Courtesy Kansas City Star

(January 20, 2010) Your TV might have been showing a fast-food ad or something, but one of the most telling moments of Paul Splittorff’s first game broadcast in nearly 10 months came during a break of Kansas-Texas Tech hoops last weekend.

Splittorff looked around and smiled. His partners during the game were Dave Armstrong and Jon Sundvold, friendships that go back a combined 50 years or so. If there was an easy way to slide back into broadcasting, this was it.

“I’m sitting there with two buddies watching a basketball game,” Splittorff says. “During one break, we said to each other, ‘The only thing we’re missing is a couple of beers.’ It was awesome, an absolute blast.”

Splittorff, you probably know, had his basketball and baseball schedules cut short last year because of an infection that jumbled his announcer’s voice. He felt fine physically but, darndest thing, the infection made his words hard to understand.

He did the Royals’ season opener in Chicago and then had to give it up. He originally hoped to return in June, but he didn’t do any more games that summer, just some pre- and postgame work toward the end of the season.

Splittorff, a regular golfer, has been fully active, but his doctor says it’ll just take time for his voice to fully recover.

“I’m not 100 percent yet,” he says. “But I’m getting close to it.”

There are some technical and preparation things Splittorff says he’s a bit rusty on, but nothing he thinks he can’t regain quickly.

He’s scheduled to do Kansas State’s home game with Oklahoma State this weekend, get a few weeks off, come back with another game or two with a three-man crew and then transition into the more traditional two-man team toward the end of the season.

The baseball schedule hasn’t been worked out, but he says he feels healthy enough that he’s hoping to get the 100 games he was scheduled to do last year.

A strange thing about Splittorff’s infection: His voice always sounds much better in person than through any electronic device. Talk to him face-to-face now, for instance, and it’s hard to detect any problems. Hear him on the broadcast or over the phone, however, and there’s still a slight change.

He doesn’t much like talking about all this. He doesn’t like to be the story. He stresses a few times that the infection carries no life-altering effects other than the change in his voice.

Splittorff says he and his doctor are both confident that’ll go away soon, too, and he can get back to his old life and schedule.

“I’m pretty much fully recovered now,” he says. “I feel great. The only problem I’ve had along here is right there with the speech. I’ve been fine, I’ve been active, going at it pretty hard.

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