Pete on Fox 25 Boston

Though few people recognize his name or face, just about everyone who listens to WEEI-AM sports radio, will recognize his voice.

He's that slick, baritone announcer who mocks the vocal stumblings of on-air personalities like Fred Smerlas and Pete Sheppard. The guy who writes, voices, and produces the station's fake commercials and comedy bits poking fun of everyone from Mayor Thomas M. Menino to former Sox stars Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez. Pete Gustin's job is to "image" WEEI, the city's top, rated radio station, by offsetting the station's locker-room chest thumping with topical and self-deprecating humor.

With the Red Sox making history last October and the Patriots' repeat appearance at today's Super Bowl, it doesn't get much better for a guy who gets paid to talk Sports.

"A lot of my friends, when they first knew what I was doing, they were like, 'Oh my god! You sit around and talk and make fun of stuff and get paid for it?" said Gustin, 27, who lives in Brighton.

Gustin said his parents still aren't sure what he does for a living. "My job is to get inside the conscience of the listener and make them believe that this station's cool and make them know it's funny and entertaining," said Gustin, who cranks out dozens of productions each day for WEEI and its -FM sister station in Providence from its Brighton studios. "We definitely try not to take ourselves too seriously."

"Pete's like audio cartoonist," explains Bill Smith, who holds a similar job as the production director at WRKO-AM. "I think he's one of the most valuable, invisible people over there. He's got a ton of talent."

Smith, now a friend, first inspired Gustin to get into radio as a teenager. "He adds attitude, he adds swagger, and he adds a great sense of humor. He enhances what everyone else is trying to do," said Smith.

"What he does is just another way to get listeners [to listen] for a longer period of time," said Jason Wolfe, WEEI AM/PM director of programming and operations. "At some point, the constant analytical breakdown gets old."

Last month, Gustin launched a website (www.petesbits.com) to catalog many of his most popular WEEI comedy bits and a sampling of music from his band, Penthouse. He hopes the site will win him some recognition with listeners and step up his second career doing commercial voiceovers.

Fans of the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will recognize Gustin from two of the video game's fake radio commercials and a mock radio station, "Master Sounds." Gustin has also done commercial voiceovers for Chevrolet, Hyundai, and an environmental ad for Vice President Dick Cheney.

"Initially, I just kind of put it up for fun because I know my friends
enjoy the things, and I figured hopefully there were other people out there who knew about that stuff," said Gustin. "And I also kind of thought it would be neat for me; it was kind of a selfish goal, but I wanted people to know I was doing those things."

With hosts John Dennis and Glenn Ordway promoting it during their shows, Gustin's site got more than 300,000 hits In the first week and more than a hundred emails from listeners.

Raised in Winchester, Gustin grew up listening to WEEI and rock on WBCN and the now-defunct WZOU's "Morning Zoo" show. "I wanted to be Dana Hersey," said Gustin of the longtime voice of WSBK-TV. "I would hear him, 'I'm Dana Hersey and this is the Movie Loft," and I was like, 'That's awesome! I wanna be that guy!'"

Gustin got his first on-air experience appearing as a guest on WBZ radio in the late 1980s and early 1990s with Dave Maynard during the station's annual "Swim for Sight" fundraiser. Maynard had developed macular degeneration, an eye disease that gradually causes people, most older, to lose most or all of their vision. Gustin had gotten a rare, early onset form of the disease years earlier.

"I was in third grade, and they didn't know what was wrong with me," said Gustin. "The first doctor said it was in my head, another doctor said I was trying to get out of schoolwork. And they finally took me to Mass. General and the guy said, 'Oh, you got a disease that mostly old people get'?

Consequently, Gustin can't do many everyday activities that most people take for granted. "I can't drive, can't read the newspaper, can't read normal sized computer" screens, he said. He doesn't take in many ballgames because he can't see the action on the field. He often wears sunglasses around the station, not to look cool, but to cut down on bothersome glare.

While studying communications at Boston University, Gustin worked several entry-level production jobs at local radio stations, including WRKO and WSZ.
"I was a traffic reporter, which was ironic?me being the traffic reporter and having never driven in my life and telling all these people in Boston how to get around," said Gustin, chuckling.

After college, Gustin did imaging for WRKO and WEEI and hoped to make the big leap into national voice work in New York. His diminished eyesight, however, proved major hurdle.

I've "never been able to get an agent to pick me up," said Gustin. "I do very well at this. I make a lot of money, but no one ever wanted to put their effort into me because I'm legally blind. They're like, 'I'm not going to back you, because what if you walk into a session and you can't read the copy?' I've heard that from over 30 agents," said Gustin, who says he was always able to memorize a script after having it read to him once.

"And so I actually didn't voice audition for two years after college because of that. But I honed my writing and my production, and I got really good at that stuff and now, because of the Internet, I actually am picking up a lot of voiceover work where I can sit in my own studio, blow up the script as big as I need to, [and] do it," said Gustin.

"It's been a very, very uphill battle. I know if tomorrow someone stuck a new pair of eyeballs in my head and I could sit down and read copy...I know if I had the eyes, I could do this stuff, but it's very frustrating sometimes. I try not to think about that end of it, being held back."

"I decided in third grade that I was never going to let this thing slow me down. I rarely have to ask for help, and I've always wanted it that way," said Gustin.

Despite his struggles, Gustin knows he's living the dream for many of this city's sports diehards.

"To be In Boston, my hometown, to be working at a sports station that I used to listen to, that broadcasts the sports team that I love [the Red Sox] and talks about the other sports team that I love, the Patriots, and to get paid for it?" Gustin asked with a smile. "It's a pretty cool job."

WEEI sports radio’s “Dennis & Callahan” are firing back at public television queen Emily Rooney after she said on TV that the duo waited until the last two days of the U.S. Senate race to ask Democrat Martha Coakley onto their morning-drive show.