Dundalk High, Aerosmith, and Leaving 'the Baltimore Sun' for Radio: Behind the Scenes with Nasty Nestor (Part II)

Popular WNST radio station owner Nestor Aparicio, 42, grew up an adopted child in Dundalk, overcoming difficult, early personal challenges on his way to a unique career as a print journalist, radio show host and local media icon.

During this, the second in a three-part Q&A, Aparicio talks about becoming a father at the age of 15, how he began working at the now-defunct Baltimore News American at around the same time. Graduating from Dundalk High in 1985, he started working at The Baltimore Sun a year later.  The
Patch: How did you get your foot in the door at the Baltimore News American?

Nestor Aparicio: I got my foot in the door, strangely enough, when I was in ninth grade. Ninth grade, I was still at Holabird Junior High. 

It was the on this one day that they distribute your form to complete what you want as your elective classes for high school. You know, it's about what classes you are interested in and what is your pathway. 

I always wanted to be a journalist. That was my thing. I loved sports writing and I loved the newspapers. I read the newspapers every day. I learned how to read by reading newspapers. 

My father taught me how to read by reading The Baltimore Sun sports section when I was a kid because I loved sports. I learned geography based on where the sports teams were.

That's how I learned where Cleveland was, and where Kansas City was. But it all goes back to that day, in the ninth grade, when I got this blue form and on that day. That was fortuitous.

Patch: Can you go into more detail about it?

Aparicio: Well, one day, I had a substitute teacher in journalism class. And we all know that the substitute teacher is the guy that you throw the spitballs at. But the day that those forms were distributed, our substitute teacher was a father of one of my classmates. It was Melissa Bading's dad, Marty Bading. And he liked me, and he always liked to talk to me. 

He was a sports guy and he said to me, "Journalism? Really? I work at the Baltimore News American. That's what I do at night." He said, "I just do this substitute teaching during the day."

He said, "I work at the Baltimore News American at night as a printer." You know, he was one of the guys in the composing room with the Exacto knife, laying the pages out. He was that guy at the News American. So he was like, "I know [late Baltimore Sun columnist] John Steadman, and I know all of the guys, and I'll get you a job."

And this was when I was in ninth grade. I guess that it was 1982. Marty Bading was someone who came in and substituted every once in a while.

Patch: So he's the man who got you started?

Aparicio: Well, yeah.  But then, at Christmastime, I ran into Mr. Bading in 1983 at the mall in the arcades, and he was with his daughter. And I was like, "Mr. Bading, when are you going to get me a job at the paper?"

I had just turned 15. He said, "Well, we've got this new paper, Sports First, and they need all of the help that they can get down there at the News American, so let me see what I can do for you."

Sure enough, on this one night, a week later, we're in my kitchen, and the telephone rang. It was a guy named Tom Robinson, who went on to become an editor of a newspaper in Scranton. Any way, he called me.

And he said, "I hear that you're a go-getter and a sports guy. Come on down and see me and say hello." I went down there. I was 15 years old. I knew a lot about sports. I was quite rambunctious.  

They just said, "Come down every Tuesday night and answer the phone and we'll figure it out." So I did. And then Tuesda's led to Thursdays, and then Tuesday and Thursday led to, "What are you doing this weekend?"

They were like, "Do you want to work on a Saturday shift?" And then it came down to, "Do you want to make $3.35 an hour?" And that was that. That was the News American."

Patch: What year was that?

Aparicio: It was in January of 1984, and that was also the same month I found out I had a pregnant girlfriend. There was a thing called Sports First, and they wanted to try to do a tabloid sports daily. 

It worked for a year, and then it failed. It didn't have the support that it needed, but that was the year that it existed. It actually went to print in '83, and lasted until September of '84.

So, having a pregnant girlfriend, I was just delighted to have a job. That was the year that the Orioles won the World Series, actually, in October of 1983. 
 
And then, the Baltimore Colts left in March of '84, so that was all during that period of time. I was at Sports First when when the Baltimore Colts left, and I remember all of that.

Patch: What was that like?

Aparicio: I remember being in the newsroom and John Steadman's reactions and his emotions and those of all of the people who worked there around me. That's all part of it as well. 

That was just an eye-opening experience. You know, working at a major, metropolitan newspaper when you're only 15, and seeing the way that everyone conducted themselves. I was everybody's kid there. I belonged to everybody.

But then, at the News American, the weekend that my son, Barry, was born was the weekend that it crashed and I lost my job. That was September of 1984, so I was unpaid at that point.

But believe it or not, when they got rid of everyone else, they hired me for $3.35 an hour to do whatever the heck they wanted me to do. I was just delighted to have a job.

Patch: So then in January of 1986, you began working at The Baltimore Sun as a gopher?

Aparicio: I was at the News American from January of 1984 until January of 1986. During that period of time, the News American was about to die. And a lot of the good people there were leaving to go all over the place.

So, in the late 1985, the News American was in its dying days. It finally died in May of 1986. I had gotten a call from one of my editors, Bob Nusgart. He had left the News American and gone to The Baltimore Sun.

So I called him and said, "Bob, I need a job, man. You've got to get me in. You've got to get me in." One night, sure enough, he called me and said, "We've got a job here. I want you to come up and meet Jack Gibbons."

I drove up to meet Jack Gibbons at 11 p.m. on a weeknight. I had never been in the building. I went up and sat in Jack Gibbons' office, and he literally hired me on the spot. He basically knew that he was going to hire me before I sat down with him. He just liked me. I had just turned 17 in October. My starting day there was January 6, 1986.

Patch: Among your roles there was being a music critic?

Aparicio: Well, the music thing happened because I used to hang out at the News American with a guy named Scott Lebar, who was the entertainment editor. One day, he got to talking to me. Again, I was everybody's pet.

I just took the time to talk to everybody. I just thought that they were all interesting because they all worked at putting out a newspaper. It didn't matter what they did. I thought that was just the greatest thing there was. 

I loved being at work. It was fun. So this guy was in the newsroom, and he liked me, and he would talk music and movies with me or whatever. He was fascinated that I had a pregnant girlfriend when I was 15.

One day, he grabbed me and said, "What do you know about Aerosmith?" I said, "What do you want to know?" He said, well, "Steven Tyler's calling in 10 minutes—do you think that you could talk to him and do a story?"

I said, "Well, yeah." He said, "Go back into the morgue and get some clips and read up." I said, "I don't need to read up, dude, I know Toys In The Attic, and I know they're doing a comeback tour."

I said, "Just get them on the phone." So I did a 10-minute interview with Steven Tyler, which was the first interview that I ever did, and he liked what I wrote in a 10- to 12-inch preview for their concert at the arena. 

After that, I did Hall and Oates, I did Kiss, I did Rush, I did Loverboy, REO Speedwagon, Styx, whoever was in town. I was doing the previews for the entertainment section. So when I got to The Baltimore Sun, the first thing that I did was to get the entertainment editor and said, "You guys aren't covering this place called Hammerjacks."

I said, "There is this thing going on where 2,000 people are getting together and going to this bar every night. The bands are coming in, and you guys are missing it." Ed Hewitt was the entertainment editor and he said, "Get a press pass and go and cover this for us—we'll pay you 25 or 50 bucks a story, whatever it was—and go cover the stories."

When I got to the Evening Sun, there was a hole there and nobody was doing the music. I just fell into doing the concerts and I loved it. That was a stringer job.


Patch: So that was the Evening Sun. What did you do at The Baltimore Sun?

Aparicio: I was the agate clerk. If it was helping out with the headlines, running copy, or going out to get lunch or handling a phone call. Whatever, that's what I did.

Patch: Tell me about your relationship with John Steadman.

Aparicio: John Steadman is the godfather of all Baltimore sports media people. Certainly, he was a great inspirational guy for me. It probably meant even more to my father, the relationship that I had with John. 

To my father, John was it. So, that was something that my father really took a lot of pride in. But the more that I got to know John, and the more that I picked John's brain, the more that it became a mentoring situation for life. 

John didn't teach me a lot about journalism, but more about how to be a journalist and how to do it—what I should be looking for, and the questions that I should be asking. I've got so many memories of John. 

When he died in 2000, that was like losing my father all over again. I was really a mess when he died, just like I was when Don Leifert died. It's talking about them that inspires me and it's nice that their energy still lives within me.

Patch: Do you feel you personify them in the things you do?

Aparicio: Dude, I'm trying. I can't carry their jocks. But it gives you something to aspire to.

Patch: Can you talk about taking the buyout from The Baltimore Sun and moving on?

Aparicio: John Steadman was the first guy to tell me that that was the best thing that I was doing. He was unbelievably supportive of my taking the buyout and leaving. 

He called me "Senior," and I'll never forget that conversation. He told me that "you will never regret this. You will never look back." He said, "This is the best thing that you will ever do."

Patch: Is it accurate to say that the buyout was a risky moved that paid off for you as you moved on to radio?

Aparicio: In 1990, '91 and '92, I was covering the Baltimore Skipjacks, and Kenny [Albert]was a guy in the booth who was six months older than me. He was 23, I was 23. I was covering the hockey team. 

He was the son of the famous Marv Albert, and he was in Baltimore cutting his teeth with WITH AM 1230, and he got offered a show before the hockey games. And he said to me, "Hey, I'm starting this sports talk show, do you want to co-host or sit in? I'm going to be gone for a couple of days, so do you want to do it?" I had never really done radio before. 

I had done color for him, you know, just goofing around, but that was because I was the other guy who knew a lot about the team, you know? So I was kind of cutting my chops and having a good time on the radio. 

But I had never run the show. I was just the color guy. I just talked about what was going on on the ice, told some funny stories and that was that. But doing sports radio, Kenny just pretty much imitated the things that he heard in New York. I wasn't a huge sports radio listener. I just wasn't. I listened to music and I watched sports.

So when I set out to do a radio show, I wanted to do one that I would listen to. I wanted energy, information, interviews. I wanted it to be fun. Fun. Laughs. No one every seemed to laugh in talk radio. 

It was usually you call in, you get your 30 seconds, you say what you wanted to say, and then, you hung up. To me, that's awful. That's un-listenable. I thought that the best part of sports radio was conversation. 

I didn't want to do "Ask the expert," even though I thought that I was an expert. I didn't want to do that kind of a show. So Kenny gave me a chance to do it, and I was able to do it the way that I wanted to do it.

Stay tuned to Patch for part III of Satterfield's interview with Nasty Nestor.