Thanksgiving 2023: Gratitude for “Rusty”
The off-hand compliment by a cameraman that change my career
Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude and I wanted to share a story about someone who probably has no idea how one small compliment impacted my career.
I’ll keep this post fairly brief. Maybe it’s something you can read in the car on the way to your Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving celebration.
Pretty sure the year was 2006. I’m covering the A’s for The Oakland Tribune, it’s my seventh straight year covering Major League Baseball. My newspaper will soon merge with two other newspapers, and if we’re being honest, I’m getting burned out on the baseball beat.
I remember it was a day game at the Coliseum and I was asked to come on the A’s pregame TV show as a guest. It wasn’t my first appearance. This usually happened 2-4 times a year. I finished the segment and camera operator Mike “Rusty” Dunbar pulled me aside to tell me two things:
If I ever wore a white shirt on TV again, he was going to kill me.
I was better than most of the people that were on TV every day and he looked forward to the day that he “shot me” on a regular basis.
That was a long time ago. I hope Rusty doesn’t mind me telling this story and using this photo I snagged from his Facebook page because I want you to see him at work.
In college, I was a Radio-TV emphasis within the Journalism department. Broadcasting was always my goal, but it just didn’t happen right after college. I probably wasn’t ready at age 22. My voice was horrendous back then and I didn’t have the self-confidence to completely dedicate myself to talking into a microphone.
It was probably just an off-hand compliment. Rusty and I weren’t super close friends, but we hung out a few times and were definitely friendly. I don’t know how much he really meant by it.
But it truly changed my life.
I’d been thinking about switching gears in my career, unsure how to do it, doubting if I was good enough, worried that I’d embarrass myself trying and ruin myself financially.
Something about the Rusty’s words that day gave me the confidence to give it a try.
That was 17 years ago. I’ve now worked in broadcasting almost twice as long as I was a newspaper writer. It’s still a struggle. It’s a lot easier behind a keyboard when you can think, and overthink, your words. There’s no delete button on a live broadcast and all mistakes are right there in the open for everyone to see.
It’s not lost on me that I’m telling this story with my fingers typing the words. I’m writing again, but it’s just a side project for fun. My passion is broadcasting and it’s what I’ll do the rest of my life.
I’m incredibly grateful for all the people who’ve assisted me over the years. Starting this year, I’m going to pick one person each year who made an impact on my life and write about them on Thanksgiving.
I’m leading off with Rusty, the camera operator who planted the seed and filled me with confidence to pursue what I truly wanted to do with my life. (By the way, Rusty, I’ve never worn white on camera again.)
When in doubt, compliment someone. You never know how it’ll change their life.