New announcer says he now has best gig

ST. LOUIS -- Years ago, Wayne Hagin landed what he thought was his dream gig as the radio voice of the Colorado Rockies, then a National League expansion team in his hometown of Denver.

"I want 30 years in the broadcast booth here," Hagin said then. "Believe me, this was my goal in life. I've found the place I want to live. I've found the place I want to work. I would like to die here. This is the opportunity of my lifetime, and I could not have written a better script."

Hagin never thought he would leave. He was wrong.

Now, the 46-year-old Hagin is making similar comments after being hired last week to succeed Jack Buck, the 47-year St. Louis Cardinals' radio broadcaster who died in June.

Hagin's bottom line: Because of the offer from St. Louis, he said, he "had no choice but to pursue it. Anyone would be crazy not to." To him, he's getting "the best baseball radio job in America, no question about it."

"There's no doubt I'm leaving a cushion," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from Denver, and says he probably could have worked there the rest of his career. "I'm giving up a lot of security."

"Everybody here in Denver who understands baseball isn't asking why I'm doing it," he told the Post-Dispatch. "They know. I was on a talk show for an hour (after the announcement was made), and nobody asked why I was leaving. Everybody knows."

Hagin, who during 21 years of major-league broadcasting has worked with the Chicago White Sox, San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics, said he formed his opinion of the Cardinals' gig during his trips to St. Louis to broadcast for other teams.

"Never did I yearn for it, because I never thought it was realistic that I would have a chance at it," he said, noting he wasn't optimistic when he interviewed last month. "But anybody who ever walked into that ballpark would say, 'What a place to work."'

Buck hadn't been the primary voice of the Cardinals for the past eight seasons, since he went into semiretirement in 1995. That's when he stopped broadcasting road games unless there were special circumstances. And Buck did not call any games last season because of health problems.

Still, Hagin calls forever being known as Buck's successor "an honor, it is humbling."