A LIFE BEHIND THE MIKE.

Byline: Steve Mims The Register-Guard

At age 4, Russ Eisenstein got his first tape recorder and soon after that he made his first broadcast.

"When I was a little kid, I'd prepare scores and read them every Saturday night before dinner," Eisenstein recalled. "I'd read the scores from the MAC and then I'd say 'Now with more, here's my dad' and he would show me a couple things."

Mark Eisenstein had a background in broadcasting and a love for sports that he handed down to his only son.

"When he was 5 or 6, back in the early ages of scores scrolling on the TV, Russ was always trying to read scores off the bottom of the TV," Mark Eisenstein said. "One day he got upset because it was going too fast for his little eyes to read. He would always practice announcing games. Sometimes it bothered me because I did not want to hear him, I wanted to hear the real announcers."

Russ Eisenstein is now one of those real announcers. He works for the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets during the NBA season and is spending his first summer as the radio voice of the Eugene Emeralds, who return home tonight to play Vancouver at 7:05.

Every sports broadcaster will say the business is unpredictable, and Eisenstein, 26, has learned that early on in his career as he has become a voice of two different organizations in the past year.

Eisenstein was working at a radio station in Bloomington, Ill. - where he hosted a four-hour sports talk show in addition to broadcasting high school sports and working with the Illinois State University football and basketball broadcasts - when Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area last September.

The New Orleans Hornets were relocated to Oklahoma City for the season and one of the team's studio announcers did not want to make the move.

Eisenstein had met Hornets play-by-play announcer Sean Kelley a few years earlier, and both are Southern Illinois University graduates. Kelley called with a job offer, and Eisenstein moved to Oklahoma City three days later.

Eisenstein hosted pregame, halftime and postgame shows along with a monthly television show on the Hornets, who went 38-44 during the season.

"He exceeded my expectations, no question about that," Kelley said. "It was great having him be as talented and as trained as he was, because I did not have to be hands-on with him each day. I could say something needed to get done and he got it done."

Following the season, Eisenstein considered taking a summer break but instead applied for the Emeralds job in April. It has become a trend in the business for some NBA broadcasters to work short-season baseball because there is no overlap between the two seasons.

The Ems received 75 applications, and assistant general manager Bryan Beban cut the list to three finalists before Eisenstein was selected.

"What I liked about Russ was his enthusiasm, and what put him over the top was his ability with production," Beban said. "He loved baseball and really showed that he wanted the job, which was important."

Eisenstein made the 2,200-mile trek from Oklahoma City and arrived in Eugene two weeks before making his first broadcast on June 19 in Boise.

"It's just baseball now, this is the normal thing," Eisenstein said. "Being in the office before the season, I was itching to get to the first game and now that we are here, we're just rolling. It is the same thing I've done at Southern Illinois and Illinois State. This is normal to me."

Eisenstein broke into sports broadcasting while a student at SIU and he did play-by-play for the Salukis women's basketball team during his sophomore year of college. He later worked with the SIU baseball team before being hired to produce pregame, halftime and postgame features for the football and men's basketball broadcasts.

"He was very aggressive in seeking the job at this place," said Mike Reis, who has been the voice of Southern Illinois football and men's basketball for 27 seasons.

"Southern has a good history in radio and television; we have some 50-60 people who have gone into the broadcasting business in some form of news, sports or management.

`Russ is one of the most talented we've had and certainly you might say he has the brightest future. This combination of the Oklahoma City Hornets and Emeralds is a good combination for him, and I expect his career to take off on these two experiences."

Eisenstein will be back with the Hornets in October and also plans to return to Eugene next summer.

"I love baseball and I love being out at the yard," he said. "I never had the opportunity to do minor-league ball because of the college baseball season and football in the fall, but this short-season is such a perfect fit."

Eisenstein grew up traveling with his parents to minor-league games in Clinton and Cedar Rapids, Iowa; the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois; Beloit, Wis.; and South Bend, Ind.

"We would do a minor-league tour to support the Midwest League Class A teams, and I think that is where part of his love for minor-league baseball came from and that is also a part of his love now for Eugene and Civic Stadium because Clinton has an old ballpark that was built in 1937," said Mark Eisenstein.

The family also traveled to Northern Illinois football games and during the winter would travel to the best nonconference basketball games in the Mid-American Conference.

"I was meant to do something in sports," Russ Eisenstein said. "When you go to hundreds and hundreds of games all over the place and then my house was like a Sports Information Department. We had more stats than anyone ever had. My dad subscribed to NCAA News, which about 1 percent of their subscription base is people outside an athletic department, and we got it."

Eisenstein made good use of all the information lying around his house.

"He knows more minutiae about mid-major athletic programs at the college level than people like myself who have been in it this long," Reis said. "He studied that when he was 14 or 15 years old. He is not afraid to prepare for a broadcast, because this is his life's work and passion and what he prepared for as a kid."

Eisenstein is off to a quick start in his dream profession after a whirlwind year living in three different states.

"I have no idea what's going to happen," Eisenstein said. "I never thought I'd be in the NBA, I never thought I would be in Eugene, so I have no clue. Ideally, I'd like to be in the situation Mike Reis is in and be the guy at a university. But I've learned that I can't turn anything down because whatever dreams I have, you have to take it when it comes to you."