Knights’ D’uva pays it forward for young broadcasters on Cape Cod

On June 7, the Golden Knights’ dream season ended with a 4-3 loss to the Washington Capitals in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final.

On June 11, Dan D’Uva was back in the picturesque seaport village of Chatham, Massachusetts, where Cape Cod dips its toe into the Atlantic Ocean. He was taking roll at the Cape Cod Finishing School of Broadcasting.

It wasn’t called that when the Knights’ play-by-play radio voice came up with the idea. Still isn’t, at least not officially.

The Cape Cod League was considered a proving ground for the best college baseball players in America. D’Uva’s vision: Why couldn’t it serve aspiring broadcasters in the same capacity?

“So we pitched the Chatham A’s, this is what we want to do,” he said.

The Chatham A’s are now the Chatham Anglers — via a crackdown by the Major League Baseball licensing flatfoots. But then as is now they were the Yankees of the Cape Cod League, Dan D’Uva said. It’s where Thurman Munson strapped on the shin guards.

Remember the movie “Summer Catch” in which Freddie Prinze Jr.’s love interest was a young Jessica Biel? Probably not. But that was the team Freddie Jr. played for, even if most of the movie was filmed in South Carolina.

Before they were stars

In keeping with the cinematic theme, these also were fast times at Ridgewood High: A day after they graduated, Dan D’Uva and Guy Benson, his Ridgewood (N.J.) High School buddy who would become a political pundit, were on the air. Sort of. Sometimes when the wind didn’t blow, one could hear A’s ballgames at the Short ‘n’ Sweet ice cream shop on Main Street in South Chatham.

While honing his craft on the summertime fly, D’Uva palled around with Evan Longoria, Andrew Miller and Todd Frazier, who starred for the Chatham team, and relief pitcher Derek Lutz, who did not.

But, D’Uva recalled, “He wrote his (telephone) number on a Cheez-It box and gave it to a cute, young girl who was hanging out by the bullpen. When they had the wedding in Chatham, a bunch of us who could went back for it.”

Dan D’Uva developed an affinity for Chatham and the Chatham ballclub and the part they played in his development as a broadcaster. So after moving on, he felt compelled to find a successor (Scott Braun, now with the MLB and NHL networks). And that led to formation of the Cape Cod School of Broadcasting, and D’Uva having to choose two aspirants from around 100 or so who apply each summer with the dream of following in his footsteps.

No cliches allowed

The chosen ones this season were Josh Schaefer and Cooper Boardman, teenagers who called 44 Chatham Anglers games in 55 days, plus playoffs. D’Uva was looking over their shoulders for more than 40 of those games. By Labor Day, Schaefer and Boardman had whittled the baseball cliches to a minimum and were no longer doing Vin Scully or Jon Miller impressions.

The two youths, as your Cousin Vinny might have tried to say, received 44 games plus playoffs of invaluable instruction. D’Uva received the satisfaction of paying it forward, which more than offsets the money he spends in returning to Chatham and treating his proteges to lunch most days.

“I have as much enthusiasm for working with the young broadcasters on the Cape as I do describing the Golden Knights on the power play,” D’Uva said.

“I don’t do it for any reward other than the fulfillment of meeting new young broadcasters and seeing them succeed. It comes down to what people like Ian Eagle and Mike Emrick had done for me many years ago when I was 14, 15 starting out in high school. They were so kind to me, because people had been kind to them.”

There are so many stories to this summer catch, D’Uva says, starting with that movie. He said people forget the legendary Curt Gowdy was the Chatham A’s broadcaster on the silver screen. The year after the movie came out, D’Uva and Guy Benson became the team’s play-by-play voices for real.

“Our joke was that we replaced Curt Gowdy as the Chatham broadcasters,” Dan D’Uva said.

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Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.