The name suggests Dr. Jerry Punch might be a fight doctor, or a professional wrestler.
What Punch is, is one of the more interesting people in broadcasting. Until 1995, he was juggling two careers--one as the head emergency room doctor at a hospital near Daytona Beach, Fla., the other as an auto racing pit reporter and college football sideline reporter for ESPN.
He finally had to make a choice, picking broadcasting over a lucrative medical career.
Punch is in Southern California for this weekend's festivities at California Speedway in Fontana. He will serve as the host of the Busch Series Auto Club 300 television coverage on Saturday and as a pit reporter for the Winston Cup California 500 on Sunday.
Both races are ESPN productions but are being carried on big sister ABC for maximum exposure.
We caught up with Punch on his cell phone as he was driving from LAX to his hotel in Ontario Wednesday evening. We talked from 5:30 to 6:30, as Punch drove out the 105 Freeway, up the 605 and out the 60. Had he taken Interstate 10, he would have been right in the middle on the six-mile, 150-car pileup.
As it was, Punch was free to talk--and talk he did--about growing up in rural North Carolina, about toiling in auto racing as a mechanic and driver while in high school, about being a backup quarterback at North Carolina State for Lou Holtz, about how Ned Jarrett gave him his first break behind a microphone, about how holding down two full-time jobs contributed to the failure of his first marriage, and about how good life is these days.
Of his football career as a veer option quarterback at North Carolina State, Punch said: "Coach Holtz once told me, 'You're not slow, you just reach your maximum speed faster than anyone else.' It took me a minute to realize that wasn't a compliment."
When Punch, 45, was in medical school at Wake Forest, he was in the press box at Hickory Motor Speedway when the track announcer didn't show up. Jarrett, the promoter, asked Punch if he would handle the job. He was apprehensive because he had a stuttering problem. But Punch gave it a go, discovering he didn't stutter behind a microphone, and became the regular track announcer.
That led to some local radio work, then a radio job with the Motor Racing Network and a one-year stint with WTBS before ESPN hired him in 1984.
