Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

The Voice heard 'round the Philadelphia basketball scene -- Mike Jensen

Jake Schwartz, a local play-by-play sensation, has persevered to become a fixture at a court near you.

The only sound by Narberth's Municipal Building is a basketball hitting a sidewalk, a teenager coming or going from the playground courts that have hosted the Narberth Basketball League for more than seven decades. Get to the courts, there is another sound. In a corner, a man sits on a folding chair, talking . . . to himself?

Get in closer. A little microphone is attached to a mini-laptop. Listen to the play-by-play of the Narberth game in progress, the smooth cadence, the voice as rich as any you hear on the radio, this game coming to life.

"The Voice is in the house," The Voice announces.

Ahead of their own game, players stroll by.

"What up, Voice?"

"Voice."

In returning greetings, The Voice knows (or will attempt to learn) not just name and class, but school, grade school, teammates, siblings, their own favorite teams or players. Do the players know his name is Jacob Schwartz, age 32? They don't need to.

Typical Voice greeting for a star big man: "Good to see you. I can still dunk on you." Mock bluster is The Voice's schtick. ("I guess I'm baby Don Rickles.") Not just here. If there is basketball, The Voice tends to find it, year-round, or it will find The Voice. His big break was working public-address for Scholastic Play-by-Play Classics games. West Catholic; Math, Civics, and Sciences; Shipley; Harriton; the Danny Rumph Classic. They've all hired The Voice for public address work.

The teenagers probably don't know how The Voice got to their gym, how until he got his license a few years back he would often walk the mile from his house to the Fort Washington station, or ride a bicycle, all kinds of crazy weather, then take a train into the city, grab another out close to Archbishop Carroll or some other suburban stop, or into Jersey. There was no Uber then. Two hours for a trip that could have been a 20-minute drive?

"Three years ago, I decided it was time to go get a license - I'm going to be normal," The Voice explained, how now he is an Uber driver himself, before and after games, side gig supporting the hoops habit.

The Voice's other stock in trade: fearlessness. Is that Brett Brown watching his son at Narberth? The Voice excuses himself, walks over to chat up the Sixers coach for a minute. A star player goes down hard at the Donofrio Classic? The Voice is out of his corner seat asking future Villanova guard Collin Gillespie about his ribs.

You can find Voice of Reason interviews on YouTube, including with all the Big Five coaches. For last year's Julius Erving celebrity golf tournament, The Voice got to the red carpet, chatting up Shaquille O'Neal. (Shaq to The Voice: "Dr. J gave a lot of great players their swag.") Chris Tucker ("I'm a scratch golfer. I scratch a lot.") and Dr. J himself. He played it straight, no bluster. Although he did tell Villanova coach Jay Wright they have a lot in common, that they both do a lot for Philadelphia.

His belief in his voice isn't bluster. When the Sixers had an audition for PA announcer, he tried out. He's all over the spring and summer hoop circuits, a regular at the Chosen League at 10th and Olney, knows the Hoop Group events as soon as they are scheduled. He saw Markelle Fultz long before you ever heard of him. Locally, he's one of those litmus tests. If you're around, you know him, whether you're a player, parent, coach, or ref.

If a college broadcast team complains that The Voice's voice on press row is bleeding into their own broadcast, what's he to do? He sits where he's told to sit. Not his fault his vocal instrument has power. Cynics sometimes call the broadcasts he tapes for his own use Radio Nowhere.

"I want to get better," said the Voice, who keeps his own statistics as he talks. "People look at me like I'm crazy. I would like to make it to the NBA."

At Narberth, The Voice intoned: "Frank Iguodala among the officials for tonight's festivities. Good to see you, Frank. You look as good as The Voice. Frank, of course, the younger brother of a man headed to the NBA Finals for the third consecutive year, his brother Andre Iguodala. . . . "

'Not the least bit afraid'

In addition to the perfect intonation, Schwartz connects the dots, finds the story behind the story. His own? He lost his mother to breast cancer when he was in high school at Upper Dublin, before going on to graduate from Temple. When he was 3, acute attention deficit disorder was diagnosed, and an auditory processing problem. He doesn't care to talk much about that as a hurdle since he's gotten over it.

"He's just driven," said his father, Bruce Schwartz, an attorney, marveling at his son, also seeing the hours he has put in on research. "He's not the least bit afraid."

The Voice grew up in a typical Philadelphia sports-crazy house. Dad had partial Sixers season tickets. The Detroit Pistons Bad Boys were the first team The Voice can remember falling for. He knows his history not just of players but of legends such as Howard Cosell. Did he broadcast games in front of the television?

"I impersonated them," The Voice said. "I was the kind of guy who would go around and impersonate Merrill Reese, Marv Albert. I used to pretend I was Mr. Baseball, Bob Uecker."

In 2002, Jeremy Treatman held his first Play by Play Sports Broadcasting Camp. Schwartz signed up. He can remember doing his Dick Vitale impersonation for others campers on a bus. Treatman subsequently gave Schwartz some of his first PA work.

In the beginning, before he was The Voice, he had the voice, but needed work on his focus. Like the time the lights went out and Treatman wrote him a statement to read to the crowd about relaxing and staying put and the lights would be on as soon as possible.

"As I'm walking away, I hear, 'The lights will be on in minutes and we will play ball!' " Treatman said, not happy to hear The Voice hype up the crowd, unsure if the lights were going to get back on.

The Voice quickly learned to stick closer to the scripts. Treatman points out he really rises to the occasion at big events such as the Danny Rumph Classic, when NBA stars including the Morris twins and James Harden showed up and played last summer.

"He's done a phenomenal job," said Mike Morak, director of the Rumph Classic. "As soon as he gets on the microphone, he's got a good understanding of who's playing. He knows where they went to college, went to high school. He always get a little extra energy going. He loves the game."

He used to do statistics at games for Fox Sports. He remembers Beasley Reece once telling him, "You know you have an announcer's voice?"

If nobody but him is going to hear his broadcast from Narberth, he doesn't go through the motions on this breezy night, the lights now on.

"The final score here is 44-40, and Anthony Covello from Carroll is our Voice of Reason player of the game with 16 points," The Voice said before signing off.

If the game has made room for The Voice, Schwartz can't say exactly where The Voice came from.

"I don't think anyone knows what the definition of a announcer's voice really is," he said.

You just know this one when you show up, as familiar as the sound of a bouncing ball.

"That's what I've been doing for 12 years," the Voice said. "I've been showing up."

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus