All In Family: Bagli Grandson Makes Calls

 (Ed Brown/St. Paul's School)

By: Keith Mills

For nearly 50 years, Vince Bagli was the heart and soul, character and conscience and certainly the voice of Baltimore sports.

“I loved every minute of it,” Bagli said. “Never, ever did I wake up in the morning and say, ‘I hate my job, and I don’t want to go to work.’”

He was your next door neighbor. He was your doctor, bartender and mechanic. He was your best friend, part of the family. His coverage of the Orioles and Colts, the University of Maryland and the Naval Academy and every high school sport from Annapolis to Aberdeen helped make Bagli a Baltimore icon.

Bagli has been retired since 1995 when he signed off his final sportscast at WBAL-TV Channel 11 with his trademark "It’s been a pleasure."

But now, 13 years later, there’s another Bagli sitting behind the microphone.

Ben Bagli, Vince's grandson, will turn 12 in June. He is a fifth grader at St. Paul’s School in Brooklandville and one of 35 middle and high school students who call football, basketball and lacrosse games and host sports talk shows on 99.1 WSPS, the school’s on-campus, online radio station.

“He’s in the fifth grade,” said the proud grandfather. “I was in the fifth grade once. And I went down to the old gas and electric company, which is where WBAL Radio was then. I thought then that maybe this would be a fun thing to do but I forgot about it completely a couple of days later. What this young guy has done is years ahead of anything I’ve ever done about being a sports announcer. It’s amazing.”

“He’s doing something he really enjoys doing,” said Vince Bagli Jr., Ben's dad.

Vince Bagli Jr. is the youngest of Bagli Sr.'s six children. A former assistant basketball coach under Rick Collins at St. Paul’s in the early 1990s, Bagli Jr. graduated from McDonogh. He was on hand last Friday at St. Paul’s when the Crusaders and Loyola Blakefield played in an early season Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference lacrosse showdown.

Ben Bagli and St. Paul’s junior Andrew Springs called the game.

“I was actually going to a football game last fall, and Mr. [Matt] Byars asked me if I wanted to announce the game,” Ben Bagli said. “I did it, and I really liked it.”

Matt Byars is a middle school English teacher at St. Paul’s and the faculty advisor to WSPS radio. The station's creator is sophomore John Dame.

"It's John who really put this whole thing together," Byars said. "He is really the guy who pushes things through."

And Dame has been impressed with the young Bagli.

"What I like to see in a young person is professionalism on the air," Dame said. "That's the big thing for me. And Ben does it. He changes topics. He goes from the NBA to lacrosse to football and takes what he listens to and applies it to the topics here. When I listen to other kids his age, no one ever comes close."

Byars agrees.

"To jump right in at a level that's literally a professional level is pretty amazing," Byars said. "He exuded a level of professionalism right out of the box."

That shouldn't be surprising since his grandfather is broadcasting royalty, but Bagli Sr. says his grandson’s interest in broadcasting caught him by surprise.

"I didn't even know he was going to do this," Bagli Sr. said. "But Vince Jr. called and said Ben is going to be the color man with John, and they were going to do a football game. So I taped it over the radio while I was sitting in the car watching.
"It was amazing. He was amazing. He's talking about the quarterback checking off, strong side to the right. I'm thinking, ‘This is unbelievable.’"

"My wife Kate called halfway through the first quarter of the first game he did and said, ‘You have to get over here, Ben's on the radio,’" Bagli Jr. said. "I said, 'I'm crosstown, I'll try.' She said, 'No, get over here now.' Well I did, and I'm sitting in my car listening, and he was right on it. It was unreal.”

St. Paul's played St. Vincent Palotti that day and one of the key plays was a "hook and ladder" play similar to the one Boise State ran two years ago in the Fiesta Bowl to help the Broncos upset Oklahoma.

"That's when it really hit me," Bagli Jr. said. "St. Paul's ran the 'hook and ladder,' and he called it exactly the way it happened. It was unbelievable."

***

"I think we were the first station to do high school games on the air," said Bagli Sr., whose first job in local radio was at WBMD in Annapolis.

In 1959, he began doing play-by-play for the Colts. In 1964, he took a job at the Baltimore News-American and then became sports director at WBAL Television, where he became as much a part of local sports as the Orioles and Colts and the men and women he covered.

Bagli's "I'm just like you" approach was his charm. His knowledge of local sports was unparalleled. His legacy? To this day, Baltimoreans still call him “the Dean.”

"I was the youngest, and because of my love of sports, I probably spent more time with him than any one of my brothers and sisters," Bagli Jr. said. "I remember he'd come home for dinner after the 6 o'clock news, and I'd go back to the station with him around 9. I spent a lot of Friday nights with [sportscaster] Chris Thomas kicking field goals in the newsroom, tracking down high school scores.

"I'd go to spring training with him. Hang out with the Orioles in the locker room -- Rick Dempsey, Al Bumbry. Come on. As a kid it was great stuff."

Now Bagli Jr. sees a lot of his father in his son.

"He has amazing recall," Bagli Jr. said. "We're watching games, and he'll say something, and I'll say 'How do you know that?’"

"Ben spends a lot of time watching 'SportsCenter,'" Byars said. "That's a great way to learn the language. Most of his peers are wonderful kids, but it's a slow learning curve. How to find angles for stories, what questions to ask, Ben knew it instantly. That's what's been most impressive."

Again, Ben Bagli's talent is not surprising, but Byars, who grew up in Lexington, Ky., was unaware of it.

"Rick Collins sent me an e-mail and told me he knew Ben's grandfather,” Byars said. “Now, I vaguely remembered the early '90s and who his grandfather was, but honestly I really didn't know much about it. I knew Ben had a very natural delivery. I just didn't know he had a genetic disposition to it."

"When people ask my name and I'd say 'Ben Bagli,' they'd say, ‘Uh-oh, you're Vince Bagli's grandson. I know you,’" Ben Bagli said. “I've seen tapes of him from my dad. It's cool."

Ben Bagli juggles school, broadcasting and athletics. He plays lacrosse for the Kelly Post recreation team, basketball for the Towson Rec Council and football for the Lutherville Timonium Rec Council, but it is obvious he is at home behind a microphone calling a game like St. Paul's-Loyola.

"I'd like to do play by play, but I'd also like my own show," said Ben Bagli, who lists John Madden and Michael Wilbon from "Pardon the Interruption" as his two favorite broadcasters.

"I can't imagine this young man as well versed as he is already," Bagli Sr. said. "When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a sportswriter or an announcer. I was fortunate to be able to do that in my hometown. Wouldn't it be nice if he was as lucky as I was?"

COFFIELD IS PROUD OF PROTEGE DORSEY

Long before the officials tossed up the ball last Sunday at the Charm City Challenge, Rodney Coffield was a winner. Coffield is the coach at Frederick Douglass High School in West Baltimore, and he spent Saturday night watching the Memphis Tigers beat UCLA to earn a berth in Monday's national championship game.

"Special night," Coffield said before he and Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical’s Darryl Wade coached the City All-Stars to a 96-83 win over the County All-Stars at the Towson Center.

"I talked to Joey (Memphis star Joey Dorsey) this morning, and he's really pumped,” Coffield said Sunday. “He is ready to go."

Coffield is no stranger to winning. A member of Dunbar's 1982 and '83 powerhouse teams that included Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues, Reggie Williams, David Wingate and Reggie Lewis, Coffield later played at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., before returning to his hometown to coach.

He just finished his 12th year at Douglass and has built the Ducks into a perennial state championships contender. Dorsey played on Coffield's 28-0 state championship team in 2002, and while Gerald Brown (Loyola) and Tyler Smith (Colorado State) off that team both have gone on to Division I collegiate careers, Dorsey is the first Douglass alum to play in the men's national championship game.

The Tigers lost the title game Monday to Kansas as Dorsey fouled out and the Tigers could not hold a nine-point lead with just over two minutes to go. The 6-foot-9 senior was looking to join Juan Dixon (2002, Maryland), Carmelo Anthony (2003, Syracuse) and Southern's Melvin Scott (2005, North Carolina) as Baltimore high school players to win national championships.

Instead, he'll leave Memphis and head to NBA tryout camps with two Final Four appearances and 126 wins on his resume, the most of any player in Memphis history.

"How can an NBA team not want Joey Dorsey?" Wade said. "He just goes to the glass."
"He'll get the chance," Coffield said.

STICK TEAMS LOADED

There's an NFL cliché -- "On any given Sunday." In girls' lacrosse so far, it's any given Sunday, Saturday, Monday or Friday.

John Carroll, McDonogh and Broadneck won huge games earlier this week, proving again the depth and talent in local girls' high school lacrosse.

John Carroll won perhaps the biggest game, beating Mount Hebron in last Saturday's Lacrosse Showdown at Homewood Field to end the Vikings’ 10-year winning streak against local teams. Grace Gaeng, Katie Kiriazoglou, Ally Carey and Casey Ancarrow paced the 18-9 win as John Carroll overcame an early deficit to raise its record to a perfect 7-0.

St. Mary's of Annapolis was the last local team to beat Mount Hebron, and though the Saints are again one of this year's top teams in the area and a contender for the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland championship, they lost a double-overtime thriller to McDonogh on Monday. Kitty Cullen scored the winner in the second overtime as McDonogh beat St. Mary's, 10-9.

Broadneck and Severna Park are two of the area's top public school teams. The Falcons are unbeaten while Broadneck is 5-1, thanks to a 16-11 win over Anne Arundel County rival South River Monday. Karri Ellen Johnson scored five goals to lead the Bruins to their fifth win in six games.

Issue 3.15: April 10, 2008