Courtesy Arizona Central

(March 30, 2009) In June of 2006, on the job only two days and attending his first Diamondbacks game, Mike Roth, a self-described "hands-off" executive producer for Fox Sports Arizona, faced his first test.

About 30 minutes after he arrived at the stadium, reporter Todd Walsh told him that a story involving pitcher Jason Grimsley and performance enhancing drugs was about to break and wanted to know how it should be handled.

"It was a real interesting opportunity for me to say, 'OK, here's how we're going to handle this," Roth said.

"Tommy Brennaman and Mark Grace were in the booth, and I went in there and said, 'OK, here's what we're gonna do, and how we're gonna handle it.' "

Roth rounded up Mike Swanson, then the team's media director, and team President Derek Hall was brought to the booth.

The story illustrates Roth's philosophy.

"Anytime something big happens, and not all big like steroid cases, there's a lot of things going on, I'm there to handle it," he said. "But the minute-to-minute stuff, my job is to hire people I know can handle that."

Roth oversees all the FSA productions, and that involves several sports and overlapping schedules.

With hockey and basketball winding down and baseball ramping up, a lot of the emphasis now is on the Diamondbacks, whose first game in the preseason will be shown on FSA today.

"We started really planning our Diamondbacks stuff in December," he said. "We're talking about 150 games, all pre- and postgame. This is a transition time. We like Todd doing hockey, and he'll be ready for Opening Day of baseball."

Roth also produced auto racing for ESPN all over the world, then he was involved in several freelance roles. He produced Penguins broadcasts on Fox Sports Pittsburgh before moving to Arizona.

We caught up with Roth and touched on various topics.

Question: With all the games FSA does, how many do you attend?

Answer: "I try to hit minimum of one game a homestand for the Diamondbacks and Coyotes, and 30 to 35 Coyotes games home and road. I'm at the bigger Suns games. When I'm not there, I'm watching at home or here (office)."

Q: When you're at games, who's the boss?

A: "Running the show in the truck is the producer, even when I'm there. I try to be relatively hands-off. I trust my guys. Obviously, if something comes up, I'm there."

Q: What did you learn rising through the ranks?

A: "There was nothing I liked less as a producer than having a guy over my shoulder telling me what to do. I try to be there when they need me, try to be there to answer questions, but I'm not a real hands-on guy. I take a lot of notes, and I'll talk to a producer and director after a game or talk the next day, but that's their office.

"There's nothing worse than being in your office, and people walk in the middle of a project and start telling you, do this, do that. If it's something big, though, I'll wait until in between innings in baseball or a commercial in hockey, and whisper something in their ear."

Q: How did you get involved in the production end?

A: "I was too tall to be a jockey, too short to be a goalie . . . If had my druthers, I would have been an NHL goalie. I learned early on they wanted you to be bigger, quicker, smarter than I am, so at about 17, I went to Syracuse and got the opportunity to work as runner, gopher for ABC and CBS."

Q: So that started your career path?

A: "I went on the road with ABC, and at 17, 18, it was addictive. It was an amazing opportunity. While I was in school, I did a lot of network stuff. When I went to Syracuse, I wasn't going to be a goalie, and I thought I'd be Marv Albert and be a play-by-play guy. I realized to be a smart play-by-play guy should realize what goes on behind the scenes. So I took production classes and fell in love with the idea."

Q: You were still peripherally associated with ESPN when Fox Sports emerged. What was the reaction?

A: "I don't think they really concerned themselves at first. It was like, alright, here comes a challenge, how do we brace for it, what do we do? We probably forced SportsCenter to become a much-more interesting show, forced to think outside the box. The difference what we do and networks don't is we have relationships that they don't have. A

"As a network guy, you roll into Chicago, if we said something that made the Blackhawks' front office unhappy, so what? Here, those relationships are the most-important thing. It doesn't mean that we would ever misstate the truth, that's not the point. The point is we have relationships they don't."