San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
South doesn’t dwell on abrupt sign off
COLLEGE STATION — In Dave South's ideal world, the longtime “Voice of the Aggies” would call his final NCAA Tournament regional championship Sunday or perhaps Monday, a chance for an advancement and perhaps ultimately a final call in the College World Series.
“We had a good ball club,” South said of Texas A&M's baseball team. “I was looking forward to Asa Lacy pitching the rest of this year — he's got a real chance to be a major player in Major League Baseball.”
South long ago figured out the world is far from ideal, and it's why he hasn't dwelled on the canceling of college baseball because of the global pandemic, which also canceled his 50th and final season as a radio broadcaster well short of the CWS.
“I've thought about it from time to time,” South said of an abrupt end to his college broadcasting career. “Especially when I drive by Blue Bell Park.”
South, 74, said before the season this would be his last calling Aggies baseball — he retired from calling A&M football in 2017 — and didn't back off the pledge even with the startling end to the year, capped 18 games in by a 6-2 A&M victory at Rice on March 10.
“I went out on a winning note,” South said with a slight chuckle. “It's disappointing, but you move on.”
Moving along, most often at a breakneck pace, has never been an issue for South, one reason why a subject of conversation on this late May day was not the lefty Lacy's 98-mph fastball, but the importance of the number eight to musician Fats Domino.
“His real name was Antoine, and he was one of eight children,” South rattled off. “He stayed married to the same woman from 1947 until her death in 2008. He and his wife also had eight children.”
South is in tune to the late Domino's goings-on because of one of the broadcaster's rekindled passions: his radio music show from a studio in his home he refused to let become cobwebbed in an alleged retirement.
“I was a radio disc jockey in high school and college,” said South, a native of Wichita Falls.
“So I called KAMU-FM, A&M's on-campus station, and asked if they could give me an hour a week for a '50s and '60s show. They did, and I've had more fun doing that — I've got a big music collection from the '50s and '60s. They stream it on the Internet, and my sister in Florida listens to it.
“She used to listen to me when I disc-jockeyed back in high school and college.”
South, who began working for A&M in 1985, wrapped up his basketball playcalling duties in 2018, when the Aggies made the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament under then-coach Billy Kennedy. In the summer of 2017, South agreed to stay on calling A&M baseball games, and figured 50 years — 1970 to 2020 — was a good, round number to hang up the headset.
“That was enough,” South said. “I want to do some other things. Your family suffers when you travel so much — our two (now adult) boys kind of grew up at various times without me being there. I missed Randy's first home run. I'll never forget, I was on the road calling a football game, and I looked down and had a text message from my wife. It said, ‘The telephone pole in our backyard is on fire.'
“Lightning had hit it. I thought, ‘Gosh I should be there.' But I wasn't.”
South and his wife of 39 years, Leanne, own an RV and intend to spend about three weeks in Fort Davis in West Texas this summer.
“A favorite spot of ours,” he said.
South, who was the last of the Humble/Exxon Southwest Conference Radio Network announcers, delivers about 15 meals a week for Meals on Wheels. He's a deacon in his church. He meets weekly with a small group of men for Bible study at a wings restaurant along University Drive — a meeting that has shifted to a portable table under shade trees between the restaurant and the road during the pandemic.
“Sometimes, people drive by and honk at us,” he said with a laugh.
The drivers likely don't realize a recipient of the National Football Foundation's most prestigious annual honor for a broadcaster (South earned the Chris Schenkel Award in 2018) is on the receiving end of their hospitable honk.
“Dave South is the Vin Scully of Aggie baseball,” A&M coach Rob Childress said of the renowned and retired Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster.
South, trim, fit and perpetually active, penned a book released last year, “You Saw Me on the Radio,” with proceeds benefiting the Wounded Warrior Project.
“I grew up on the radio — we didn't have a TV when I was a kid,” South recalled. “You had to use your imagination, and you always wondered what those (broadcasters) looked like. … I worked in all three conferences the Aggies have played in – the Southwest, Big 12 and SEC. As a Texan, I grew up listening to the Southwest Conference.
“It was time to retire. But I also know wherever you go and whatever you do, you always meet new people, and make new friends.”
“I went out on a winning note. It’s disappointing, but you move on.”
Texas A&M broadcaster Dave South