Called games for Kalamazoo in the Frontier League for 2 years, & Bill Lee is as responsible as anyone for helping me become an MLB broadcaster. It’s one thing to think you might be good enough; it’s another to have someone who knows a thing or two to tell you you’re good enough. https://twitter.com/jjcoop36/status/1361443445047394307

Bill would tell me I was as good as anyone at AA (back then, it was rare for a broadcaster to go from Indy ball to the high minors), & I might be the first FL broadcaster to make it to MLB. I told him, if I did, he should name the league’s Broadcaster of the Year award after me

I was joking; I wanted to get to the Majors, but that seemed so far off back then. Sure enough, my next baseball gig was at AA. And, after I’d been with the Astros a couple of years, a young broadcaster reached out to me on Twitter to tell me he’d won the FL’s Robert Ford Award.