about his father, Fred Andrews, and other family members. He married his college sweetheart, Shelcy Torrez, in 1991, and has two older siblings and a younger stepsister.

Before his mother died of cancer in 1983, he promised her he would get an education and do something with his life.

Andrews, who is 6 feet 6 and says only that he is over his playing weight of 220, was a football and basketball star at Cerritos High. He concentrated on basketball after high school, starring at Cerritos College, where former NBA player and current broadcaster Tom Tolbert was a teammate.

Andrews also played at Eastern Washington, where he was a television production major.

He did what it takes to land a big job in a big market, doing an internship at a Spokane station while in school, working as a news apprentice at Channel 7 after returning home following college in 1990, and then starting out in a small market.

A Don’t-Invite-’Em

As part of its 25th anniversary celebration, ESPN is bringing back five former “Sports- Center” anchors to work with current anchors for five nights beginning Sunday.

Conspicuously absent is Keith Olbermann, who went from stints at Channel 5 and Channel 2 to make his mark at ESPN before a nasty parting.

ESPN production chief Mark Shapiro, only half-kidding, said: “We didn’t want to bring him into the workplace. The damage he could cause in our newsroom in one day could put us into damage control for two years.”

The pairings will be Craig Kilborn and Dan Patrick, Charley Steiner and Bob Ley, Gayle Gardner and Stuart Scott, Greg Gumbel and Chris Berman, and George Grande and Berman.

A Time for Antacid

The biggest event this weekend -- at least the one attracting the biggest crowd -- is Sunday’s NASCAR Nextel Cup Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. A crowd of 300,000 is expected and NBC will use 80 cameras to cover the race, which kicks off the second half of the season. Of the 16 races left, only six are left to determine which 10 drivers will be in contention to make a chase for the title.

NBC announcer Allen Bestwick said, “The chase and the number of races that are left really add a twist to this Brickyard 400. Think about a crew chief and a driver in the late laps in the race. They’ve got a chance to win one of the two races everybody wants to win, that and the Daytona 500. And maybe you’ve got a chance to win that race by gambling on fuel.

“You’ve got to make that decision -- do you roll the dice and try and win the race, or do you maybe try to play it safe to protect your spot in the chase? I really think there’s going to be some serious antacid consumed by the crew chiefs on Sunday.”

Short Waves

Olympic reporter Alan Abrahamson, besides filing reports for The Times, will work for NBC during the Athens Games. He will appear regularly on MSNBC’s coverage with Lester Holt and will be used elsewhere as news develops.... KSPN’s Steve Mason will work the Olympics for NBC as a shooting analyst. Makes sense. Mason always has claimed to be a straight shooter.

ESPN will televise Sunday’s Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony Sunday at 10 a.m., and ABC will have the Hall of Fame game between the Washington Redskins and Denver Broncos on Monday at 5 p.m.... Channel 5 will televise four NFL exhibition games, including three St. Louis Ram games, beginning with the Rams playing host to the Chicago Bears Thursday. The announcers will be Tom Kelly and Vince Ferragamo.... The Fox baseball game of the week Saturday features the Chicago Cubs’ Greg Maddux making his second attempt at his 300th win. The Cubs play at San Francisco, with Thom Brennaman and Steve Lyons calling the game.... The 2 1/2 -hour Acura Classic semifinal between Anatasia Myskina and Vera Zvonareva will be reshown by the Tennis Channel on Sunday at 6 p.m. Myskina won, 6-2, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (15) after the longest third-set tiebreaker in the history of the women’s tour....

What ESPN deems as the fifth-biggest story of the last 25 years, Pete Rose’s being banned by baseball, will be featured on “The Headlines” series Tuesday at 4 p.m.... Pat Summerall, having recovered from a liver transplant, has agreed to work four NFL exhibition games for ESPN, beginning Aug. 12. Summerall will fill in for Mike Patrick, who is out because of heart bypass surgery.

President Bush will be featured on the Outdoor Life Network’s “Fishing With Roland Martin” tonight at 8. Bush and Martin spent a day fishing on Bush’s 11-acre lake on his ranch near Crawford, Texas.... Some of the biggest names in sports broadcasting, such as NFL Network President Steve Bornstein, ABC announcers Brent Musburger and Mike Tirico, and CBS’ Lesley Visser, along with some of the biggest names in sports, are taking part in the V Foundation Wine Celebration in Napa Valley this weekend. The event, first held in 1999, has raised $9.5 million for cancer research.

In Closing

Bill Ward, former general manager of the original KMPC (710), was found dead at his Sherman Oaks home last Friday. Ward, 65, apparently had suffered a heart attack.

In 1992, Ward oversaw KMPC when it changed to an all-sports format.