Steve Degler
Toni Reece: Hi there. I’m Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Steve Degler with me. Welcome.
Steve Degler: Thanks for having me, Toni.
Toni: Absolutely. So, Steve, take a minute and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Steve: Sure. I’m a lifelong resident of the county. Grew up in Hamburg, graduated from Hamburg High School a long time ago. I won't tell you when. I went to Kutztown University where I was able to get a degree in telecommunications, and I’ve been working in sports broadcasting ever since then. Right now, I’m currently employed by Service Electric Cable TV and Communications out in Allentown doing Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs games, Lehigh Valley Phantoms games, Lehigh University football and basketball, high school and college sports. I tell everybody I don’t work a day in my life. I get to go to a game, talk about it, and they give me a paycheck every couple of weeks, so that’s a good deal for me.
Toni: Can't beat that. So, you’ve got that radio voice on you, right?
Steve: Radio voice, and I’ve been told many times radio face as well.
Toni: Ah, okay. Let’s get into the Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Steve: When I was asked to do this Project and I saw the topics, I was really kind of stumped as to where I was going to go with this answer. For me, it’s kind of two-fold. I think I have a professional one and I have a personal one. Professionally, you just want to go out there and try to do the best job you can every single day, be prepared. When you put yourself out on TV, you have to have a certain amount of ego and you don’t want to look like a fool in front of everybody, so I try to do as much as I can to make the broadcast as good as it can be, and especially when you’re doing high school games, because these games are so important for those kids; especially if it’s a championship game and parents and grandparents are watching. You want to have as much information as possible to make them look as good as you possibly can.
Then from the personal side, to me I have a wife and two daughters who are grown right now; kind of a somewhat empty nest at home, and I just want to present a good image for all of them as well as to how they should live their lives. We don’t always do the right things, and I’m certainly not perfect, but I want to make sure that they have a plan in place as well and they see how hard that my wife, who is a teacher, and I work and try to get things done the right way. Hopefully, they’ll be able to learn from that and be able to do the same things in their lives.
Toni: So, are you inspired to create these experiences professionally and personally, and that’s what inspires you when you see that people are learning from those experiences?
Steve: A little bit. I’ve been asked a lot of times about the amount of games that I do — and it’s over 200 a year, and most of them are professional sports, whether it’s the minor league baseball or the minor league hockey, that takes up more than half of them, of the games that I do; the rest are high school and college. People say, “Well, the college/high school games, aren’t they boring to you?” They’re not. I mean, the high school kids are out there putting in as much time and effort in their practices as the professional players are, and a lot of these high school kids will never play again. The fact that they’re out there giving it their all, whether they’re 0-21 or 21-0, I want to do a good job for them if their game is on TV. I draw a certain inspiration from that, that I don’t want to shortchange them just because it’s a “high school game” as opposed to a AAA baseball game.
Toni: I like that answer. You really are inspired by — you have to be inspired by the game —
Steve: Yes. Absolutely.
Toni: - in order to stay inspired to do your job.
Steve: No question. That’s a fair assessment.
Toni: You have to be inspired with the home life in order to keep creating the best example you can for your family.
Steve: Yes, and it’s been difficult for me and my family. When I was doing the radio for the Reading Phillies, which I did for 17 years, I was gone for half the summer. My wife was the rock and the anchor at home and making sure the girls got to where they needed to, whether it was soccer or softball or dance. I was in contact with them by phone, even before Facetime, doing this. I have to have a certain amount of inspiration from them as well, that they were able to do all of that.
I missed a lot of things, which I would probably change a few things right now if I had to do it all over again, but when I’d get back home and see what my family had accomplished when I was gone — especially when the girls were little and in school and it’s a different kid when you come back home from a road trip — I drew a lot of inspiration from that to try to keep going and try to show them the way things should work. It’s allowed us to travel a little bit together as a family, so they get to see a little bit of the world from time to time if they get to go on a road trip with Dad. All of that kind of adds up to me is that I know I’ve got a pretty cool job, and I hope my family has appreciated it over the years.
Toni: So, how do you take all of that inspiration, whether it’s melding the professional and personal together or separately, and put that into practice here in Berks County?
Steve: Not as much as I used to, unfortunately. Being based in the Lehigh Valley, I get here from time to time and we get to do some Reading Fighting Phils games on TV over the course of the summer; 20 to 25 of them. Every once in a while I get to do a high school game, a playoff game; maybe it’s played in Berks County, and I still do some events at Kutztown University, whether it’s football or basketball, because I had such a great time there; met my wife there. It really set the foundation for where I am today. I like to be able to give back to them because they gave me a different type of inspiration when I was there as a student athlete.
I just think the whole Berks County aspect having grown up here, watching my parents raise my sister and me and how hard my dad worked every single day, and sometimes six-seven days a week, and that’s what this county is. I think if you’re born here and you’ve lived here, you get how blue collar and hardworking it is, and it’s kind of ingrained in me. It’s nothing I necessarily did myself. I was just raised that way, and I think that the whole Berks County aspect of how hardworking this area is is always going to stay with me.
Toni: Does that inspire you to work harder?
Steve: It does. It really does. I mean, I’m one of those, I like to do a lot of research. I like to read a lot. I like to talk to coaches and players and gather as much information as I can, and I never seem satisfied. I can always find another nugget of information if I just look 20 more minutes. I just search something else on the Internet; maybe I’ll find something. So yes, you always want to try and end up doing a little bit more and make it as good as you possibly can. You’re never going to have the perfect broadcast. Anybody who tells you that it’s not going to happen when you’re talking for two three hours, mistakes will made, but you want to try and limit them, and by doing that preparation and that research and being inspired to do that helps you minimize the mistakes you might make.
Toni: Who in Berks County inspires you?
Steve: That’s a really good question. I mean, there are so many people that I’ve known over the years that have had such an influence on me, and not all of them are in Berks County, but I mean, it starts with my family. My dad worked a lot. My mom worked a little bit, but when my sister was born, she stayed at home a little bit and had a very important job taking care of us and making sure everything at home was good to go — the food, the laundry. I hate to say the stereotypical housewife, which we don’t see as much anymore these days, and that’s fine, but she has had a big inspiration to me because — we talked about it the other day, as a matter of fact — when I would come home from school in October, she would have the major league baseball playoffs on TV because they were afternoon games. We would sit there and watch baseball, and I caught the bug. Baseball’s been my number one sport forever, and she’s a big reason why, because she would watch the games with me.
Then you go to my father’s side. I watched him work overtime and work extra jobs on Saturdays and volunteer in the community, whether it was with the fire company in Hamburg or the Recreation Board in Hamburg, and I saw how much time he gave not only to us, but to other people as well, and it’s very inspiring to see that. So certainly those two people have had a major influence and inspiration on me.
Toni: Oh, fantastic. So Steve, what would you like your legacy to be?
Steve: I’m not sure I can have a legacy. Am I good enough to have a legacy?
Toni: Everybody has one.
Steve: Everybody has one, I know.
Toni: That’s right.
Steve: I just want to be looked at, again, if you look at it professionally, as a guy who had a lot of fun. I’m going to games. It’s serious, but it’s not life and death serious, even though in the moment for the athletes it may seem that way. Have fun, entertain people, have a good time doing it, and again, try not to look too foolish. But, I want to be known as somebody who was prepared and was always ready to go no matter the sport, no matter the level, no matter the game. Personally, it goes back to my wife, Karen, who teaches kindergarten at Schuylkill Valley. I’ve got the utmost respect for her chasing 21 or 22 five-year-olds around every single day — and for my daughters, Sarah and Hannah. Sarah’s out of college. Hannah is at Penn State right now as a junior. I just want them to see me as a good example, and that I tried to do the best I could; always striving for that, but knowing you can't always get there on a certain day or a certain time. Just that they appreciate what we were able to do for them and hopefully they can take from that and make their lives even better.
Toni: Isn't it amazing with this Project, every single interview and there’s been thousands with this Project — people think that they want people to remember after they’re gone what their legacy is, but yet you’re living it every single day now. You are living your legacy. The way you’ve spoken in this interview alone, you are living that legacy that you want so badly afterwards.
Steve: I appreciate that, and you don’t necessarily think about that.
Toni: That’s right.
Steve: You always think of legacy as after somebody is gone, and certainly I want to be remembered in a good light.
Toni: Absolutely.
Steve: I don’t want somebody to think, “Oh, that Degler guy, he was a real jerk and nobody misses him,” but in the moment, too, you have to be able to build that legacy after you’re gone — you have to live it while you’re here.
Toni: Absolutely, and it seems to me that’s what you’re doing.
Steve: I’m trying best I can.
Toni: Absolutely. Thank you so much for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Steve: Thanks for having me. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate it.
