HOUSTON, TX – Under any other circumstance it would have been just a simple turn of phrase. But in this instance, it made the hair on Matt Hammond’s forearms stand up.
On Memorial Day Saturday of 2014, he could almost feel the words leaking out of his on-air guest’s mouth.
“Let’s say hypothetically that…” Michael Diamondstein uttered on Hammond’s ESPN 97.3 Atlantic City radio show.
That’s lawyer speak for “I’m about to tell you what happened, but if I say ‘hypothetically’ it can’t be used against me in court.”
Diamondstein was the attorney for the then-criticized though not-yet-vilified NFL running back Ray Rice, who was embroiled in a domestic dispute that would hijack the media and social conscience of the nation for months.
“I said to myself, ‘holy s—’ something big is about to happen,” Hammond recalled.
Diamondstein went on to describe – for the first time anywhere – what happened inside that infamous elevator at the now defunct Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, before TMZ acquired and released the video.
What followed for Hammond, a 2011 TCNJ graduate, was surreal.
“It was one thing to know how big it was,” Hammond said. “But even when I was shopping it out to Pro Football Talk and the ESPN news desk, you have a feeling there is going to be interest but until it happens it’s not real.
“It was all hypothetical interest. When you see the headline on Pro Football Talk or CBS Sports or Yahoo [which all picked up the story] it’s like ‘wow that’s a pretty cool thing to have happen.’”
To date, according to Hammond, currently an on-air talent and producer for CBS Houston’s Sports Radio 610, that has been the apex of his career. But from it, he took one very important lesson.
“It happened when I was 25, and I don’t say that to say ‘hey look what I did,’” Hammond said. “To me the thing I am happiest about with it happening when I was 25 wasn’t because I had accomplished a lot early. But since I was 25 when I did it, I keep telling myself that it can’t be the pinnacle. You can’t peak and be the guy who peaked in high school. That’s a constant thing for me.”
But still, the lead-in and excitement were pretty cool.
“He starts going and going and going,” Hammond remembers of his interview with Diamondstein. “And here I am at 25 years old, in market 144 on a weekend show hosting from my girlfriend’s bedroom via skype on my laptop, and I have Ray Rice’s lawyer just wink and nod and tell me what happened in the elevator before the tape came out and before anyone else had it.
“As he was saying it I was G-Chatting [Google’s messaging system] my producer that we just made national news. It was pretty cool.”
LISTEN: CBS HOUSTON’S SPORTS TALK 610 – MATT & CODY SHOW
It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, unicorns and butterflies for Hammond, though, on his journey from part-time Trenton Times sports writer to (among other things) producer of an afternoon talk show in one of America’s major cities.
He’s had to leave behind a girlfriend of four years (they’re still together) who is finishing a Pharmacy degree. He moved with no knowledge of how the job would work out, where he might live and with only assurances of opportunities to come, despite no firm promises.
It was a situation that gave him pause – if only for a brief moment. Assurances and even promises were things that he had been given before, but ultimately fizzled out.
“The worst part about it, is that it wasn’t even a decision,” Hammond said. “When we talked about it the conversation was maybe five minutes when I told her about it. But I knew going in that I had to take the job. It wasn’t even a question. What that meant for our relationship going forward, either she was going to say ‘let’s do it’ or ‘this doesn’t work for me.
“Luckily we have known for a while what we have. It’s not just some two, three or four week relationship.”
Hammond, a former football player at Bishop Ahr and Sayreville high schools, played two years of fullback at TCNJ before chronic knee problems forced him to hang up the cleats. In high school as a both a junior and senior he tore the meniscus in his left knee.
Once he became a Lion, he tore the ACL and meniscus in his right knee as a freshman, and tore what he thought was the meniscus in his left knee as a sophomore.
“I went in for surgery as a sophomore thinking it was a scope,” Hammond said. “I was thinking a few weeks no problem. When I woke up they were like ‘yeaaaaa you’re never going to play football again.’”
Doctors discovered that he had a partial tear of his ACL, and rather than go back in weeks later to repair it, Hammond opted to stop playing. He attempted a comeback “in my super-senior year” as he calls it. But that didn’t last long as he found that he couldn’t walk after going through a football workout in the summer prior.
He added, tongue firmly in cheek, “yea I was on the five year plan. But I had two majors, OK?”
It all added up to a love of sports for the New Jersey product that continues today.
His stops at the Trenton Times, 97.5 The Phanatic in Philly (part-time producer/promotional staff member/Phillies beat reporter) and in Atlantic City (morning update man, weekend host) have taught him some things that shouldn’t be lost on up-and-comers.
You can get to where you want, but you’re unlikely to start there.
“You have to be politely persistent and learn to push without annoying them (your bosses),” said Hammond. “Well, you have to annoy a little bit.”
But for Hammond, as is typical with most young people in the sports radio business, the sledding is tough.
“I haven’t had a Friday or a Saturday night since probably college,” Hammond said. “There is something about this industry that you need to know, for as much fulfillment as you’re going to get in your life out of pursuing – not even a dream, but – something you know you were meant to do and are best at, you need to acknowledge there is going to be some fun and some life that you have to check at the door. That’s the give and take of that.
“I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”
Leave a Reply