I am the PA guy, hear me roar

If you have a Twitter account, you know you don't have much space to describe yourself in that little bio box. We're allotted 160 characters to tell our life stories to the world, so generally speaking, whatever someone puts there is probably pretty important to them.

Nearly half the characters in my Twitter bio are taken up by this phrase: "PA announcer for
@WickliffeHS band, soccer, volleyball and hoops."

For the last few years, I've had the golden opportunity to be on the microphone for all of those activities at my alma mater, Wickliffe High School. This past fall was my sixth as the Wickliffe Swing Band announcer, while I'm in the midst of my third season as the PA voice for the four sports (girl basketball, boys basketball, girls soccer, and volleyball).

Much like offensive linemen and U.S. vice presidents, public address announcers are doing their job when you forget they're there. The less we're noticed, the better.

I've been doing it just long enough to know the most important thing about sports PA announcing, and that is this: You are not the show. You are not the reason people came to the field/gym that day. You are merely there to amplify the efforts of those young athletes and ensure that those in the stands understand what is happening. Anything else is showboating.

I'm increasingly coming to understand that the less I say, the better.

Because, you know, the temptation once someone puts a live mic in your hand is to over-talk. When you do that, it's just a constant stream of words the crowd will soon tune out.

Remember: Amplify and clarify. If you're thinking of saying something that doesn't accomplish one or both of those things, you probably shouldn't say it. Silence really is sometimes golden.

I love PA announcing. I absolutely love it. And I'm still learning how to do it. Cadence, inflection, flow, volume, distance from the mic. Those are all things at which I want to improve, and all things the best announcers do well almost instinctively.

The best PA announcer I've ever come across was Ray Milavec. Mr. Milavec was not only one of my 10th grade English teachers, but also a coach, athletic director, and PA guy at Wickliffe. He was at one time the PA voice of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, and after retirement served a number of seasons in the same capacity with the minor-league baseball Lake County Captains.

One time, during the first football game of my senior year, Mr. Milavec made sure the announcers from the local cable access TV station said my name correctly on air, and even told them that I also ran track. He didn't have to do that, but he did, because he believed in making sure student-athletes got the credit he thought they deserved.

Not that you have to do this, but if you fast-forward to the 2:03:39 mark of this video, you can hear the results of Mr. Milavec's efforts on my behalf:

Mr. Milavec was a legend. This is off-topic, but I'm starting a scholarship for Wickliffe High School students in his memory (he died of stomach cancer a few years ago). More details on that in early 2020.

Anyway, my point is, while I love PA announcing, and while I believe I have a certain natural ability to do it, I am far from expert. It is a craft like anything else, and every game I try and get a little better at it.

One of the challenges for me comes when I announce basketball. I don't like to announce a foul until I see the ref confirm the player on whom the foul is called, even when it's obvious to me and everyone else who committed the infraction.

But by waiting for it to be official, I also lose valuable seconds during which I'm supposed to announce who committed the foul, how many fouls that person has in the game, what number team foul it is, who's shooting free throws, and how many shots they're taking.

All of that is supposed to happen before the ref hands the shooter the ball, because once the ball is in the shooter's grasp, my instructions are to be quiet. You don't want to distract someone trying sink a free throw in front of hundreds of people in a hot gym.

Sometimes I do it all on time, sometimes I have to cut myself off before relaying all the details, and sometimes I have to wait until after the shot to finish announcing the particulars. (And sometimes, admittedly, I am still talking when the shooter has the ball.)

It's an art as much as it is a science.

There's also the matter of how enthusiastically you announce the accomplishments of the home team vs. how enthusiastically you do it for the visitors.

Many announcers will scream about their own school and sound like they're announcing the death of a family member when a visiting athlete scores.

At the professional level, I get it. That's OK. But in scholastic sports? I don't agree with it. Yes, I will announce a Wickliffe kid louder than a visiting kid, but the difference is relatively slight. When it comes to 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old athletes, I think they all deserve recognition, no matter what color jersey they're wearing.

Like I said, it's an art. Few hard-and-fast rules, but plenty of ways to screw it up.

Right now, the only Wickliffe sports I don't announce are football and boys soccer. Those are handled by Gary Willis, a veteran announcer from whom I've learned quite a bit in terms of preparation and other small tricks of the trade. Gary is a great guy and longtime Wickliffe sports booster, so as far as I'm concerned, he can keep doing those two sports as long as he wants. I'll sub for him whenever he's unavailable, but he has the right to keep doing it for many more years. He has earned that.

Still, I won't lie: Someday I want to add football and boys soccer to my resume, at which point, yes, I'll have the Wickliffe PA announcing monopoly. I met a guy from Beachwood who does that (all sports AND the band), and he is quite frankly my hero.

But I think my three-point shot call is a little better than his. Just saying.

I just noticed that I am now 50

Last month I turned 50 years old. A lot of people turn 50. More now than ever in human history, as a matter of fact.

It's interesting to think that life expectancy for American men in 1900 was about 46 years. It is now pushing 79.

As my favorite author Bill Bryson puts it in his (excellent) new book "The Body: A Guide for Occupants," that's not because men in 1900 were turning 46 and immediately keeling over. It's because so many children died in infancy, pulling down the overall average.

Still, at the turn of the 20th century, once you hit 50, you started living on borrowed time to a very real extent. Chances were good that an infectious disease of some sort would eventually get you.

Nowadays we've conquered most of those infectious diseases. We just die of heart disease and cancer instead.

All of which is to say, while I feel blessed to live in an age when men are living to nearly 80 on average (and woman beyond that), you can't help but notice once you turn 50 that, mathematically speaking, you are very likely on the downhill side of your personal roller coaster ride through life.

How far you actually make it is largely influenced by your lifestyle choices, of course, but also by genetics. People who live to 100 and beyond usually have relatives who also lived to 100, or at least close to it.

As the saying goes, if you would live long, choose your parents well.

I should mention here that it's not like I think about dying all the time. I rarely do, actually. But the thought does cross my mind with at least a bit more frequency now than, say, when I was 30.

When you're 30, you can reasonably expect that another half century will pass and you'll still be here.

When you're 50, it feels like you're asking for a lot if you expect another 50 years. It happens, of course, and medical science is getting better all the time at extending your stay on this planet. But living to 100 often takes a very deliberate effort to live to 100.

For those who get there, it's usually because they lived in a way that was conducive to longevity.

I do some things well when it comes to personal health, while I slack on others. That's probably how most of us are.

The most powerful anti-aging factor I likely have in my corner is simply that I have a good time. I mean in general. I just really like life, and specifically the life I happen to lead.

Yeah, I complain regularly about this or that. But all things considered, I kind of hit the jackpot when it comes to personal circumstances and overall contentment.

I have it good. I'm very blessed. I enjoy myself day in and day out.

I don't yet have the kind of health issues that become common as you age. I have no chronic pain, I have no diabetes, I have no cancers of which I'm aware, my organs all function more or less pretty well, and I feel good when I get up in the morning.

That changes with time, I understand, but I run regularly, which I know helps a lot. I've let my weight creep back up lately so I have to address that, and I have a genetic predisposition toward high blood pressure that has me on a very low-dose prescription medication (at least until I get those BP numbers back down naturally, at which point I would like to ditch the lisinopril).

But taken as a whole, I'm in a pretty good physical state. I don't even (yet) need reading glasses, though like I always say, that's coming.

It is, like all things, a matter of perspective. People older than 50 would love to be 50 again, and people younger than 50 dread it. I get it, especially now that I'm transitioning from one of those groups to the other.

50 may be the new 40, but I'm not even sure what that means.

All I know is, I'm starting to have to pee a lot more than I used to. And if I have to complain about anything associated with advancing middle age, I'm going with that.