Monday, March 16, 2009

Hacksaw Lands On The Bird

UPDATE 3/17/09 11:15 AM: Our apologies to our friends over at AllAccess, who had this news way back on January 27. We missed their original item, and the Los Angeles Times did as well...

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It looks like there was one more sports-related item we missed in our morning update.

Veteran Southern California sports talk host Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton has found a regular gig behind a microphone again.

Los Angeles Times blogger Diane Pucin reports that Hamilton is now talking baseball on Sirius XM Satellite Radio's "Home Plate" Channel:

Hamilton is anchoring a noon to 4 p.m. national baseball show on Saturdays and Sundays, and like his previous shows, you learn a lot in quick bursts. If you have XM radio it's channel 175. If you have Sirius it's channel 210.

We're not sure, but we think Sirius subscribers have to pay for the "Best of XM" package to get the channel.

(A hat tip, by the way, to Radio-Info.com news columnist Tom Taylor for finding this news.)

In his 22 years on the air in Southern California, "Hacksaw" basically defined sports radio, particularly in his original market of San Diego.

You can get a nice perspective on that part of his career in this article by the San Diego Union-Tribune's Jay Posner - who, by his own admission, wasn't really a Hacksaw fan.

The article reminds us that Hamilton left the latest incarnation of "XTRA Sports" in San Diego last September...at the time, his future destination unknown. There had been rumors that he would show up on sports talker Chris "Mad Dog" Russo's self-named channel on Sirius XM, but that apparently wasn't in the cards at the time.

Non-regular readers who haven't followed us for a while may be wondering why we're spending so much time talking about a Southern California-based host.

So, just as a reminder, Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton spent the first part of his career here in Northeast Ohio.

In addition to being the radio voice of the World Hockey Association's Cleveland Crusaders on then-WWWE/1100, Hamilton's sports talk roots were laid down at Susquehanna's WHLO/640 "NewsTalk 64" in the mid-1970's...where he hosted the Akron station's early evening sports talk show...

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