Jim Cuddihy – Executive Vice President MASN

Our Town with host Andy Ockershausen - Homegrown History

Jim Cuddihy with career advice ~ "I tell kids all the time, interns that come into my office, people who want to get into the business: 'When you wake up in the morning, you better want to go to work. Figure that out. Do something that you love.'" Jim Cuddihy - Executive Vice President MASN A Ockershausen: This is Andy Ockershausen. This is Our Town and we have a special, special delight to have a guest that has made such an impact on the greater Washington area at both Home Team Sports, Comcast SportsNet, and now with MASN. We'll get into that later, but right now I'm gonna say hello to Jimmy Cuddihy, the man from New York who took over Washington by storm. Jim Cuddihy: Great to be with you, Andy. One of my heroes since I moved here to D.C. in 2001. On Moving to Our Town A Ockershausen: I love your story. When you first arrived in the city, your wife and your two little children, at the time, got lost and ended up going by Georgetown Prep. Jim Cuddihy: You know, it's- A Ockershausen: The hated rival of Gonzaga Eagles at this point. Jim Cuddihy: Kind of ironic, right? My little guy's like five years old and we're looking for houses. This is the first time they've moved down; I'd already been here a couple months. And we see this beautiful campus and we pull in and there's a rugby game going on. I played, I had coached, I love the sport. A Ockershausen: It's your life. Jim Cuddihy: I take a picture with my son and the ball's half as big as him, right? And he goes to school, they do a father's day present where they do cardboard cutouts of tools. And he cuts out a saw and he puts the picture in there and he writes, "To the best dad I ever saw." A Ockershausen: He's five years old? Jim Cuddihy: And to this day, I still have that in my office and he turned out to be a fantastic rugby player, Gonzaga High School, and now the captain of Saint Joe's University rugby team. So it was ironic, that that young of an age, he- A Ockershausen: Jimmy, it is all do to his experience at Georgetown Prep. Jim Cuddihy: That's right. A Ockershausen: Prep- Jim Cuddihy: He wouldn't want to hear that. A Gonzaga guy wouldn't want to hear that, but you're right. A Ockershausen: But your career has been in broadcasting, but you grew up in New York City and I love hear you telling stories about the guy ... The guys you grew up with all became an important part of the city. Cops, firemen, workers, whatever they did, and you moved on. But you grew up in that atmosphere. On Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town, New York City Jim Cuddihy: Yeah. And those guys. . . And those guys are still my best friends. We grew up in a neighborhood ... Really one of the only communities in New York City called Stuyvesant Town. On the lower- A Ockershausen: I know it quite well. Jim Cuddihy: Yeah. It's on the Lower East Side from 14th Street and 1st Avenue to 23rd Street. A Ockershausen: High rise. Jim Cuddihy: High rises. And they built them in the 50s for the returning war veterans. A Ockershausen: Correct. I remember that. Jim Cuddihy: So this kind of neighborhood, you would run home from school, drop your book bag down, and you'd go right out and play until 6:00 or 6:30 until it was dark. And sometimes your mother would open up the window- A Ockershausen: Yeah. Parks and recreation on site, correct? Jim Cuddihy: We had 15 playgrounds and every playground had a specialty. A Ockershausen: Was that a project of an insurance company? Was that Metropolitan Life? Jim Cuddihy: Yeah. MetLife owned it, yeah. That's right. That's right. A Ockershausen: I know a lot about it because my brother-in-law was a firefighter. He was a fireman then. After the war, when he came back, there was no place to live. They lived out, someplace at Floyd Bennett Field. Jim Cuddihy: Yeah. Right. A Ockershausen: There's little Quonset huts out there. They couldn't find a place. Jim Cuddihy: Stuyvesant Town is rent controlled and my parents moved into a five-be...