Game 33: Monty Bancroft - Broiled Salmon with Dill

There wasn’t much I could find on Monty Bancroft, the longtime radio engineer for Lakers broadcasts. Just two brief mentions in the Los Angeles Times: One reported that he won the “good guy award” from the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Association in 1992. The other mentions that he said he “wouldn’t cross the street to see a game . . . but I like the checks.” I wonder how good those checks are these days, now that radio has been decimated, along with every other media outlet left dying or begging for scraps. But that’s on the music side of the radio business. Sports talk radio, at least in L.A., seems to be surviving. Likely because our car dependent-culture lends itself to spending a couple hours each day with some former jocks arguing for the sake of arguing.

When I started seriously obsessing over sports in 9th grade, I became a religious listener of sports talk radio. The local channels here in L.A. are AM 570 and ESPN 710. The latter always seemed too corporate, with shows that cast too wide a net for an audience that wanted in-depth analysis on everything from the Lakers to the Arena Football League’s Aengers. I didn’t want to hear D.C. columnists give their tired take on the now cross-country Shaq vs Kobe feud. I wanted 15 minute segments on why UCLA football’s constantly embattled head coach Karl Dorrell tucked his playsheet into the front of his khakis.

My guys on AM 570 were Petros and Money. Their show, PMS, was led by Petros Papadakis, a legitimately funny ex-jock and third-generation Trojan who captained what he calls “the worst team in USC history.” Petros is loud and brash, but never overly obnoxious. Like the sensitive, intelligent, well-read college buddy of yours who you can’t believe actually enjoys being in a frat, until you see him shotgun a Keystone surrounded by the friends he paid to hang out with. Petros, a native Angeleno, came from an old school Greek-American family that owned the beloved (and closed since 2010) Papadakis Taverna in San Pedro. It’s easy to imagine him holding court and working the dining room at his family’s restaurant had he never decided to professionalize his gift of gab during the end of his college years.

Petros was joined by Matt “Money” Smith. When Jimmy Kimmel left KROQ’s Kevin and Bean Morning Show to follow his TV host dreams that unexpectedly came true, Money replaced the open Sports Guy chair. Money was easy-going and affable, a Chicagoan with a smooth baritone voice who came to Southern California to get his law degree but fell in love with sports. My memory is a little hazy, but sometime in the mid-2000s, he left KROQ to join AM 570 to do pre-game, halftime, and post-game reports for the Lakers. When the team moved to ESPN 710, he stayed at 570 to continue doing his radio show with Petros. They’re still going strong today, a testament to their talent and chemistry in a volatile industry.

The other show I’d listen to from my silver Sony boombox and the scratchy speakers of my 1990 Toyota Corolla were The Loose Cannons: Steve Hartman, Mychal Thompson, and Vic “The Brick” Jacobs. Hartman was ostensibly the straight man, but former Showtime Laker Thompson was so chaste and conservative (especially in his politics) that Hartman got pushed into a role he likely didn’t sign up for. By chaste, I mean that one time he had to leave the room for a segment involving Hooters waitresses. Rounding out the trio was Jacobs, a wild-haired, poncho and Russian fur hat wearing New Yorker who thought the word “homer” as it pertains to sports fandom was a compliment. An unabashed Lakers fan known for yelling “FEELING YOU!” after every six words, his love for Kobe Bryant was cemented in this clip-turned-early sports gif of Kobe’s game-winner against Phoenix in the 2006 playoffs:

I wasn’t an unabashed fan of The Loose Cannons like I was with Petros and Money. Still, I listened to them every day. Despite this daily devotion, I never called in to either of these shows. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did call in a few times, but when I actually got through to the screeners, I hung up. I was scared. As an early adopter of Arguing Online, I could expertly debate sports in the forums of DodgerBlues.com and LiveJournal communities, but to actually go toe to toe with THE Petros Papadakis? Live on air?! No way. There wasn’t going to be a Big Fan esque revenge story that started with Pablo from East Hollywood getting chewed out over his thoughts on Milton Bradley and Hee-Seop Choi and ended with the blood-lined hallways of AM 570. I was content with a taciturn long-term relationship with my sports guys, one that had clear boundaries about our one-sided communication. We watched, they talked, I listened.

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Broiled Salmon with Dill

½ cup butter or margarine, melted

2 teaspoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons seasoned salt

1 teaspoon dill weed

¼ teaspoon onion powder

Lemon wedges

½ teaspoon dry lemon peel

Dash white pepper or Lawry’s seasoned pepper

Dash paprika

2 pounds salmon steaks

Combine melted butter, lemon juice, seasoned salt, dill weed, onion powder, lemon peel, pepper, and paprika. Arrange salmon steaks on greased broiler rack and brush with half of seasoned butter. Broil 2 inches from heat for 5 to 10 minutes, depending on thickness of steaks.

Carefully turn and brush with remaining butter mixture. Broil 5 to 7 minutes more or until steaks flake easily with a fork. Serve hot with lemon wedges.

This recipe adapts well to use in a microwave oven. Just arrange the salmon steaks in a dish suitable for the microwave and cook for about 2 minutes longer, or until fish flakes. Cooking time will vary with the number of salmon steaks.

I didn’t make this in the microwave. I should have. It would have made for a more interesting dish.

I cook salmon all the time. It’s maybe my favorite fish. Back when I was a bratty eight year old trying to copy the masculine influence of fish-hating grandpa and uncle, I still made fake exceptions for when my mom cooked up some salmon with a generous squirt of lemon. So I have high standards for any of the salmon recipes in the 1985 World Champion Lakers Are Cookin’ Family Cookbook.

This did not meet my lofty criteria.

The butter mixture definitely needed more lemon. Oddly, it didn’t even taste that much like dill. With all those ingredients, the only flavor that stood out was the butter. Once broiled, the salmon is flaky and buttery, but doesn’t taste like I mixed eight ingredients together. It just tasted like the lemon I squeezed on it. If you’re going to make a salmon dish from Goldstein and Gasol, definitely go with Gary Vitti’s recipe from yesterday’s entry.