The San Bernardino-area's KCKC broadcast the opening game of the San Bernardino Spirit 1987 season and it went so well they inked a deal to do more, veteran local announcer Bob Harvey told The San Bernardino County Sun.
They then moved to broadcast each Saturday night game through the rest of the season.
"We're very excited, and we like the association with the Spirit," Harvey told The Sun.
The Spirit not only got a radio station and a well-known local announcer out of the deal, they also got a bat boy, Harvey's son, Bob Harvey Jr.
The younger Harvey appears to have served as a bat boy for the Spirit for at least three seasons, 1988 to 1990, all while his father served as Spirit announcer.
Harvey Jr. is referenced in the role in a June 1988 Sun feature on fellow bat boy Dustin Avila. The feature identified Harvey Jr. as the son of the Spirit radio announcer.
Then, in 1990, Harvey got his own card in the Cal League set.
It was unclear exactly how long the younger Harvey served as bat boy for the team, the elder Harvey's time as announcer appears to have ended in 1991 as the team appeared to flirt with leaving the city for Rancho Cucamonga, according to The Sun.
"I'm not a guy who's going to change my allegiance," Harvey, who also served as the KCKC programming director, told The Sun in December 1991. "It's betrayal and they're a lame-duck team. I don't want to be a part of that."
The elder Harvey appears to have had at least some connection to the San Bernardino team after that - the team did stay in San Bernardino through 2002.
But the younger Harvey may also have followed the father into radio, though it was unclear if the age math added up. In a February 1996 article about a radio station changing to formats to classic country, The Sun quoted a program director named Bob Harvey Jr.
"You can say we're trying to copycat the old KCKC format," Harvey Jr. told The Sun. "We're trying to fill a void on the air (created) when they changed (to talk radio)."
- San Bernardino County Sun, May 6, 1987: Spirit to be on KCKC on Saturdays
- San Bernardino County Sun, June 18, 1988: Spirit's bat boy is always on the run
- San Bernardino County Sun, Dec. 6, 1991: KCKC is back in football business after 2-year layoff
- San Bernardino County Sun, Feb. 2, 1996: Classic country comeback
Made the Majors:1,403-32.2%
Never Made Majors:2,956-67.8%-X
10+ Seasons in the Minors:352
Batboy baseball cards in minor league oddball issues are always fun. I actually have a 1963 Tulsa Oilers card of a batboy names Jon Smith. (Are there any batgirl cards out there? And I don't mean Barbara Gordon!) Nice to get some back story. I worked at one radio station that carried local minor league baseball but I don't think anyone associated with the station was a batboy.
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