Working for the St. Louis Cardinals fulfilled a childhood dream for sportscaster Bob Carpenter.

"I didn't know if I'd ever get to work for the Cardinals," said Carpenter. "I've wanted too ever since I was a teenager."

Since 1995, Carpenter has been the play-by-play announcer for the Cardinals. He grew up in the city of St. Louis and began his love of the team as a boy. His fondest memories are of his father taking him to see ball games and seeing legends like Stan Musial play. He has been sportscasting in major league baseball for 16 years with teams such as the New York Mets, Texas Rangers, and Minnesota Twins.

Carpenter was one of the guest speakers at Missouri Southern's "Southern Video Showcase" on Friday, Nov. 12 in Webster Auditorium. Students from several area high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools attended the broadcasting festival and awards ceremony. Other speakers included Marci Burdick, the news director at KY3 in Springfield, and the winner of 1999's Pioneer Broadcaster Award, Don Gross. Gross, who was the former "voice of the Lions" at Southern, played on several Cardinal farm teams prior to entering sportscasting.

Carpenter has worked in many different professional and collegiate sports, but emphasized how special baseball was to him. He relayed this sentiment to the audience with a story about an unidentifiable baseball card found at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y..

The card in his story had a picture of an old time player in a Sinclair Oil jersey. The card was researched and the press eventually picked up the story. A young man phoned and said he had placed the card there, and knew the identity of the player. The next day, he brought an identical card to the curator who asked who the man was. The boy said, 'this guy wasn't a real professional ball player, but he was the guy who was always there to play catch with me. He taught me how to play the game of baseball and he was always there for every other kid in the neighborhood.'

The curator again asked who the man was. The boy said 'well, he's no longer living, but that was my dad. I always thought he belonged in the hall of fame.' Carpenter said this story was a perfect example of how special baseball is.

"For me to call myself a Cardinals sportscaster," said Carpenter, "is indeed an honor."

He said when you get involved with the team, that you become part of that organization. With his job, he said he also really gets to know the players outside of their fame.

"You find out that they are, in some respects, regular people, just like you and I," said Carpenter.

In 1997, the Cardinals acquired Mark McGwire, which had a great impact on Carpenter. He was in awe of the famed home-run slugger.

"When we got him on July 31st of 1997 and he walked into our clubhouse in Philadelphia the next night, I thought God was coming to play with us," said Carpenter.

He said he later found Mark was a regular guy. He was a baseball player and a good teammate with a great sense of humor. He said the mystique had disappeared.

Through his position, Carpenter has met baseball legends like Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, and his childhood hero, Stan Musial. He now sometimes works with former Cardinal and future hall-of-famer, Ozzie Smith on KPLR.

"Sometimes I'm sitting up there and I'm like 'what am I doing sitting next to Ozzie Smith,'" said Carpenter.

Carpenter has covered many other sports besides baseball. Monday, he left for Tucson, Ariz., for the first round of the NIT college basketball tournament. Later this month he will be hosting the Maui Invitational in Hawaii for ESPN, which involves an arduous schedule of six games in three days. He said he preferred this series compared to the Great Alaskan Shoot-out in Anchorage, which falls at the same time.

"This is four years in a row for me going to Maui," said Carpenter. "I keep waiting for the phone call every year that tells me I'm going to Anchorage instead, but so far, that call hasn't come."

Carpenter has also covered the NBA, NFL, two World Cups, the Master's golf tournament in Augusta, Ga., and most college and high school sports. He's worked for both ESPN channels and CBS. He's done everything from rugby, track, and bowling to horse racing.

"I've even done rodeo," said Carpenter, "which, for a city boy from St. Louis who lives in Oklahoma and doesn't even own a pair of cowboy boots, is quite a stretch."

Carpenter, who graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said he got his hard-driving work ethic from his father. His father was a steelworker in St. Louis. Carpenter, while on break from school, came to work with his father for two summers.

"I never wanted to go back to school so bad in my life," said Carpenter. "I couldn't wait for summer to be over."

His father passed away three years ago. It was on the same day as Carpenter's birthday. He said his dad was an important influence.

While at school in Kansas City, Carpenter had a production class with a professor named Bob Mussberger, who was the cousin of Brent Mussberger, a famous sportscaster who he would later work with through CBS. In 1974, Mussberger told Carpenter's class there were no jobs and the business was too crowded.

"I refused to believe that," said Carpenter. " I believed that if you worked hard and were willing to do whatever it took, you'd be successful."

Twenty-five years later, Carpenter has proven his instructor wrong. He emphasized that he loved his job and all the benefits it has.

"The great thing about this career is you can go as far as you want to go," said Carpenter. "There aren't a lot of careers where you can say that."

Published by The Chart on 11-19-99.