![]() ![]() "By 2009, he needs a bone marrow transplant. So, he prevailed," Pluto said.Ī year after beginning his job as the Browns' play-by-play announcer, Donovan was diagnosed with CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia). He even went out and made a tape of a Notre Dame football game, something real fresh on radio, because he didn't want to be just considered off his TV tapes. Who's going to be the play by play guy? And Jim desperately wanted that job. "So when the team came back in '99, that opened the door wide open. The next year, owner Art Modell announced the team would be moving to Baltimore. Meanwhile, the Browns' radio play-by-play announcer, Nev Chandler, passed away from cancer in 1994. Pluto said Donovan was also asked by NBC to call some NFL games on the weekends. And that got him the job in Cleveland back in 1985 doing the the weekend sportscast." Cloud, Minnesota, doing about 100 events a year, different hockey and basketball and baseball, and living in this guy's basement because he was making no money," Pluto said.ĭonovan then went on to a station in Burlington, Vermont. Pluto said after college, Donovan paid his dues at small TV and radio stations. "And so he played those tapes and they go, 'Those are pretty good.' So they gave him a shot at the Boston University hockey team doing those games on the student station," Pluto said. Then, Donovan used those tapes to try to get jobs when he went to Boston University. And so here's a 12-year-old Jim Donovan sitting next to his father at the old Boston Garden doing, 'Goal go by Phil Esposito!' And it began that way," Pluto said. "His father had tickets to the Bruins, and he asked if he could go. He realized he needed to record crowd noise to make it authentic. Pluto said that journey began when Donovan was a young hockey fan in Boston, muting the TV and calling Bruins games into a tape cassette recorder. He'll begin his 24th season as the voice of the Cleveland Browns, tying Gib Shanley as the franchise's longest tenured radio play-by-play announcer.Ĭommentator Terry Pluto recently wrote a series of articles about Donovan's hard-fought journey - both professionally and personally. Entry in Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.Longtime Cleveland sports broadcaster Jimmy Donovan marks a milestone this fall. ![]()
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