Pete Weber all tuned up to call Nashville sports history

Even with a couple of chord changes to tweak the twang, Pete Weber’s broadcasting career in Nashville shouldn’t sound like the starting point for another tired country western song.

It’s hardly been a long, lonesome 20 years behind the microphone, be it on TV, radio or even CB Radio, for the original and still-going-strong voice of the NHL’s Predators. The 66-year Weber, who got up to speed on the pro hockey game during a three-year run as the colorman for Bob Miller on the Kings’ broadcasts from 1978-81 between Rich Marotta and Nick Nickson, has belted out scores in Buffalo, Seattle, Albuquerque and Rochester. He’s worked on the NFL Bills’ broadcasts during their run of four straight fruitless Super Bowl outcomes.

He’s even had his heart kinda broken -- a serious heart procedure in 2014 to be exact -- but it’s kept on ticking.

And now, if things break right, he could be making his first championship call. The Preds’ first Stanley Cup win could come as early as mid-June, but that won’t be the time to drop the mike.

“I’m a little too selfish to see what could follow,” Weber said beforeo Saturday’s Game 5 of the Ducks-Predators Western Conference finals. “I have another year left on my contract and they’ve already asked me if I want to continue. I do. And once the first one happens, I’ll be going for at least two.”

Two would tie him with his very close friend Miller, the 78-year-old who retired from the Kings after a 44-year run last April. It took Miller only 39 years before he got to call his first Stanley Cup -- nearly twice as long as Weber has waited to get to this point.

The road to Nashville

While with the Buffalo Sabres’ organization, the closest he got to a Stanley Cup was six wins away before it was snatched from Washington in the Eastern Conference finals of 1997.

That next season, the media-adept Weber learned on a slow-driving Prodigy sports report that the NHL was considering expanding to four cities. Nashville, not far from where the parents of his wife Claudia lived, was one of them.

Weber went in pursuit of networking with friends, tracking down the team owner, and even borrowing his father-in-law’s car during a Fourth of July family reunion in Knoxville to pitch himself in face-to-face meetings.

“As a hockey town, I thought they always had a chance,” Weber said of that time in Tennessee, which had just convinced the NFL’s Houston Oilers to relocate. “But having never been on the level of a major pro-sports city, I knew they’d have to overcome some sticker shock with ticket prices. But from the start, the game experience has left everyone leaving entertained -- if not deaf.”

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The decibel levels recorded at the Predators’ home games has become as much a team advantage as an occupational hazard of some sorts to the broadcasters working there. Weber recalls his ears were still ringing long after the first Predators’ home playoff game on Easter Sunday, 2004, even as he wore ear phones.

At the very first Predators game at home against Florida on Oct. 10, 1998 -- with no exhibition games or scrimmages prior -- the fans gave the team a prolonged standing ovation.

“They wanted something to cheer for, and the Predators have provided it,” he said.

Some of Nashville’s hockey knowledge has some from transplanted Detroit auto workers seeking to keep their jobs. Weber recalls referring to the hybrid fans as “PredWings” because of their connection to the Detroit Red Wings. But there’s been no question that the Predators, who’ve never been this deep in the playoffs, have been loyal long before what Weber calls his most memorable sports moment there -- Mike Fisher ending a triple-overtime playoff win over against San Jose in a 2016 second-round game that ended past 1 a.m.

The love of radio

After a dozen years working on the TV side, Weber and analyst Terry Crisp moved to radio on the Nashville all-sports WPRT-FM, 102.5 The Game. The team also has eight other affiliates in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky. No wonder Predators fans have learned how to take the NBC video feed during these playoffs, turn down the volume and sync it up through their DVRs to get Weber’s calls.

“You can tell by those who go on the call-in postgame shows that they are very educated,” he said. “I can’t go into a store or restaurant without someone wanting to talk hockey. They’ve gone from Hockey 101 in the early teaching days to where they’re at graduate level or Rhodes scholars.”

The city was smart enough to declare it Pete Weber Day in Nashville last Jan. 10 as he reached the 2,000th game milestone for the franchise. The four-time Tennessee Sportscaster of the Year also has a young-at-heart technical know-how that allows him to stay engaged with fans while on the air as those ping his Twitter account (@PeteWeberSports) and Facebook page.

If Nashville now seems a long way from his days of living in Playa del Rey -- “How could that not be a great experience so close to a Winchell’s and Bob’s Big Boy?” he said -- the decision to pursue a play-by-play career at that point in his life has led to this nice crescendo in Music City.

Sure, there may be a TV play-by-play opening in L.A. hockey now, but Weber says he’s not about to change his tune.

“I really love doing radio again, that’s the main reason,” he said. “Plus, I don’t want to be Phil Bankson (the Green Bay Packers head coach who followed Vince Lombardi). I’d rather be Dan Devine (who came later and then went to Notre Dame). Sorry, Wayne Gretzky, but Bob Miller is the ‘great one.’

“Back in those days in L.A., I realized I’d never do play-by-play with the Kings -- Bob wasn’t going anywhere as great as he was. But I do know he may be jealous of me now. Bob says he’d like to retire and just pan handle down by Music Row, he loves country music so much.

“I’m still more of a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young guy.”

MEASURING MEDIA MAYHEM

WHAT SMOKES

• Edition 242 of HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” (Tuesday, 10 p.m.) sends the host out to Dodger Stadium for a feature story on how Jaime Jarrin has made it through 58 seasons with the Dodgers as their Hall of Fame Spanish language radio voice. Vin Scully is also part of the story narrative.

• A key part of the MLB’s new live-streaming partnership with Facebook, resulting in a weekly 20-game package for Friday nights, is that it will not be subject to local blackout and use the local broadcast right-holders feed - another way that the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA may squeeze in another appearance for those who can’t access the service. Only one game has launched so far - Colorado-Cincinnati - with more games to be announced. MLB has used Facebook in the past to livestream spring training games with the MLB.tv player on the league’s Facebook page.

•The World Series of Beach Volleyball, which circles back to Long Beach on July 13-16, has worked a deal with ESPN to carry 30 hours among its various platforms and networks, live and on tape. The women’s final is committed as a live event on Saturday, whether or not U.S. Olympic star Kerri Walsh Jennings makes it that far. She has broken away from the domestic AVP tour to play in this tour created by her agent, Leonard Armato, but has yet to find a partner. “We’d like to put our shoulder behind it,” ESPN executive VP of programming and scheduling Burke Magnus said of beach volleyball in the Associated Press. “Maybe acquire other volleyball content, give it a good try and see what happens. We’ve never put a concerted effort behind the sport at all.” NBCSN carries either the men’s or women’s final of the Austin Open on Sunday at 2 p.m.

WHAT CHOKES

• If one actually saw or heard the exchange that took place last Wednesday on Colin Cowherd’s syndicated radio show (KLAC/570) and/or on FS1 – the one focused on the obnoxious father of a future NBA star making the TV rounds again as he interacted with Cowherd’s naïve newsreader who seemed to believe she was shown a lack of respect -- it would be obvious that all the headlines generated and regenerated from it by otherwise reliable news-gathering sources were misguided. Without any context, it’s easier to try to take a side and then watch, as Cowherd pointed out, that there was an unusually high spike in social media response. Mission accomplished with the low-hanging fruitcake. Attention was sought, and then attained.