SIUE

A 1975 graduate of SIUE in mass communications, DewayneStaats got his start as a student sports reporter for WSIEradio.  He began his broadcasting career as the radio voice ofthe Oklahoma City 89ers.  In 1975-76 he was sports director atKPLR-TV in St. Louis where he received an Emmy nomination.  Heis currently the play-by-play voice of the Tampa Bay Rays andserved as an announcer for the Houston Astros (1977-84), theChicago Cubs (1985-89), the New York Yankees (1990-94), and TheBaseball Network (1994-95).  He also handled MLB baseballassignments for FOX Sports National.  He called the firstnight game at Wrigley Field for the Chicago Cubs and has beennominated for the Ford C. Frick Award, the broadcaster’saward to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and was recently listed amongbaseball’s top 101 all-time announcers by author Curt Smith. He earned SIUE’s Distinguished Alumnus of the Yearhonors in 1987 and was inducted into the SIUE Alumni Hall of Famein 2006. The Dewayne Staats Award for Broadcast Journalism wasestablished by SIUE’s Mass Communication Department in 2008to honor sports journalism students at SIUE.