Central Hockey League playoffs: Original voice of the Jackalopes is moving on

Bob Hards is a storyteller.

He works from fact, his pages comprised of the emerald-green diamonds of Texas League baseball and the white, chilled surfaces of the Central Hockey League.

The images of crisp line drives and dazzling defensive plays, or an odd-man rush up the ice, leap from the airwaves as Hards works seamlessly from pitch to pitch, shift to shift, game to game, sport to sport.

Since 1992, Hards has been the radio voice of the Midland Angels and RockHounds. In 1997, with the birth of the Odessa Jackalopes, Hards became a two-sport man, quickly segueing from baseball to hockey for the past 11 seasons.

That will end when the Jackalopes' season ends - which could be as early as tonight as they face the Laredo Bucks in Game 4 of the Southern Conference semifinals. Laredo leads the best-of-7 series, 3-0.

During the team's final road trip of the season, the veteran broadcaster - who punctuates each Jackalopes tally with "Light the lamp!" - announced he would be backing away from the microphone as a hockey broadcaster.

"We're sorry to see him go," Jackalopes co-owner Rick Gasser said. "He's been the guy from the very beginning and brings a lot of cohesiveness and familiarity for the fans.

"He's traveled a lot of miles with this team and done a great job for us. He's one of the very best."

Hards will continue to bring RockHounds games to the Permian Basin, but the wear and tear of 11 consecutive seasons of more than 200 games on the air has taken its toll.

"It's just time," said Hards, who grew up in Seattle listening to Leo Lassen broadcast Seattle Rainers baseball games on the radio and Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese doing the "Game of the Week" on television, along with sports broadcaster Keith Jackson on the local news.

"This will be 23 consecutive seasons, between hockey and baseball, and I told myself that when I didn't have the energy to do both, that it wouldn't be fair to the listeners because you have to give 100 percent every night.

"I've been very blessed to be able to do the Jacks for the past 11 years and I've made friendships that will continue long after I'm done calling the games."

Calling games has been a passion for Hards since those early-childhood broadcasts, but he took a circuitous route to the microphone.

A drummer and musician growing up, Hards left home in 1970 for seven years to tour with a band - Brandy - before realizing that life on the road wasn't really all that it was cracked up to be.

"It was a wonderful growing up experience," Hards said. "But when the band was dissolving, I knew that the only other thing that I wanted to do was radio."

Hards returned to the Pacific Northwest and, with some financial backing from his mother, enrolled in the Ron Bailie School of Broadcasting in the fall of 1977.

His first job in radio came in 1978 in Ellensburg, Wash., doing the morning show from 6 a.m. until noon and then calling high school and college games in the evening.

The tenure in Ellensburg lasted seven years before Hards moved to Olympia, Wash., but the situation there was tenuous as the station was sold and things weren't working out.

During the winter of 1985, Hards heard of an opening for a baseball team in Bend, Ore., with the then-California Angels short-season affiliate.

From Bend, Hards moved to Eugene, Ore., where he first met Bob Richmond, who was the president of the Northwest League. Richmond later partnered with Miles Prentice to purchase the Midland Angels.

When an opening for a broadcaster arose in 1992, Richmond offered it to Hards, who has been here ever since.

"It's amazing how things work out," Hards said. "When I was in Bend, I never would have thought that I would have ended up in Midland, but the relationships I formed in Oregon proved to be the difference in my career."

A career that now will have some free time for Hards and his wife Peggy.

Christmas and New Year's Eve won't be spent on the road with the Jackalopes for the first time in more than a decade and the couple should be able to plan the cruise the Jackalopes presented them with as a going-away present.

Don't be surprised, however, when surfing through radio stations on a Friday night this fall that Hards isn't calling a high school football game somewhere.

"I did high school football for about five years at the beginning of my career," he said, laughing. "Do you think I should get a resume together?"