Stewart finds Reds booth after Cape

~ The former KFVS sports reporter is now broadcasting games for the Cincinnati Reds.

Cincinnati Reds broadcaster Steve Stewart credits two people in Cape Girardeau with helping his career back in the early 1990s.

One was Robert Floyd, who worked with Stewart at KFVS. The other was a complete stranger, who told Stewart one night in a diner to quit living in the past.

Stewart, heading into his third season as a member of the Reds broadcasting team, mentioned those two people Tuesday afternoon in his speech to the Tri-State Advertising and Marketing Professionals Luncheon at Port Cape Girardeau restaurant. Stewart, 42, worked at KFVS as a weekend sports anchor and reporter from 1991 to 1993.

Stewart said his nomadic drive to reach his lifelong goal of working in major league baseball as a broadcaster had taken a detour with his foray into television. He was talking -- probably in his booming radio voice -- about his career with former KFVS colleague Steve Sotak in a diner one night when the stranger confronted them.

Stewart then enlisted Floyd's help in putting together an audition tape, which Stewart took to the baseball general managers meetings in Louisville, Ky. He ended up returning to baseball broadcasting with the Class AAA Richmond Braves. After a brief stop in South Carolina, he moved to a radio station in Baltimore and was part of the Orioles broadcasts before joining the Reds in 2004.

"He gives me way too much credit," said Floyd, who works in creative services for KFVS. "We just stayed up one night editing tapes. You could tell from his tapes that he was going to make it. You could tell he was awesome then, too."

Stewart grew up in Kirkwood, Mo., and went to college at Southern Methodist University. He worked in Dallas broadcasting indoor soccer before doing radio for the Class AAA baseball team in Calgary, Alberta.

He worked in Nebraska before coming to Cape Girardeau.

"It's a great place with great people," he said. "It was nice being close to home."

Stewart's mother, Marilyn, drove down from Kirkwood to watch her son's speech. She said she listens to his broadcasts, which are on the 50,000-watt WLW-700, on the Internet.

"I think his sense of humor comes through," she said.

Stewart showed some of that Tuesday.

While talking about his inclination to talk a lot during games, Stewart said he commented to a friend during a Blues game that when a player took the ice, "We haven't heard a lot out of him today," which led someone behind him to say, "Yeah, but we've sure heard a lot of you."

And when asked about replacing legends -- Stewart did some Cardinals work after Jack Buck's death in 2002, worked with Chuck Thompson in the Orioles booth and succeeded Joe Nuxhall in Cincinnati -- he said, "I've been around those situations before. You just be yourself, kind of like I did when I was here and Randy Ray was off."

After the meeting, Stewart added, "The first couple of times I was in a major league broadcast booth, I was kind of nervous. But I'm pretty comfortable in those situations."

He said the many moves during his career have left him with many friends with whom he remains in contact.

"It's been a fun journey," Stewart said. "I liked everywhere I've been and I've made a lot of friends in a lot of cities."

Stewart would like to stay in Cincinnati for many years.

"Cincinnati is very similar to St. Louis where you have a radio tradition that's passed down from through the generations," Stewart said.

Part of that tradition includes broadcasting to fans who live and die with their teams' results.

"You don't want to be a blatant homer," he said, "but your listeners are more excited when good things happen to the Reds. And they're disappointed when the Reds don't do well. You try to mirror the fans' interests."