Look Who’S Listening Now
Larry Weir fell asleep on the flight home from Eastern Washington’s last basketball road trip of the regular season - a deep, peaceful sleep. So he couldn’t have been dreaming about the first six years he spent as the Eagles’ play-by-play voice.
When he stirred, there was a piece of paper rolled into a cigarette dangling from his lips, and his shoelaces had been tied to the seat in front of him.
“Aaron Olson and Dennis Fitzgerald,” Weir said, fingering the perpetrators. “But it’s nice to feel like you’re a part of the club.”
It’s even nicer when the club you’re a part of is winning and happy - champions, in fact, of the Big Sky Conference, even if there’s a “co” in front of it.
Larry Weir couldn’t have been certain that he’d ever see the day, or even a light at the lip of the grave.
As the Eagles fish for the two tournament victories in Missoula this weekend that would fulfill this formerly improbable dream, their radio guy remains perhaps the most appreciative witness - and not only because he is burdened with the curse of context.
Mostly, he knows he at last has an audience.
“The worst feeling as a broadcaster is that you’re not talking to anybody,” Weir said. “And I know there were times for several years that I wasn’t.”
Of course, not all of that was the doing of the basketball team, pitiful as it often was. Over the years, EWU has had more flagships than a toddler’s bathtub navy, and some of those radio stations had after-dark signals that could only be heard if you parked under the transmitter. That may have been an FCC mercy rule, if your Eagles loyalties couldn’t take another blowout. But some of us endured simply because Weir is always worth a listen.
Things have been better lately. Weir sees a better-rounded student-athlete in the program under Steve Aggers’ program, better chemistry, a solid identity. And the Eagles are a respectable 41-39 the past three seasons.
But before that?
“Thirty-two and 125,” Weir said, the number branded into his memory as if it were his tax refund. “My sixth year, we were 7-19 - and that was the first time we hadn’t lost 20 since I started doing the games.”
That would have been in 1991, one year into John Wade’s term as Eastern’s coach. Within a couple of seasons, the Eagles would embark on a 44-game road losing streak - including 29 straight in Big Sky play.
“What Steve Aggers and Brian Priebe have done, and the way they’ve done it, is unbelievable to me,” Weir said. “I think the world of John Wade - he’s a great person and a good friend of mine. But that program was probably one of the five or six worst programs in America when Steve took it over.”
On the air, naturally, Weir had to keep that thought to himself. And generally after it, too.
Because on the road, he more or less served as Wade’s lifeline.
“When things weren’t going right - and some of it was his fault, but a lot of it wasn’t - I thought it was my job to get him out of a funk after losses,” Weir said. “John is a diabetic and stubborn as a mule, and sometimes I’d have to drag him out to a restaurant and get him to eat to keep him healthy. Those were hard days, because you hate to see a guy suffer and there’s nothing you can really do to help him. I couldn’t recruit for him, and I sure couldn’t play.”
Who could? From the time Weir first put on his headset to Aggers’ third season, EWU had exactly one All-Big Sky player. If you knew the answer was Brad Sebree, you need to find more to do with your life.
“A lot of the kids on those teams - How can I put this tactfully? - were not great competitors,” Weir said. “I remember in 1993, we had 11 kids, but on the last trip to Idaho State and Boise, we took only seven with us.
“One had a broken toe - he could play at home but for some reason couldn’t make it on the road. Another decided he had to stay home and do schoolwork, not that he couldn’t have done it on a 13-hour bus ride to Pocatello. Another kid off that team - Ed Knight - left to join Snoop Doggy Dogg’s entourage. The only guy with a legit deal was Aaron Childress, who had a badly sprained ankle.”
Even Wade’s lone assistant didn’t make that trip - the boss having sent him out recruiting. So trainer Tom Embree was put in charge of the white greaseboard used during timeouts.
“We call timeout and Tom sets the board down to get everybody water,” Weir recalled. “At ISU, the students are right behind your bench. So one of them grabs the pen and when John goes to diagram a play, some kid up in the stands is waving the pen.”
Short-handed and under-resourced is a concept Weir understands well. A native of Waitsburg, Wash., and a graduate of the Ron Bailee School of Broadcasting (“worst money I’ve ever spent in my life”), he has bounced around to a handful of Eastern Washington radio stations - in Toppenish, Yakima, Walla Walla, Colfax and now Pullman - doing a little of everything, all of which he learned on the job.
“My first job in Toppenish, we ran a religious hour the local pastor came in and taped on Saturday,” he remembered. “I start the tape machine and there’s nothing coming over the air. I’m 18 and too young and stupid to call anybody for help, and somewhere between the control room and the production room I leave a microphone open and I’m cussing a blue streak.
“I’m saying every cuss word in the book and the pastor’s at home listening to what’s supposed to be his sermon, none too happy. Ron Bailee didn’t teach you about that kind of stuff.”
Didn’t teach him how to keep it interesting through a stretch of 32-125, either. But this winning stuff, Larry Weir can handle.
He just keeps his shoes tied to the seat in front of him and goes along for the flight.