Call Him "Crazy"

The voice sounds gravelly and deep, as though it's coming from an older guy — a 45-year-old man who stayed up too late watching ESPN highlights, knocking back beers and yelling at the screen. That is, an average sports-talk-radio caller.

"It's not the pitcher's and catcher's fault that the players don't know how to run," says the voice on the radio. "If you're hitting a base hit and you can't make it to first base, that's an upset, especially if you're bunting the ball. You can't even make it to first base without being called out?"

Six in the morning is not too early to bitch about the Royals.

"You gotta beat it," the caller continues. "You gotta beat the bag every day. Gotta focus. They're thinking it's about the money and we're gonna be all right, but the Royals gotta work on their speed."

The voice belongs not to some grizzled bar-stool jockey but to 25-year-old Ray Ulberg. He's known as "Crazy Ray" on The D.A. Show, which fills the 5:30 to 9 a.m. slot on KCSP 610 (610 Sports). And though his voice sounds old, what he says is childlike.

"I just like running the bases," he says. "I like beating the bag at first, like [legendary base stealer and former Royal] Tom Goodwin."

Ray keeps the show's host, Damon Amendolara, on his toes. "His calls are like skiing down a mountain with no poles in the middle of trees," says Amendolara, known to listeners as D.A. "Breakneck turns, you might crash, you're gonna have to make a quick left, dodge this tree, dodge this rock, but you don't know where you're going. In the middle of an idea, he's going to go every which way."

Ray is unpredictable, but his calls never make the station scramble to bleep him during the seven-second delay between what's live and what's broadcast.

"Does not swear. Never offensive. Never offensive," D.A. says of Ray.

Never offensive — except to the listeners who don't know that Crazy Ray is real.

"I thought he was goofing on slow people. It pissed me off at first," says Jim Sawyer, the one-eyed bartender at Dos Hombres.

The Mexican restaurant in the River Market serves as a meeting place for frequent callers to The D.A. Show. On a recent all-you-can-eat taco night, regular callers are gathered around the bar, where a large, mounted buffalo head keeps watch over rows of amber bottles of tequila.

"I have a cousin who's slow," Sawyer continues. "But then, when he [Crazy Ray] came in here, and I went and said hi to him, I realized it's not an act."

Several of D.A.'s callers adopt alter egos. One guy speaks in a Christopher Walken impression. Another, Jimmy the Freak, does what D.A. characterizes, for lack of a better description, as "the angry black man." Wolverine Willy sings classic rock songs rewritten with sports-related twists ("Husker Fan" to the tune of "Piano Man").

"Everyone thought Crazy Ray was a character," a D.A. Show regular nicknamed Lobos chimes in. "But he's just a real sports fan."

Lobos is an officer with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department. Also at Dos Hombres this night are Commander, an appliance repairman, and a guy who calls himself Main Street Moron. Other regulars are Show-Me Mo, BBJ (Big Black Jeff), Vigilante and a woman in law school who calls herself Lawyer Lovelace. D.A. inducts some frequent callers into his Caller Hall of Fame each November.

The station's employees consider themselves underdogs. D.A.'s drive-time competition is The Border Patrol, hosted by Steven St. John and Nate Bukaty, on WHB 810. The D.A. Show whipped The Border Patrol in ratings once, during the fall of 2005, but has trailed ever since.

Which makes D.A.'s callers small-time celebrities on the second-place radio station, where they talk about some of the most disappointing teams in pro sports.

The conversation pauses as all eyes drift to an ESPN scoreboard on the TV above the bar. Royals 0, Cleveland Indians 1.

Commander says he first met Crazy Ray two years ago at Municipal Auditorium, where the University of Missouri-Kansas City men's basketball team was playing a game and D.A. was broadcasting. Ray came running up to Commander with his driver's license held out in front of him — the "Non-Driver" designation clearly visible — and proclaimed, "I'm Crazy Ray!"

Sports radio has rules.

"There are sports-talk handbooks that say don't put kids on the air, don't put women on the air, and don't put anybody on the air that might sound like they're crazy or doesn't have a good point or isn't coherent," D.A. says. "And 610 has always been about, if you have time to call us, we're going to put you on the air."

Ray started calling D.A.'s show in December 2005, in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl XL. In that game, the Pittsburgh Steelers faced the Seattle Seahawks.

"He called me up because he's of Samoan background and he's very proud of that, and there were two Samoan players in that game, Troy Polamalu for the Steelers and Lofa Tatupu for the Seahawks," D.A. recalls. "And he just burst upon the scene like a comet. I mean, at one point, we had no Crazy Ray, and a week later, everyone knew who he was."