February 16, 2003

Nascar's Voice, Born in Brooklyn

By JOHN D. THOMAS

ELI GOLD'S path to sportscasting -- Brooklyn Jewish schoolboy, Mel Allen acolyte, starry-eyed gofer at Madison Square Garden -- would seem to lead straight to the broadcast booth of the Knicks or the Yankees. So how did he come to be a resident of this city and one of the most recognizable voices in a sport whose roots reach deep into the South: stock car racing?

''I did not come down here and say, 'Listen, I'm from New York, this is how we do it and this is the right way, so the heck with you,' '' Mr. Gold said recently. ''I never did that. I didn't want to alienate folks. And once I got on the air, folks saw that I was not some carpetbagger coming down here to steal their money and besmirch their product.''

Mr. Gold, whose status as Southern radio royalty is cemented by his off-season job as the voice of University of Alabama football, is best known as the host of the call-in show ''Nascar Live.'' It's the signature show of Motor Racing Network, the in-house Nascar radio service that provides race broadcasts and other programming to stations around the country. Beginning in February 1983 on 25 stations, the hourlong program has expanded along with the sport and can now be heard on more than 350 affiliates every Tuesday night, year-round. (The network's Web site, mrnradio.com, has a list of affiliates but not all carry the show; for more information, call the network at 386-947-6400.)

''It's like any other talk show, but we are the only one that allows that Nascar fan in Pocatello, Idaho, or wherever to pick up the phone and talk to Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Tony Stewart,'' Mr. Gold, 49, said during an interview at his home. ''If it's happening in Nascar, we cover it.''

Over two decades, ''Nascar Live'' has often been the source of breaking news, from rules changes to explanations of scoring mix-ups. Many drivers use it as a primary source of information. ''Every Tuesday night I'm tuned in,'' said Darrell Waltrip, a three-time champion on the top Winston Cup circuit. ''I know drivers listen. They call me and say, Did you hear the announcement Eli made about the rule change or about the fine so and so got?''

Today's Daytona 500 opens the Winston Cup season, and in the week before the race Mr. Gold was to do his show and several specials from studios in Daytona Beach, Fla. But the rest of the year he broadcasts from a small, sound-proofed studio in his basement. ''The phones are answered in Daytona, the music rolls from Daytona, and the uplink is in Daytona,'' he said. ''I am in charge from here.''

Mr. Gold, who has lived in Birmingham since he began announcing races in 1976, was born in Brooklyn 23 years earlier. His father was the business manager of the Brooklyn Jewish Center and his mother worked in personnel at Chase Manhattan Bank. At night he would lie awake under the covers and listen to Allen broadcast Yankee games; he wrote in his eighth-grade yearbook that his goal was to be a sportscaster.

In his teens, he got a job as an office boy at Madison Square Garden. In lieu of a paycheck, he received an all-events pass. ''It didn't matter if it was the seventh game of the N.B.A. finals or the Royal Lipizzaner Stallions,'' Mr. Gold recalled. ''I sat in the very last seat of the press box. And with my little tape recorder I did the play by play and, I'm sure, annoyed the dickens out of the people sitting around me.''

On his daily runs delivering mail, Mr. Gold would take his tapes and give them to Bob Wolff, who did the television broadcasts for the Knicks and Rangers. ''Bob would take a minute and pop that cassette in and say, 'You're doing that well, you're doing that poorly, you need to work on this and that.' He was a huge help.''

Through his Garden connections, Mr. Gold landed a job as an announcer on the lowest level of minor league hockey. As he moved up the hockey ladder, he found himself listening to stock car races during road trips and enjoying them. High-profile sportscasting jobs were scarce in the Northeast, and he eventually landed in Birmingham as the voice of the Birmingham Bulls, a short-lived World Hockey Association franchise, and as a Nascar announcer.

The first race he broadcast was only the third he attended. ''They brought me to Charlotte for the World 600 and gave me an on-the-air audition, which nowadays you never have,'' he said. ''They said, 'If you do well we'll keep you, and if you stink you're out of here.' I guess I did well.'' Seven years later he was tapped to be the first, and so far the only, host of ''Nascar Live.''

Mr. Gold maintains that stock car racing, essentially cars going around in circles, is made for radio. ''With basketball and baseball, you only have one ball and you know exactly where it is,'' he said. ''Those sports have one major concentrated area of attention, and it's relatively small and confined. In Nascar you have 43 balls, if you will, and every one of those guys has a story that can be unfolding at that instant.''

Though a majority of basketball or baseball fans have probably never heard of Mr. Gold, he has reached the upper echelon of his profession by moving south. Only one thing, he said, could entice him to move back to the land of his birth: ''If the phone rang and it was the Yankees, I'd have to listen long and hard.''