Bees broadcaster Steve Klauke looks to start new streak

Baseball is a game of numbers, and a game that loves its streaks.

From 1982-99, Cal Ripken Jr. became baseball's all-time Iron Man when he played in 2,632 consecutive games for the Baltimore Orioles.

In 1941, Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games for the New York Yankees — a record which might never be broken.

In 1988, Orel Hershiser pitched 59 2?3 consecutive scoreless innings, the equivalent of throwing almost seven straight complete-game shutouts without giving up a run.

And for 40 consecutive years, every year from 1970 to 2009, Steve Klauke — the longtime voice of the Salt Lake Bees — attended a major league game on opening day.

Alas, all streaks — like all good things — must come to an end.

And, sadly, Klauke's opening-day streak came to an end this year.

"The streak started in 1970 at old Comiskey Park in Chicago," said Klauke, a 55-year-old Illinois native whose radio career brought him to Utah in 1991, when he joined Dave Blackwell and Ron Boone as part of the "Jazz Talk" team which did such a masterful job with Utah Jazz pregame and postgame radio broadcasts.

"Even when I moved to Utah in 1991, I still made it to an opening-day game every year. It's been a little more of a challenge since I moved to Salt Lake, but I kept it going as best I could.

"But this year, I just couldn't swing it," Klauke lamented.

Along the way, Klauke has certainly seen some memorable major league moments.

He was there for the first game in the history of the Tampa Bay (formerly Devil) Rays' franchise in 1998 — back when they were the Devil Rays.

"I still have a commemorative seat cushion from that one," Klauke said wryly. "The next day, they had to change the configuration of the bullpen, because they found out that two left-handers couldn't warm up at same time."

He's seen season-opening games at Oakland, Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Houston (twice — once at each of the Astros' stadiums, the Astrodome and Minute Maid Park) and Denver, where he went to the Colorado Rockies' first-ever home game in 1993.

"At that first Rockies game, the atmosphere was amazing," Klauke recalled. "There were more than 80,000 people there, and it was 80 degrees in early April in Denver.