My First Baseball Play-By-Play Demo: A Look Back

Once I decided I wanted to be a play-by-play broadcaster, I knew I wanted to call baseball games, and I knew that meant starting out in the minor leagues. So, during my junior year at Syracuse University, I sent my résumé and cover letter to a handful of short-season teams – short-season since their 76-game, June-to-Labor Day schedule meshed with my summer break from college. I wound up getting hired as an intern by the Queens Kings, a short-season minor league team the New York Mets had just purchased and moved to Queens, New York with the intent of moving them to Brooklyn the following year, once a stadium had been built. The Kings played their lone season as a Toronto Blue Jays affiliate (their player development contract with the Blue Jays had yet to expire) in a ballpark the Mets renovated on the campus of St. John’s University, less than seven miles from Shea Stadium. We didn’t draw very well, but the Kings was a great proving ground for me because I got to learn what the business of minor league baseball was all about. But, the Kings didn’t broadcast any of their games, so I still didn’t have any baseball play-by-play experience. So, during my senior year of college, I sent several minor league baseball teams a five-minute snippet of play-by-play I did of a Syracuse University basketball game from the upper reaches of the Carrier Dome. Not one team contacted me.

After I graduated from college and returned home to New York City, I realized I needed to get serious about getting a baseball play-by-play job. And, if no one would hire me without baseball broadcasting experience, I had to be creative. So, I decided I would go to a handful of Mets and Yankees games with my tape recorder and call the action from the stands. From there, I would choose the best-sounding clips and cobble them together into a demo tape I could use to pursue a play-by-play job for the 2002 baseball season.

I followed through on my plan and registered for the minor league baseball job fair at the Baseball Winter Meetings, which were being held in Boston, Massachusetts in December, 2001. I had no idea how many broadcasting jobs would be available at this job fair so, to be safe, I made 50 copies of my demo on my dual cassette recorder. Maybe 10 of those demos actually wound up in the hands of hiring parties, but I did land my first broadcasting job, with the Yakima Bears of Washington State and of the short-season Northwest League, thanks to that demo.

Recently, I found one of those original demo cassettes and decided to listen back to my earliest work. I figured it would be educational at best, entertaining at worst. So, after I found batteries for a tape player I hadn’t used since Dubya’s first term, I gave it a listen (You can listen as well; each play-by-play clip I post is followed by my analysis. Clicking a link will open it in a new browser window or tab).

My voice was the first thing I noticed; it sounded awful. I was trying to talk over the crowd, which you should never do. As a result, my sound alternated between “shouting” and “raspy”. I remember being hoarse after each of the Mets and Yankees games I called because I didn’t know how to properly control and modulate my voice. With experience, broadcasters learn to speak in a more measured tone, a tone that’s different for everyone and a tone that allows you to carry a broadcast every day, for several hours, without getting hoarse on a regular basis.

Mike Piazza two-run home run (:40)

My demo begins with a call of one of the most famous home runs in New York Mets history: Mike Piazza’s go-ahead, two-run blast in the eighth inning of the Mets’ 3-2 win over the Atlanta Braves on September 21^st, 2001. The Braves were the Mets’ nemesis for more than a decade; even when the Mets were mediocre, they always played the Braves tough, but Atlanta always seemed to find a way to win. The Mets had won the National League wildcard the previous two seasons, culminating in a World Series defeat at the hands of the Yankees in 2000. At this point in 2001, the Mets were in third place in the NL East, 5 ½ games behind the first-place Braves, and nine games behind the St. Louis Cardinals for the wildcard. It was a night fraught with emotion not just because of the game, but also because it was the first major sporting event New York City since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Mets eschewed their traditional baseball caps for caps honoring the New York Fire Department, New York Police Department and Emergency Medical Service workers. Both teams’ uniforms had small American flags sewed on the back, just above the players’ names. A red, white and blue ribbon was painted onto the Shea Stadium grass.

You could feel a lot of that emotion in my home run call. I thought I did a good job describing the scene immediately before (“Karsay sets at the belt”) and after (“…into the camera bank, just to the left of the 410-foot sign in centerfield”) the homer. But, you can hear my issues with voice modulation and pacing. In between “deep to centerfield” and “Andruw Jones is back” I take a rather noticeable deep breath; it sounded like I was hyperventilating. I did do a nice job of letting the crowd noise tell the story, though.

B.J. Surhoff RBI single (:37)

Broadcasters are taught to begin their play-by-play demo with their best call, a call that will immediately grab the listener. At the time, I thought the Piazza home run call was my best but, upon further review, I think the second call on my demo is better. That call came two days later in another Braves-Mets game, on September 23^rd, 2001. The Mets had beaten the Braves the previous two days, keeping their playoff hopes alive. They were now 3 ½ games behind Atlanta for the division lead, with 13 games to play, but the Philadelphia Phillies were just a half-game back. The Mets entered the ninth with a 4-1 advantage, but saw it evaporate, culminating in a game-tying, RBI single by pinch hitter B.J. Surhoff that I called. I did an even better job of setting the scene in this call (“Braves trying to avert the sweep and stay in first place”). The call of the game action was decent as well and I thought I wrapped things up effectively and succinctly at the end of the call (“so, three times, the Mets were a strike away from winning the game and three times the Braves have been able to keep things alive”). You could hear the disappointment in my voice, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing; unless you’re auditioning to call a game for a national audience, there’s nothing wrong with conveying favoritism for the team you follow the closest, and I was still an unabashed Mets fan at the time. The key is to make sure the favoritism doesn’t morph into blatant rooting.

A grouping of highlights (like Piazza’s home run and Surhoff’s RBI single) often serves as the appetizer on a demo (and, like an appetizer, highlights are often unnecessary) and one’s call of a half inning of baseball action is the main course. Generally, at least two half innings should make their way onto a demo. Ideally, you’d like one to be a half-inning with a lot of action and the other half-inning to be a quick one with minimal action; for my first baseball demo, I simply picked the two half innings I thought sounded the best. For reasons unclear to me now, the first half inning I chose wasn’t a full half inning; it was three of the four batters in the bottom of the second inning of a Boston Red Sox-Yankees game on June 4^th, 2001 (You generally shouldn’t put a partial half inning on your demo; you don’t want the hiring party to wonder why you chose to exclude part of the frame).

Bottom of the second inning, Red Sox @ Yankees 6/4/01 (3:57)

I set the scene well at the start of the inning, giving the runs, hits and errors for both teams and mentioning who’s due up for the Yankees. I also like that I mentioned the inning’s leadoff man, switch-hitter Bernie Williams, was batting lefthanded against Pedro Martinez (it’s a good idea to occasionally mention which side a hitter is batting from; it helps paint the picture). I’m not too crazy about the home run call, mainly because I never mentioned what the outfielders were doing. However, I do like that I knew Williams had homered off Martinez earlier that season. I also liked the background info I had on Henry Rodriguez. I still had a lot of work to do on calling pitches. You should mention where every pitch ended up and, if possible, the type of pitch (e.g., “fastball high and inside”, “curveball drops below the knees”, “off-speed offering in for a strike over the outside corner”).

Listening back to my first demo wasn’t as cringe-worthy as I initially thought it would be. I think I sound like a broadcaster who’s rough around the edges, but has some potential; I can definitely see why my demo attracted the attention of the Yakima Bears, a team in a position to hire broadcasters with little or no baseball play-by-play experience. It still amazes me that I got my career rolling with a rather simple demo created from Major League games I called from the stands. If you would like to hear the rest of the demo, the audio is posted below.

Highlights (:52)

Bottom of the eighth inning, Red Sox @ Yankees 6/4/01 (17:36)

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9/11 & Me: It’s Complicated

A few years ago, I was on a chartered bus with the Binghamton University women’s basketball team, which had just finished playing a road game that I called on the radio. It was already well into the evening and we had a long bus ride home, meaning the bus’s DVD player would get plenty of action. Movies for the bus rides were usually picked by the head coach, with input from the players. I don’t remember exactly how United 93 was chosen for our ride home on this night, but I was excited about the choice initially. I’d heard good things about the film, which was about one of the commercial airliners hijacked on 9/11, the one the passengers were able to disrupt enough so that it didn’t hit its intended target. Instead, it crashed on a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing everyone aboard, but potentially saving thousands of lives.

The lights dimmed as we began our trip. One of the assistant coaches fast forwarded through the previews until she got to the main menu. The opening credits to United 93 started rolling. And, I began to feel uneasy. The uneasiness reminded me of the feeling I used to get as a kid, when I was on a roller coaster as it began its ascent. Do I really want to do this? I thought. However, I wasn’t buckled into a roller coaster, so I quickly pulled out my iPod and put the headphones in my ear. I closed my eyes right as my music started playing and before the opening credits had ended, forcing myself to fall asleep. I never did watch United 93.

*          *          *

There has been a lot said and written about the 9/11 terrorist attacks but, with this being the tenth anniversary, even more has been said and written. Whenever I’ve scrolled through the channel guide on my television over the last couple of weeks, I inevitably see a listing for some 9/11 retrospective. Through Twitter and Facebook, I’ve stumbled upon more than a few newspaper articles, blog posts and podcasts devoted to 9/11. I’m sure many of them tell a good story. Some of them probably have a unique perspective. All of their viewpoints are valid. And, I don’t think this is an instance of media overkill; 9/11 is one of the most important events in US history and should get an inordinate amount of attention.

However, I haven’t read, listened to or watched a single thing commemorating 9/11’s tenth anniversary. I don’t have to. I was there.

Well, I wasn’t there in the sense that I wasn’t at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or on a field near Shanksville. But, I was in New York City on 9/11, about four miles from the World Trade Center. I was working for the Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, as a sports reporter in their New York bureau, which was located in Rockefeller Center. I was the first one to arrive at work that day, minutes after the first plane hit the North Tower. The television was already on, showing the World Trade Center, a graphic at the bottom of the screen explaining that a plane hit one of the towers. But, there was no reason for alarm. I went into the back office to check the wire stories on the crash. It was being treated as an accident; all of the initial stories mentioned a plane that had mistakenly crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945. After a few minutes, I went back into the main office, to see what was happening on television. A plane had just hit the South Tower, they said. Once I heard that, I knew something was up. My hometown was under attack.

It wasn’t long after the second plane hit that all of my co-workers seemed to arrive at once, immediately springing to action. It wound up being a long day, involving lots of phone calls, lots of speculation and few answers. The entire day, I felt like I was in a movie. On several occasions, I found myself pausing for a second and asking myself, Is this really happening? It was, without a doubt, the most surreal day I have ever experienced. When I finally got home late that night, I was exhausted, but I couldn’t fall asleep.

9/11 was an eventful day for me and, since I was closer to Ground Zero than most, my experience tends to pique people’s interest. I don’t shy away from discussing what I witnessed when asked, but I’m not exactly looking to regale everyone I know with my tales from that day, either. And, most of all, I have absolutely no desire to re-live 9/11 by watching or reading about it; it was tough enough scanning a few online articles about 9/11 to verify some things for this post. Even though what I experienced on 9/11 was nothing like war, I feel like a military veteran who’s loath to talk about his combat experiences. My 80-year-old grandfather served in the Korean War, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever heard him discuss it. And every single one of those instances occurred because someone asked him about it.

Part of the reason I rarely choose to re-live 9/11 has little to do with that day and more to do with the aftermath. I’m not from a family of police officers or firefighters and knew very few people with any sort of connection to the World Trade Center, so I didn’t lose any friends or family that day, nor was I close to anyone who was profoundly affected by the attacks. But, I remember walking through Times Square and Midtown Manhattan the days and weeks after 9/11 and seeing walls covered with pictures. They were pictures of people who hadn’t been seen since 9/11. Most of the pictures were on flyers that included the  name and contact information of the person’s loved ones. Sometimes, they included details of where they worked or what they might have been doing in or around the World Trade Center on 9/11. Like a typical New Yorker, I tried to briskly walk by those pictures and pay little attention. But, more often than not, I’d find myself slowing down and reading at least two or three of the flyers. I couldn’t get those faces out of my mind. You could tell most of the pictures were taken during happy and festive occasions; usually the person was smiling, often he or she was wearing formal wear or a bathing suit. Sometimes, I’d walk by while someone was putting up a flyer with a picture of their loved one. Sometimes, that person would be sobbing as he or she posted their loved one’s picture. Sometimes, they would see me staring and would voluntarily tell me about their missing loved one. He was a big baseball fan. She really liked to ride her bike. He’d be loving this weather we’re having right now.

I can’t even put into words the amount of pain I felt for the people who posted these flyers. They knew they would probably never see their loved ones again. They knew it was a million-to-one shot that their loved one was alive and that someone would find them from these flyers. Yet, they were determined to do what they could to keep hope alive, no matter how slim those hopes were. It’s possible they would never truly get closure. I’m sure many were still in denial.

We should never forget what happened on 9/11 and we should make sure future generations understand the importance of that day; someday, I plan on telling my 15-month-old daughter about what 9/11 means to me and what I experienced, just like my parents told me where they were when they learned President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were shot. Millions of lives were affected, and continue to be affected, by 9/11 and everyone’s stories need to be told.

Whenever I think of 9/11, I think of those flyers. Those faces. They’re more powerful reminders of 9/11 for me than any vigil, ceremony, television program, film, newspaper article or magazine feature story ever will be. I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who chose to take part – whether it be actively or passively – in any of the public commemorations of 9/11. I just prefer not to. Whenever I do think about taking part, I get that feeling of going up in a roller coaster again. Maybe one day, I’ll feel strong enough to come along for the ride. But, for now, I’d rather keep my feet on the ground.

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Who Needs Coaches?

The Binghamton Mets’ manager’s office at NYSEG (pronounced “nice egg”, an acronym for the local electric company) Stadium in Binghamton, New York had a 35-inch television hanging from the ceiling in the corner diagonally across from the door. The channel was turned to ESPN, as it generally was in the early afternoon. ESPN was talking about the resurgent Detroit Tigers; under new manager Jim Leyland, the Tigers were not only poised to finish with their first winning record in 13 years, but they were likely to make the post-season as well.

I was sitting in a chair next to the manager’s desk, which was occupied by Juan Samuel, who was in a unique position to talk about the Tigers’ success. Before signing on to manage Binghamton for the 2006 season, Samuel had spent the previous seven years as a coach for the Tigers. The Tigers were dreadful during Samuel’s tenure there; just three years prior, Samuel was on the staff of a Tigers team that lost an AL record 119 games. After the ‘05 season, the Tigers decided to part ways with manager Alan Trammell and the contracts of Samuel and the rest of the coaching staff weren’t renewed.

Samuel told me he wasn’t surprised by the Tigers’ success, that last year’s staff thought they were very close to being a very good team. I asked him if he were bitter or upset that he didn’t get a chance to be a part of that year’s team. He said he wasn’t.

“We had three years [with manager Alan Trammell] to get it done and we didn’t,” Samuel said. “We deserved to be let go.”

I asked Samuel about the 119-loss 2003 season and how much accountability he and the rest of the coaching staff had for that year.

“I can tell you we worked just as hard as every other Major League coaching staff that year,” Samuel said. “We just didn’t get the results we wanted.”

That comment led me and Samuel into a conversation about the role and importance of Major League coaching staffs. Samuel told me that, while coaches and managers can help, talent almost always wins out in the end. So, if you don’t have talented players, you’re going to struggle to win ballgames and if you do have talented players, you won’t struggle as much to win. That’s true regardless of who’s managing or coaching, Samuel told me.

The statistics agree with Samuel. There have been several studies done on the impact of a manager on a Major League team’s success. Most of them concluded that a manager wasn’t worth more than five wins or losses over the course of a season. In other words, the worst possible manager for a team would cost them five wins while the best possible manager would help them win five more games. Since most managers are neither the “best” or the “worst” for a given team, their impact is even smaller. And, the impact of individual coaches much smaller. Ultimately, it comes down to your team’s talent.

I distinctly remember when I knew that Trey Hillman needed to be relieved of his duties as manager of the Kansas City Royals. It was during a particularly rough stretch for the offense and Hillman was asked what the team needed to do to get out of it.

“It’s gotten so bad,” Hillman said, “sometimes, you think about squeezing in the first inning.”

Calling for squeeze plays in the first inning? When has that ever gotten a team out of an offensive slump? There are few things a manager can do tactically to get a team out of offensive doldrums; at the end of the day, the team has to hit its way out of it. The manager’s job in such situations is to instill confidence in his team and not to panic. That doesn’t mean you don’t shake things up to send a message (e.g. changing the lineup, promoting/demoting players), but there’s an art to knowing what to do and when to do it. I think a Major League manager’s main job is to stay out of the way and prevent the team from panicking. If a manager isn’t doing those things, it’s probably time for him to go. And, when Hillman began discussing putting on first-inning squeeze plays, he was getting in the way. He was panicking. And I knew the time had come for him to go; he was fired a few days later.

The Royals were 152-207 in two-plus seasons under Hillman. So, was he just a terrible manager? I think the only way to find out if a manager is any good is to have him manage a team with talent; if he is able to screw up a good team, then he’s probably a lousy manager. Of course, many managers never get an opportunity to manage a talented team, so we may never find out whether they’re any good. I’ve had several baseball people tell me that Buddy Bell (career record as a manager: 519-724) is a great manager but has never gotten a chance with a talented team, hence his poor results. I’ve also had several baseball people tell me that Bob Brenly (career record as a manager: 303-262) was an awful manager who got way too much credit – and a World Series ring – because he always had good players.

With coaches, it can be even trickier to determine whether they’re having an effect or not. Generally speaking, if he’s making players better, then that coach is effective. However, improvement is only a good measuring stick with younger players, since veteran players don’t have as much room for improvement. Also, the pitching coach is the only coach players – in this case, pitchers – have to work with. The infielders and outfielders don’t have to work with the infield and outfield coaches, respectively. The hitters don’t have to work with the hitting coach. Sometimes, the reason a player is struggling is because he isn’t listening to his specific coach, which can be the fault of the player or the fault of the coach or the fault of both; it’s really hard to know, even if you are around a team on a daily basis.

A lot of times with coaches, it comes down to getting to a player at the right time in his career. After several disappointing and injury-plagued seasons with the Royals, Alex Gordon has turned the corner in 2011 and is finally putting up great offensive numbers. Gordon has worked diligently with Royals hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, who certainly deserves some of the credit for Gordon’s success. But, if Seitzer had come across Gordon in his first Major League season, after Gordon had torn up college and the minor leagues, was maybe a little too cocky for his own good and had never suffered a serious injury, would they have worked as well together? Maybe not.

People often think baseball isn’t a “real” job, but it is. It’s a more glamorous job than most, but it’s still a job. And, in any job, success is the result of patience and hard work, but it’s also the result of timing and a little bit of luck. Baseball is no different. Ned Yost, Hillman’s replacement with the Royals, has had a more promising, more talented group of players with which to work than Hillman. There’s a chance Yost’s managerial record with Kansas City will end up looking a lot better than Hillman’s when all is said and done. If Yost does wind up having more success, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a better manager than Hillman. It will mean he had more to work with and joined the Royals at the right time.

Oh, remember Juan Samuel, the former coach for the hapless Detroit Tigers? After managing Binghamton for a year, he got back to the Majors in 2007 as the Baltimore Orioles third base and infield coach. He was with Baltimore for four seasons, even serving as interim manager last year; the Orioles lost over 90 games each year he was there. Now, Samuel is in his first year as the third base and infield coach for the Philadelphia Phillies, who have dominated the National League all season long. Samuel’s poised to get to the post-season for just the second time in his 28 seasons as a Major League player or coach; I guess the Phillies are winning in spite of him.

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