An STAA client, Howard, 51, has competed in adult baseball leagues every summer since 1996. He went to the plate a few years ago and, small world, the pitcher was ex-TU quarterback (and ex-OU pitcher) Tyler Gooch.

"He just blew me away with three fastballs," Howard said. "I couldn't touch 'em."

Howard, a quarter-century older than Gooch, was asked if he feels 12 again when playing ball. When Howard was a kid, he often played until it was too dark to see.

"Sometimes I feel like I am 78 when I am playing," he said. "I don't know that I would say I'm 12 again, but I'm thinking when I am playing there is nothing else I would rather do at this moment than play, play a game."

That's love of the game. And that's why Howard does what he does.

He didn't get into the play-by-play biz because he fell in love with broadcasting. "There is not going to be a story about me under the covers (as a kid) listening to Vin Scully or Phil Rizzuto," he said. "I didn't do that."

He chose voice work because it gave him an alibi to be around the games he cherished playing. He said he was a three-year high school starter for the Southern Cayuga Central (N.Y.) Chiefs baseball team.

Once a competitor, always a competitor? Color analyst Rick Couri has been a part of 265 TU football broadcasts before and after Howard's 1993 debut. Said Couri, "He is the most prepared person I have ever worked with in my life, one of the most detail-oriented people I have ever worked with in my life and cares more about the final product that comes out of the speakers more than anybody I have ever worked with in sports broadcasting."

Early years
Howard intentionally does not have a signature phrase. If he ever says "holy cow," it won't be a tribute to Harry Caray. It will be a Freudian - or Holstein - slip.

Howard was raised on a 250-acre dairy farm in the central New York community of Scipio Center. Everyone in his family helped in the hayfield and in a six-stall milking parlor.

Bruce was driving farm machinery at age 8 or 9 (dad attached wood blocks to pedals so the little guy could reach them) and, panic-stricken, once steered a baler into a telephone pole.

"I think I shut off the tractor and immediately started running," he said.

Cows had to be milked before and after school. Job hazards when you attach milkers to udders are getting kicked and getting splashed - not just by milk. "It was always a race to get back to the house, get cleaned up, not smell like a pasture and get to school," he said.

If you participated in sports, after-school practices got you out of chores. Howard would have played ball without the incentive clause.

He fell in love with dad's favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, and idolized 1967 AL Triple Crown champ Carl Yastrzemski. He became a Cleveland Browns fan because dad liked to watch Jim Brown and, if you turned the TV antenna just right, you could get Browns games on a Rochester, N.Y., station. A favorite college program was not-far-away Syracuse.

If Charlie Brown had a sports hall of fame, the Red Sox, Browns and Syracuse would be locks for induction. Howard referenced a snakebitten period when the Red Sox lost the 1986 World Series, the Browns dropped consecutive AFC title games to the Broncos and Syracuse was shot down by Indiana's Keith Smart in the 1987 NCAA hoops final.

When an infamous ground ball slid through Bill Buckner's legs in the '86 World Series, Howard overturned a table at a watch party. "Then you're embarrassed, so I left the house and didn't return until everybody left," he said.

For the sake of mental health, Howard deserved TU's historic victory over Notre Dame last weekend as much as players and coaches.

He's better at coping with heartbreak now because he's seen how the other half lives. The Red Sox have won a couple of rings since 2004. He was aboard at TU when football and basketball teams set single-season victory records. His first TU basketball season ended with the school's first Sweet Sixteen trip. Howard has never seen a better half of hoops than the one crafted by the Hurricane in a first-round upset of UCLA that season.

'Clearly' the best
Howard left the farm to enroll in a broadcasting program at Cayuga College in Auburn, N.Y., and made his play-by-play debut calling Cayuga basketball games.

He got disc jockey and sports work at radio stations in Watertown, N.Y. (fringe benefit: he drove to Lake Placid to watch the Miracle on Ice), Knoxville, Tenn., and Nashville, picking up enough minor league baseball experience to get the Tulsa Drillers' play-by-play job in 1989.

"The first pitch to the first player in the first game I ever broadcast for the Drillers was to Sammy Sosa," Howard said. "He was a skinny, little 20-year-old Dominican five-tool player who could do everything. Fast. He hadn't gotten thickened up yet."

Minor league baseball provided only seasonal income, so Howard took additional jobs. He did play-by-play for a CBA squad and Oral Roberts University. He hosted a sports radio talk show and wanted to hide when a profane caller sabotaged a guest appearance by NFL Hall of Famer Alan Page.

In 18 years as TU's director of broadcasting, Howard has gained a rep for spot-on description. "He is a consummate professional, and to me, clearly is the best play-by-play announcer in this part of the world," former stat man Stacy Richardson said. Howard also is known for eccentricities that make him an easy target for friends who like to push his buttons.

* Howard is admittedly frugal (and suggests it may be linked to his grandparents trying to make ends meet during the Depression). He always takes home comp coffee bags from hotel rooms and stashes them in a freezer because he doesn't want to get caught without brew. Frugal or smart?

* Howard has George Costanza moments. Couri recalled a commotion in the booth while Howard was setting up for a road game in '95. Howard was ranting that a hotel cleaning lady must have stolen his microphone from an open briefcase.

"You've seen his briefcase," Couri said. "There are cobs of corn in there and old bodies and DVDs and VHS tapes. There may be old computers in there. The thing is crammed full of stuff."

Couri said Howard said "oh" after finding the microphone. Said Couri, "It was behind like a '65 Chevy hubcap or something."

* Howard leaves nothing to chance. He is obsessed with arriving at game sites absurdly early so he can set up equipment - and ward off gremlins - with hours to spare.

"His work ethic is old school," Couri said. "It's not what is the littlest I can do and not have anyone notice. It's what can I overdeliver without worrying about whether somebody notices or not. That's the thing that sets him apart."

A travel delay (with lots of pacing by a red-faced Howard) once caused him to arrive "only" 30 minutes before the start of a hoops broadcast. "His head was about to explode," Couri said.

Factor that in when digesting this tale: Howard was in New York for a preseason NIT game and entrusted a friend (EOOC's Larry Egge) to take a "silver bullet" briefcase full of broadcasting equipment to the team hotel.

Egge forgot the briefcase in the trunk of a cab - or pulled a great prank by making everyone think that was the case (and he's still not confessing). Howard had filled out a detailed police report - and was frantic about how he was going to get the next game on the air - when a bellman emerged with the silver bullet.

The silver bullet is retired now. It's tacked to his office wall like a trophy, with years of service listed beneath. The silver bullet's owner isn't ready to retire from baseball, even though he keeps getting grayer and the boys of summer keep getting younger.

"I'm not a great hitter," he said. "But as long as I can go in the outfield and track down balls and not make too much of a fool of myself, I will keep playing."