Announcing Sunday's Bayou Bucket 5K

Race announcing has changed for me recently.

As I've written before, when I got to do a little bit of announcing in relief of those working the Cowtown Marathon a couple of years ago, I proved to myself that I could hold my own with some of the best out there.

And when you share a stage with a Dana Tyson and get complimented by the likes of a Kevin Kline, it is a nice, silent satisfier that validated the ability that God gave me even though I didn't make my living as a result of my voice.

My style might be different, but all of that proved that I was in the same conversation.

And that came as a result of my grandfather's background in radio - the Armed Forces Radio Network at end of World War II and helping to launch a few radio stations in central Pennsylvania in the 1950s -- and both he and my Dad teaching me what it meant to be professional in everything I did.

I'm not a fit, for example, for the Chevron Houston Marathon, given the way that the sport has changed over the last number of years.

They have guys - Whit Raymond and Mark Purnell - with incredible voices and energies.

So there are still events out there that allow for me to earn the respect of organizers and competitors alike.

If given the information I need with enough time, I prepare as well or better than anybody in the business.

I get to choose what I will and won't put up with - and what I consider fun or not.

Sunday, I get to announce - thanks to Graham Schooley and Brian Jones with RA Sports Management - the inaugural Bayou Bucket 5K, which starts outside of Rice Stadium and finishes on the field.

(Finishing on a college football field is fun.  I've done so at Notre Dame, Penn State and Illinois and wanted to get over to Nicholls State last Saturday but didn't because of the weather forecast.)

I learned during the week via Twitter that Sammy The Owl is going to be running the race.

Playfully, I replied that I needed @RiceAthletics to tell me what Sammy's PR was since I was announcing.

I got chided a little bit that I might not be worthy compared to the late great J Fred Duckett.

I responded that I got to meet J Fred when he would keep the score at Houston Awty International School basketball games, where he was a teacher.  (As well as a few other resume building facts.)

I think I hit it off J Fred initially when I told him that I thought it was a travesty that they didn't bring him back for the last Astros game in the Astrodome to deliver his signature "Jose Cruz" introduction.

When I first started to run in 2003, I had a tradition of finding J Fred before the start of the Houston Marathon as he was the race anouncer - and had been for more than 20 years.

Until he wasn't.

I don't know if it was the year that I ran with Waverly, 2006, when she did her first half, that I didn't notice him on the microphone.

I e-mailed him and he said that he had been fired.  A volunteer.  Fired.

J Fred passed away at the age of 74 before the 2008 Chevron Houston Marathon and I ran that race with the bib "RIP J FRED" and I carried a microphone the entire 26.2 miles.

A microphone that I placed in the casket of my grandfather four and a half years ago before I saw him for the very last time.

So while it won't be over the big speakers at Rice Stadium, it'll be in the same venue where J Fred right before kickoff belted out that "It's a beautiful day for outdoor football."

Sunday I'll do my best job of being me, but like at times that I think about the influence that my grandfather has had on my announcing I'll also think about the great J Fred too.