Don La Greca still has the table sign.
This was 1989 and as a membership perk for being in the Devils fan club, he got to have dinner with a player. It was supposed to be Jim Korn, only the winger didn’t show, so they put him with the broadcasters. Gary Thorne, Chris Moore, Peter McNab and a 21-year-old La Greca.
He talked nonstop, telling them how they had his dream job. They signed the table marking and Thorne wrote him good luck in broadcasting.
Funny how things come full circle.
La Greca has his dream job now. After two decades doing Rangers games on the radio, he’s moving across the Hudson River to take over play-by-play duties for the Devils on MSG, replacing Bill Spaulding in the booth alongside Ken Daneyko.
“It’s a dream come true,” La Greca told The Post in a phone call Monday. “… I grew up following this team. It’s been a dream to do full-time play-by-play for a team, to represent a team. To do it with a team I grew up following, representing a state I’ve lived in my whole life is just an absolute dream.”
La Greca, 57, plans to continue hosting his show with Alan Hahn and Peter Rosenberg on ESPN Radio along with the job, though he does need to negotiate a new deal with the station at the end of the year.
Doing TV will also be an adjustment of sorts, as La Greca has spent his career to date working in radio.
“A true great broadcast is making sure that everybody gets to contribute,” La Greca said. “I saw that with Doc [Emrick], bringing out the best in Chico [Resch], bringing out the best in Kenny [Daneyko], I saw it with Sam [Rosen] and Joe Micheletti and [John Davidson] before him. I see what Brendan [Burke] does with Butchie [Goring]. That’s how I think I’ll be ultimately judged. I want to make sure everybody gets to shine on this broadcast. That’ll be the challenge for me.”
Right now, though, the main emotion is excitement — not just to be doing play-by-play, but to be doing it for the team he grew up rooting for and rekindle a fandom that had gone quiet while working for the Rangers.
“You get to know the players and the coaches and travel with them, so that becomes your family,” La Greca said. “But to now be able to do that with the Devils, with the team my heart was with, is just gonna be amazing. I guess the quote would be it lied dormant for going on two decades. Now it gets the chance to fill out and really come out, and that’s what makes this so much of a dream.”