From parents taking their kids to soccer practice to friends cheering on their favorite pro team in a bar, sports pervade the life of a community. KZSM 104.1/KZSM.org, your true community radio station, honors that tradition every Saturday morning from 11 a.m. to noon with “The Blitz,” hosted by Damian Entrican and Beckett.
Sports talk includes the local level, such as an interview with Simon Sanchez of Aftermath Boxing, a non-profit San Marcos gym that offers programs for young people. But much of the conversation covers professional sports, especially Damian’s first love, baseball. He spent thirteen years as part of the Chicago Cubs grounds crew, where part of his job was working in the historic manual scoreboard that sits high up in center field at Wrigley Field. Before that, he grew up in North Central Illinois “among the corn and bean fields.” He played football, basketball, and baseball and was an all-conference basketball player in junior high, as he often jokingly reminds his listeners.
Entrican interviewed prominent sports figures beyond baseball as well, including Tuff Hedeman, “one of the best bull riders ever.” Mike Holbridge, Muhammed Ali’s personal chef, shared anecdotes from The Greatest’s training camp.
Damian’s co-host, Beckett, might be familiar to San Martians from Jason Beckett and the Lane Drifters, a band that used to play often at Cheatham Street Warehouse. He still plays occasionally around town. Damian explains that “Beckett and I would often argue at the bar over sports, and I felt with our discussions (arguments) and strong opinions that he would make a good cohost.”
Damian’s impatience with soccer inspires many of those arguments, both in the bar and on the air. Beckett follows Premier League Soccer, and supports his team, Crystal Palace—“sounds like a Chinese Restaurant to me,” Damian complains. “Besides, soccer is slow. Paint dries quicker. I don’t like 1-0 games. While I don’t mind a nice 1-0 pitchers’ duel in baseball, it’s way too frequent in soccer.”
“The Blitz” began with the birth of the station in 2017, as “Anything But Soccer” because of then co-host Len Hickey’s antipathy to the game. Craig K eventually replaced Hickey as co-host, and discussions expanded to “everything in the sports world and beyond.” “We’d get off on tangents, and we’d roll with it,” Entrican explains.
Tune in for reviews, commentaries, and (yes) arguments that you won’t hear anywhere else!
