At Home on the Air :...

When Ken Brett first entered the California Angels’ radio booth three years ago, with little experience behind a microphone, it wasn’t his first baptism under fire.

Just 22 years ago, a 19-year-old Brett--barely off the mound at El Segundo High School--made two relief appearances for the Boston Red Sox against the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1967 World Series. He remains the youngest pitcher ever to appear in a World Series. That was the beginning of 12 seasons as an itinerant major league player.

It’s that experience as a player--and perhaps a reputation as a free spirit of the game--that opened the door to his broadcast career, which began with an assignment as a television color commentator for the Seattle Mariners in 1986.

“A friend heard about the opening and told me about it,” Brett said. “I went to a video place and made an eight-minute videotape. I sent that up to Seattle and they hired me.” He included footage of his World Series and All-Star Game appearances, along with a TV commercial he made for Miller Lite Beer in 1984.

“I had zero training (as a broadcaster). They (station management) told me, ‘We realize you haven’t had much experience, but we’ll train you. We’ll give you some of the tricks of the trade before you go on the air,’ which made me feel a little easy. But I got no training at all,” Brett explained.

In his first several years as a professional pitcher--until 1973, actually--Brett says he didn’t know what he was doing. He felt the same way about his debut as a broadcaster--and he has continued to be the target of some critics despite noted improvement.

“I was a little awkward my first several games. After about 15 games I started to feel fairly comfortable in front of the TV (camera),” he said.

A contractual technicality before the ’87 season made him available to join the Angels’ broadcast team. Another player-turned-announcer, Ron Fairly, left the Angels to become the lead announcer for the San Francisco Giants.

The plan of the Angels and the team’s flagship radio station, KMPC, was for the former hurler to learn the broadcast business, get comfortable behind a microphone and gradually develop an announcing style. It was with that intent that he was teamed with veteran KMPC announcers Al Conin and Steve Bailey at the outset of the 1987 season. Brett was to do only color commentary that first year.

A programming decision early in that campaign removed Bailey from the team. Thus Brett became a play-by-play announcer in one of the top sports media markets in the nation, doing two innings in every game to spell Conin.

As in his early days as a pitcher, Brett found that he was not ready for such a major assignment. Critics readily agreed on that point.

“As a broadcaster, he had to take his lumps at the beginning,” Conin said. “People didn’t understand that he had no training. It’s been since he started in the job that he’s made himself into a broadcaster.”

Larry Stewart, The Times’ radio-TV sports columnist, has been critical of Brett’s earlier broadcast work but has also heard improvement in the Manhattan Beach resident.

“He wasn’t very good at all his first season, but is now very capable behind a mike,” Stewart said. “But that’s not to say that he doesn’t have room for improvement, either.”

Brett readily admits that he is still learning the business. But he feels he is a worthy voice in the booth.

“I’m sure there are some people in this business who look at me and say, ‘How could they hire him? (He’s got) no experience.’ But luckily I played,” Brett said.

“I think it’s always good to have the word of someone who’s been on the mound, who’s been in the batter’s box, who’s been on the basketball court. I think it’s important to get (former athletes’) viewpoints because they’re the only ones who know what it feels like to be in those situations we’re describing. If I was going to be critical of anything the networks do, it’s that they always have a tendency to go for the big names. It’s as if the big name alone is what it takes to get the ratings.”

He realizes that the critics--both the sports columnists and fans who concern themselves with the subject--have a right to voice their opinions.

“Any time I read something bad about me in the newspaper, I don’t like it. That’s just human nature. But I think if they’re right, then I’ll accept it. And if they want to be critical, then that’s their right. But I’d like to know what it is you have to do to be a sports radio-TV critic. I’d like to know what their backgrounds are. All they do is watch TV and listen.

“If I could be critical of the radio-TV critics, a lot I have read about Al (Conin) and I has not been true. Their information was not correct,” Brett said.

An example Brett points to was an August item written by an L.A.-area columnist containing “inside information” about a confrontation during a meeting between Angels General Manager Mike Port, Brett and Conin.

“We went in to talk about some problems we had on the road, and (Port) came at us with a totally different subject and was totally critical of the quality of our work,” Brett explained. “Since then there hasn’t been a whole lot of progress as far as our relations (with Port).”

But Brett doesn’t feel that the confrontation affects the broadcasters’ work. “We respect the job Mike does, and I think he respects us.”

He says the details of the incident were incorrectly reported and exaggerated. The columnist’s information “was not correct,” he said. “And nobody talked to us about it. I wish that if they wanted to clarify something, they’d come to us. If they wanted to clarify something, they’d ask, ‘Is this true?’ ”

As employees of KMPC, not the Angels, Brett says they have to please station management.

“As long as my bosses are happy, I’m happy. If it was my boss criticizing me on a regular basis, then I would have a problem with that. From all the reports I get, he’s pretty content with our work,” Brett said.

KMPC sports director Steve Bailey backed him up: “Ken’s development has been spectacular. He’s learned much more quickly than the average person, and he has exceeded any hopes we would have had for his progress at this point. The competition in this market is so fierce. He didn’t have a chance to gain experience in a smaller one. But maybe for that reason he’s worked twice as hard as most people would to improve.”

The 41-year-old Brett is now a family man. He and wife of six years, Teresa, have twins, a daughter and son, born 2 1/2 years ago. He has the stability of employment and residence he didn’t need while he was a major league player, because he was single then.

During those seasons of big league pitching between 1967 and 1981, Brett worked for 10 different major league employers, including the Red Sox, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Philadelphia Philles, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the New York Yankees, the Chicago White Sox, the Angels, the Minnesota Twins, the Dodgers and the Kansas City Royals, with whom he ended his career as a teammate of his younger brother George, a perennial hitting leader in the American League.

Brett enjoyed his life and his independence as a ballplayer. But he is thriving now as a family man in the off-season, when he’s able to stay at home with Teresa, daughter Sheridan and son Casey--named for Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel.

“I’m not planning on doing a whole lot during the off-season,” he says. “I just want to spend time with the family and enjoy this time of year. I’m really content with my life, especially now that I don’t have to work during the off-season. It’s the first winter I have had off in many, many years.”

Brett still enjoys the baseball season, but the road trips take their toll on the family. “Oh, I go on the road during the season, and I get some decent sleep and peace and quiet. (But) I miss the kids to death after about a day.

“Other parents of twins say that it’s five times as much work having twins, and I believe them now. I don’t know how my wife does it sometimes. If I’d had the kids when I was 21 or 22, I don’t know how I would have handled it then. But at my age now, I really appreciate them. I have a great wife, great kids, and a nice house. I’m really content with my life right now.”

He doesn’t admit to feeling any different about his life previously, though. And if it weren’t for the chronic left elbow troubles that shortened his major league career, he says, he’d be playing as happily as a contemporary who still is, 42-year-old Nolan Ryan.

“The only place to be involved in the game is as a player. I loved playing. The only reason I quit was the bad elbow,” Brett said.

But there are no misgivings.

“I’ll still be able to play catch with my son. I still have enough left in my arm so that I’ll be able to pitch batting practice to him when I’m 55.”

As a result, you won’t see Ken Brett participating in the seniors league starting in November in Florida for former big leaguers 35 and older.

KMPC doesn’t ask for much of his time during the off-season, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other interests besides his family.

“Kemmer,” as he has been called since an infant--when older brother John couldn’t pronounce “Kenneth”--is an investor with his brothers in Class A minor league teams in Riverside and Spokane, Wash., and in a sports bar-restaurant, P. J. Brett’s, in Hermosa Beach. His brother Bobby, a professional investor, is involved more with those interests on a day-to-day basis but consults with Ken during the off-season.

Pressure during the off-season for the Angels announcer probably means a busy night as a guest bartender at P.J. Brett’s, where he can be found while “Monday Night Football” is viewed on television sets throughout the establishment.

“It’s a lot of fun, and it gets me out of the house for a few hours,” he said.

Brett will also use some of the off-season to further perfect his broadcasting skills.

“A guy who’s been very helpful is Roy Englebrecht (operator of annual Sportscasters Camps around the country),” he said. “I also do some one-on-one lessons with Bob Miller, the L.A. Kings announcer, who is a partner with Englebrecht in the sportscasters camp. He’ll listen to some tapes and give me some critiques. He gives me the goods and the bads. He’ll also listen to me during the season sometimes and drop me a little note and say I enjoyed your comments on this or that, or note some problems.”

His biggest influence, though, is his broadcast partner, Conin.

“I work with Al (for) 190 games a year. He’s been my biggest help and my biggest influence. He’s been critical constructively, and I can take that, and he’s also been a friend, and that’s important. We have our little flaps in the booth. You can’t work with somebody that much without getting on each other’s nerves now and then. But it’s been minimal, and we get along very well.”

Brett plans to remain around baseball as a broadcaster for the foreseeable future. After he retired as a player in 1981, he participated in the popular television commercials for Miller Lite Beer. In one, he recited the names of all the cities he played in during his major and minor league careers. The last name mentioned--Utica--brought some national attention to the upstate New York town and made Brett a hero there.

That led to him accepting an offer to manage the Rookie League team there for a season.

“I loved it. I think I was an adequate manager; I wasn’t a good manager. But I didn’t have any previous experience as a manager,” Brett said. His enjoyment came from “working with the kids that year--and because they were kids, they listened. When you work with kids at Double-A or Triple-A, they think they know more and the less they listen to the manager.”

He chose the broadcast booth over the manager’s office “because I didn’t want to do that (move around the minors) to my family. Plus, the pay is horrible.”

As a pitcher, Brett worked long and hard at his craft. His philosophy is pretty much the same as a broadcaster.

But unlike his gypsy movements from team to team as a player, Ken Brett hope to stay put in the Angels broadcast booth for a while.