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Benetti: The media road paved by Homewood-Flossmoor's finest

During the last White Sox game that Steve Stone and I called before the road trip, Chuck Garfein of CSN did his fifth-inning update. Afterward, he and I talked briefly about the place we both did our 9-12 schoolin', Homewood-Flossmoor High.

You may hear me or Chuck and Ben Bradley or Scott Merkin and Laurence Holmes or others mention H-F every once in a while in passing on a show or in a column or tweet. If I can speak for them for a column-moment, we gush for a reason. H-F - and its WHFH radio station and Viking Television - is a major reason we all have a love for what we do.

With the news this week about the future of the Sox broadcast booth - one that I'm grateful to be a part of - I've been asked quite a bit about what it feels like to call White Sox games.

What I feel most is gratitude toward the people who gave their time to help me learn along the way. And that line of people started at WHFH and VTV with Bob Comstock and Megan Tipton.

All of us who know them owe them a great deal more than 550 words, but that's all I've got on this page for now.

After school, the horde of us media-types would go to the radio and/or TV stations, which put on some pretty cool programs. We'd also just sit there and cause minor high schoolish interpersonal calamities for one another. Megan and Bob were there to make sure we focused on the former more than the latter.

We - the students - ran a radio station and a TV station. We were DJs and newsreaders and producers and play-by-play announcers and executives and interns. And Bob and Megan set the standards.

Before anything hit the air, we read it at least once to Bob or Megan (or another faculty rep if neither was available to pull his/her hair out that afternoon). When we had a technical problem, they pointed us to the proper solution while making us know - just know - that we had come up with the answer on our own.

Bob Comstock would laugh with us at one moment, then sit with us silently the next as, say, the confusing pictures from Columbine came in.

Megan Tipton would tell us to do it again until we got it right. She'd send us on the hunt for the best word for a sentence, believing we'd find it if we tried. And we did.

Megan and Bob are both retired now, at least from H-F. But Bob spends a good chunk of his free time catching up with former students. And Megan has carved out a portion of her soul for the revitalization of south suburban theater.

In late 2015, Megan and Bob helped put together a 50th anniversary bash for former students at Idlewild Country Club. Two days later - in part, I think, because I happened to be in town - the White Sox interviewed me for their open television job.

I hope you and your kids and grandkids all have a Megan and Bob in your lives. Priceless are people who steer you close enough to what you love so you can see the beauty of the detail that makes it a thing worth caring for.

• Jason Benetti is a play-by-play broadcaster for the Chicago White Sox, as well as ESPN. Follow him on Twitter @jasonbenetti.

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