'I wouldn't trade it for anything': Detroit sports TV fixture retiring at end of Wings' season

‘I wouldn’t trade it for anything’: Detroit sports TV fixture retiring at end of Wings’ season

Posted by Admin December 20, 2024 Sports

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John Keating gets a kick out of seeing his face on Chris Osgood’s ties.

He’s less comfortable being called “the face” of Detroit sports broadcasts for all these years. But the reality is, that’s exactly what he’s been, greeting Tigers and Red Wings fans all across Michigan night after night since he came back to the area in 1996 to be the primary reporter and host for game broadcasts on PASS, then Fox Sports Detroit, and now FanDuel Sports Network Detroit.

Keating’s time on the air is coming to an end in 2025. He announced on social media early Friday morning that he will retire following the Red Wings’ season, capping a 45-year career in broadcasting. In the ever-changing and volatile business of regional-sports networks, Keating is going out on his own terms, every broadcaster’s dream.

He made the final decision over the summer, after long talks with his bosses, as well as his wife of 40 years, Linda, and their three adult children. The last several years, Keating has regularly bounced between his home in Canton to Grand Haven, where Linda has been living, while she was taking care of her parents. Grand Haven now will become his permanent home, and home to his 20 Emmys, his credential collection, and his endless supply of Dad jokes.

“She’s greatly distressed about the notion of having me around all the time,” Keating said of Linda, in his typical deadpan. “She would like the Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup if only to keep me away from her a little longer.

“I’ve had a terrific run. I don’t know that I’m the face of anything. We have a great team of people, and the fact that I’ve been a part of it and seen the things I’ve seen, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“Everybody talks about, ‘I wish I were younger.’ I don’t have that. I wouldn’t trade what I’ve been able to experience.”

Keating, who turns 68 in January, grew up in Madison Heights and attended Bishop Foley High School, before earning his degree at Grand Valley State.

He began his career in radio in Grand Rapids, and then made the transition to TV, as a weekend sports anchor at WZZM in 1980. He was there for five years, before moving to Denver in 1985. Denver was a 12-year run that included the birth of MLB’s Colorado Rockies, and the Colorado Avalanche winning the Stanley Cup in 1996.

Late in 1996, he came home to Detroit, to work for PASS (Pro-Am Sports System), and quickly covered two more Stanley Cup championships, by the Red Wings, in 1997 and 1998. He covered four Red Wings’ Stanley Cups, the Pistons’ championship in 2004, and two Tigers World Series appearances, in 2006 and 2012.

Interestingly, shortly after returning to Detroit, Keating didn’t know if he made the right move. Fox Sports launched in Michigan in 1997, and quickly acquired the rights to the Tigers and Red Wings, and eventually the Pistons. Fox Sports quickly put PASS out of business, and there was no guarantee that Keating would make the transition. But newly on the air, Fox Sports needed a host for the first broadcast, a preseason Red Wings game, Sept. 17, 1997, Keating filled in, and Fox Sports acquired his contract. The rest is history. He’s been the main pregame, postgame and studio host for Tigers and Red Wings games ever since, being a constant in the changing landscape over the years, from Fox Sports Net Detroit, to Fox Sports Detroit, to Bally Sports Detroit, and, now, to FanDuel.

“It was a really interesting time for everybody, and it worked out for him,” said Jeff Byle, vice president and executive producer for FanDuel Sports Network Detroit, who has worked alongside Keating for more than two decades. “He’s been the guy that’s been our face and the staple of who we’ve been for, now, well over 25 years. Whenever it came to storytelling for anything, anything special, some special ceremony, special teams, documentaries, memorializing our fallen sports heroes, he’s been the guy.

“He’s been the guy that would write and, really, give us our compass to what that looked like.”

Keating said his interest in broadcasting dates to when he was 10 years old, and a friend of his turned on a radio ― and out blasted the voice of legendary WJR host J.P. McCarthy. Radio was always the goal, until a news director named Jack Hogan gave him his shot on TV at WZZM, where, at first, Keating swears he was “awful.”

He grew into the job, took a liking to the industry, and it’s taken him on the adventure of a lifetime ― including meeting some of his childhood heroes, like Ernie Harwell, who was broadcasting games on PASS when Keating arrived back in town, before eventually returning to radio, and Mr. Tiger Al Kaline. A signed Kaline jersey is a prized possession, and a prized memory is when Kaline sought out Keating at the ballpark to offer condolences following the death of his father. Keating’s father was a big Kaline fan, and would’ve been floored by that story.

Picking out his favorite Detroit sports personalities is complicated, because there are so many. Picking out his favorite Detroit sports teams is easier.

He gravitates toward the 1996-97 Red Wings, who snapped a 40-plus-year Stanley Cup drought, and the 2006 Tigers, who made baseball fun again in Detroit. Recently, the Tigers’ magical 2024 playoff run stands out.

“It’s the same joy everybody’s feeling with the Lions right now. It has been so long,” Keating said. “That’s the feeling that I guess I’ll take to my grave with me. That’s the kind of stuff that you can’t script.

“Those are the feelings that I will cling to.”

By the way, speaking of scripted, yes, many of Keating’s jokes ― the more the groaner, the more they bomb, the better they typically are, not unlike Johnny Carson ― were written ahead of time. You could tell anytime Osgood would bust out laughing before Keating even delivered the line, because Osgood had seen the words on the studio teleprompter during Red Wings’ pregame shows. Soon, his stable of jokes will be reserved for his family, including two grandchildren; there’s a third on the way.

“I can hear their eyes rolling in the back of their heads,” Keating said of the typical reaction to his Dad jokes over the years from his three adult children, who were raised by John and Keating in Bloomfield Hills.

“I just think they’re brilliant turns of phrases,” he quipped.

During his career, Keating also has covered three Super Bowls (including XL in Detroit in February 2006) and the Winter Olympics in France in 1992, and his time working in the Detroit market saw 15 different head coaches for the Pistons, 13 for the Lions (the only local team not on the RSN; the NFL is all national), six for the Red Wings, eight for Michigan State football, six for Michigan basketball, five for Michigan football, and just one for Michigan State basketball (Tom Izzo, yo), as well as 10 different managers of the Tigers.

Keating praised all his coworkers through the years, and made special mention of Red Wings’ TV man Mickey Redmond, who when he learned of Keating’s plans to retire, he made a plea for him to reconsider.

And he also thanked the fans who’ve welcomed him into their homes, from the dawn of the RSN era until now, at a time when the RSN business model is as fragile and uncertain as ever. Keating will get approached a lot at games, while on set or walking the concourse, often by a fan who points out they’ve been watching Keating on TV all their lives. Keating can’t see the viewer through the camera, but the viewer sees him, and that puts things in perspective.

The sports-media business can be a grind, especially when there’s travel involved; for most of his career, there was. But no matter how stressful the day of work, Keating tried to find time to remember he was doing what he loved. It’s easier said than done. The love, the passion, they can get forgotten, amid the day-to-day rigors of the job. Keating has been thinking about that a lot lately, as he prepares for a retirement around family and Lake Michigan sunsets ― the sunset pictures that have flooded his social-media feed in recent years gave strong hints this day was coming.

“There have been occasions where I’ve been walking into a ballpark or an arena, and someone will stop me, ‘John, you’ve got a great job!’ And you might be jet-lagged,” Keating said.

“But then it’ll hit me, yeah, you get to go to work at an arena, or a ballpark.

“That’s as good as it gets.”

tpaul@detroitnews.com

@tonypaul1984