Former voice of the Dallas Stars reveals he’s fighting cancer
The Stars’ original radio voice left Dallas for Southern California, and while he knows the purpose of the phone call he also know the business.
“Hey, here is your headline: ‘Former play-by-play voice of the Dallas Stars has cancer,’’ Ralph Strangis said in a phone interview.
It’s not the news I expected to hear.
“It’s OK. I don’t mind sharing it,” Strangis said from his home in Palm Springs. “They got it early.”
Strangis said he has the same type of cancer that longtime DFW sports radio voice Norm Hitzges recently revealed he’s fighting.
“I was suspicious something was going on a while ago,” said Strangis, will turn 60 in February. “I went through all the stages; I still am. I was shocked. Concerned. Worried.
“I don’t want this to be the end. I’ve got a lot to do, it’s probably not going to be more hockey games, but I have more to do. I want to keep going. I am so grateful for every single day and every single thing.”
Strangis calls 2020 a thorn bush, but every day he finds the roses and smells them, most notably the chance for he and his daughter to watch their hockey team, the Dallas Stars, play the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup Fiinal.
The decision to leave the Dallas Stars
When the Stars relocated from Minnesota to Texas in 1993, Strangis was one of the few to make move with the team.
Along with Daryl Reaugh, Mark Followill, Chuck Cooperstein, Eric Nadel, Brad Sham and Babe Laufenberg, Strangis was a member of a tiny fraternity of men in our area who were synonymous with their respective franchises.
People don’t leave these jobs.
In April of 2015, after 25 years with the Stars, Strangis made the decision to leave the team and pursue other interests.
There was speculation that he left over money. Not the reason.
There was speculation that he left because of his relationship with Reaugh, but it’s not uncommon that relationships in broadcast teams are often strained.
“My relationship with Daryl is not the reason I left. It was not perfect, but these things can be difficult,” Strangis said. “It was just time for me to do my stuff, and for them to go forward, too.”
Jobs in sports are wonderful, but they can become not just your identity. They can consume your entire life.
Ralph wanted to see what else there is.
He finished his degree from the University of North Texas. He traveled to Europe. He would still dabble in calling hockey games for radio, including the Olympics, and the outdoor games that are now a staple on the NHL calendar.
“I frequently would say would I have been better off doing what I was doing, or doing what I did? Sometimes I did have pause,” Strangis said. “I am better off doing what I did. I was able to go places and meet people that I would not have been able to do.”
He eventually moved to Palm Springs, where he continues to freelance calling games. He was actually scheduled to call the NHL conference finals.
His daughter, Savannah, lived in Los Angeles as she breaks her way into the production side of the entertainment industry.
He got involved in a local community college, where he started to teach. He also started to work with the local theater group, and won an award for a role in The Diary Of Anne Frank. Ralph played Anne’s father.
Fighting cancer and watching the Dallas Stars
Strangis admits when he first left the team there was a void. He grew up in Minneapolis, and watched the team, then the North Stars, from the time he was a kid. The franchise came into existence in 1967.
“This is my team. I mean, I’m the only one to say the, ‘Dallas Stars have won the Stanley Cup’ as their radio voice,” he said.
Even as he bounced around, he followed the Stars and stayed in touch with the people from the team.
Everything was fine until six weeks ago when he noticed atypical stomach pains. He’s had one surgery, and another to remove a tumor doctors found in his bladder.
He’s currently undergoing immunotherapy, and while this is not chemotherapy it’s not exactly fun. There are hard days, and Ralph is almost as good at sitting still as a toddler.
The recovery process was going to force Strangis to stop. When the world stopped, he finds his rose every day.
When COVID closed the world, the entertainment industry shut down, too. Savannah left L.A. to live with her dad to take care of him while he fights, and recovers from, cancer.
“What world was I going to live in and watch the Dallas Stars in the Stanley Cup Finals with my daughter?” he asked. “That was never going to happen. We needed the earth to shut down. We needed the league to shut down. We needed the league to go into a bubble.
“Then we needed the entertainment industry to stop. Then we needed the Dallas Stars to go on a Cup run.”
Strangis calls this episode a “blip.”
While he knows what the headline is to this story, it’s just another chapter, and hardly a conclusion.
“Every day I write down 10 things I’m grateful for. There’s so much. I’m doing good,” he said, “and the Stars are helping.”
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
