‘Sports Jeopardy’ came to Boston looking for its next star
COMMENTARY
Jason Berube may or may not make it onto “Sports Jeopardy” one day soon, but at least the 44-year-old native of Fall River had the pleasure of stumping the quiz show’s staff when he boasted that he was from the “home of the RemDawg.”
Nicknamed the “RemDawg” by former TV partner Sean McDonough, this Red Sox second baseman-turned analyst can most days be found in the broadcast booth at Fenway Park in Boston .
“I don’t know who that is,” show producer Maggie Speak said last Friday during local auditions for the show.
The correct response: Who is Jerry Remy?
Of course (Even though Remy actually hails from Somerset, across the Taunton River).
On this day though it was more important for Berube and 14 other “Sports Jeopardy” hopefuls to deliver the correct response to answers like, “‘Toe ‘Pick’ was a frequent taunt in this 1992 film” (What is “The Cutting Edge?”), “This N.L. team has not even appeared in the World Series since 1945” (Who are the Chicago Cubs?), and “Red Sox catcher known as ‘Pudge’” (Duh).
Now entering its third season on the Crackle streaming service, “Sports Jeopardy,” hosted by longtime sports yakker Dan Patrick, is like a dumbed-down version of the parent mainstay, still managing to stump audiences and contestants every weeknight. The show held auditions for local hopefuls in Boston over the weekend at the downtown W Hotel, where a few dozen prospects were tossed into what was a bro-tastic screening of which candidates had not only the proper smarts, but the right level of fraternity boisterousness to bring to the tube (The show will also make its network debut on NBC Sports Network during the Summer Olympics).
Whereas “Jeopardy”should be considered a buttoned-down atmosphere of professionalism in the presence of host Alex Trebeck, there’s no such decree on the sports side of things, where a certain high energy and “in-your-face” attitude is encouraged. Bold. Brash. Boo-yah.
“This is not your mom’s Jeopardy,” Speak said, playing the crowd like a cabaret comedienne, trading barbs and initiating dialogue in the hopes of creating a lively, sports bar environment in this tiny hotel conference room overlooking the Rock Bottom Restaurant on Stuart Street.
After all, Dan Patrick can’t connect with all the quiet, smart ones that make it to the set, you know.
“When you’re on the show don’t you want Dan to love you?” Speak asked
Daniel Sibor isn’t so sure. The Boston native had already bristled at the few times Speak has picked him out as the quiet target in trying to determine the room’s level of vitality. If this sort of feigned enthusiasm was the key to becoming (Sports) Jeopardy champion, it was going to be a challenging journey for the 33-year-old lawyer.
“Uncomfortable,” Sibor said when asked how he felt about the rah-rah necessities. “Forced. But that’s all right. I think everyone understands what they’re trying to do.”
If you guessed they were trying to find the next Vinnie V., then good for you.
Just in the unlikelihood that you didn’t know, Vinnie Varadarajan is the all-time, reigning “Sports Jeopardy” champion, winner of $75,000 over 15 shows. Yeah, it isn’t the $3.2 million Ken Jennings took home from the mothership, but how do you think Jennings would do going for $1,000 in the category of “Quarterback Passing Ratings?”
In fact, each show’s top winner takes home $5,000, with $2,000 and $1,000 going to the second-and-third-place finishers. “We hope that defrays the cost of travel,” Speak said.
Contestants are indeed responsible for making it to Los Angeles on their own dime, perhaps in as little as a two-week notice during the taping schedule. After these auditions, each hopeful will be placed in an 18-month pool, which means the next grand champion may have to face a travel burden some year or so down the line, or forfeit his or her chance at being the next Vinnie V.
According to Speak, Dan cherishes Vinnie V. for bringing a swagger of confidence and conversation to the game show set, a personality that apparently has conflicting polars in the “Sports Jeopardy” fan world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLu9rCPkqSU
Internet sensation.
Love or hate Vinnie V. though (I’m led to believe there are groups of both?), it’s the sort of presence “Sports Jeopardy” producers are trying to weed out in their first encounters with contestants in an attempt to separate those who might make good TV in addition to merely knowing that Kirk Gibson hit that home run off Dennis Eckersley in the 1988 World Series. In all, 10,000 hopefuls took an online test. Of those, only a fraction were invited to audition at local outposts throughout the country, in search for 150 new players for the upcoming season.
“I tried out for the online Jeopardy test three years in a row,” Leominster’s Brian Andrews said. “Never once got the call back, and this past year…I did so horribly, it felt like, ‘We’re doing a show called Sports Jeopardy, maybe you’d be good for that.’ And I did amazing. Now, here I am.”
Each contestant in Boston, where other hopefuls also reigned from Maine, upstate New York, and Connecticut, had to take a 30-question survey before the audition process got more into the spirit of the show, taking three of the qualifiers and pitting them up against each other, buzzers in hand and all.
Category, The World Series: “For arguing a call, this Braves manager was tossed out of two World Series games, one in 1992 and one in 1996.”
“Who is Bobby Cox?”
Category, Basketball Abbreviations: “BS.”
“What are blocked shots?”
Category, Sports Drinks: “This dairy drink, a favorite with kids, is great for post-workout recovery; its carbs-to-protein ratio is ideal.”
“What is chocolate milk?”
The contestants in the room had little trouble responding to most of the clues.
“All this stuff is taking up a bunch of space in my head that it probably shouldn’t,” Sibor said. “So, might as well just put it to use.”
After their round of responses, Speak bantered with each hopeful a little about themselves from the information made available on their applications. Most of the guests would take a trip with their winnings, either a quick getaway to Nantucket or a National Parks tour. A sports fan from Cleveland (on pins and needles last Friday with Game 7 between the Cavaliers and Warriors looming Sunday), said he was planning on buying tickets to the World Series when the Indians made it.
Like we said, it’s an 18-month window we’re talking about here.
Also part of the application process was penning a brief synopsis of a funny sports story “to share with Dan,” the equal of those banal moments on “Jeopardy” when the contestants uncomfortably try to relay to Trebeck about the time they wrote the wrong date on the check to the water company. Berube, a tutor and appointment setter for a food delivery service, told about the time he told Ferguson Jenkins at the 2000 All-Star Game Fan Fest that he would be in the Baseball Hall of Fame someday.
Jenkins was inducted in 1991.
Whoops.
“Look, they can ask me anything and I’ll probably have a good enough story, but I just like sports,” said Andrews, an inventory analyst who does bookkeeping for Pepsi. “Simple as that.”
Simple as that.
Now, we anxiously await to see if one local can become the next Vinnie V., which would truly be a television landmark for us to cherish.
Maybe he’ll even get a recently-added clue about the ol’ “RemDawg.”
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