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Hello, prospective broadcaster with luminous, thick hair. We’re reaching out to you because you expressed some trepidation over the seemingly impossible task of improvising everything within a three-hour baseball game, while stand up comics are thrilled to scrape together 30 minutes of material. We understand! It is impossible. But to allay your concerns, we’re supplying a recent example of a Broadcasting Situation, in the hope that it can provide an example of how to turn any baseball occurrence into a teachable moment. Enjoy!
The setting: A Giants game. As an announcer, the demands of the job are both straightforward (narrate the game) and expansive (be consistently interesting for basically every day for six-plus months). However, the specific knowledge required in the booth—whether as a play-by-play announcer or color commentator—is largely limited to baseball-relevant information. Even that directive is blindered; though many announcers have grown increasingly more knowledgeable of and willing to deploy advanced analytical stats in game, plenty of the game’s famous voices have gotten by fine and continue to with only the standard baseball announcer’s toolbox. Mix them in with a mild awareness of the news and pop culture, familiarity with the cities one announces for and visits, how well each batter has done against each pitcher in their six career head-to-head plate appearances, and some personal quirks, and your average announcer is set. What more could you need?
Well, here’s a case study: A rarely used implement within the announcer’s kit is birding knowledge—sure, you might see the odd pigeon at the ballpark, or the occasional seagull in coastal venues, but there are few birders at the average game looking to log their latest ID. While most announcers presumably have rich inner lives, the contingent who hold active memberships in the National Audubon Society is likely small (and as we learned from Matt Sussman’s attempts to rechristen the “group Maddux,” perhaps there’s little virtue in supporting a society that retained the name of a man who “did despicable things even by the standards of his day.”) So between those, you felt pretty well justified in keeping your knowledge of class Aves to the purely appreciative: “Cool bird!” And now, perspective announcer, put yourself in the shoes of two seasoned broadcasters. How’d it turn out for them?
On Saturday afternoon, the Reds took on the Giants in San Francisco, with the game nationally televised on Fox and called by play-by-play announcer Eric Karros and color commentator Jason Benetti. The latter voice, now with the Tigers, is known for his acumen with the analytical side of the sport, appearing on “Statcast broadcasts” several times in the final few seasons of his White Sox tenure (2016-23) and recently discussing run expectancy matrices on air. The availability of that mode doesn’t mean Benetti is freed from the rails of topical conversation, however. Take this exchange in the top of the fourth (interestingly the first available frame from the contest, possibly due to apparent technical issues):
KARROS: “Do you have any tattoos?”BENETTI: “I don’t.” KARROS: “Mason Black does.” BENETTI: “Ohh no.”[Further conversation is forestalled by the third out and cut to commercial]
Sometimes it goes like that. Other discussions linger.
Thank you for reading
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