Sutter Health Field, West Sacramento (AAA #11, MLB #10B - THIS ... is Baseball on the Radio)

 

Baseball play-by-play announcers, particularly those on radio, are an important part of the game, more so than in any other sport.

If I have to drive somewhere, there is no better way to fill the time than to have a baseball game, any baseball game, on the car radio. I think it’s the pace of baseball that makes it perfect for radio. The announcers have time to describe the play as it happens, and good announcers can do it in a way that gives the listener the ability to visualize what’s happening. Furthermore, although there may be all sorts of people running around (baserunners, fielders going after the ball, throws, more throws, …), a good announcer can figure out who made the crucial good or bad play, not just the obvious things, but if a runner was aggressive or indecisive, or an infielder was not in the right place at the right time for a cut-off throw (more on that later). And the nature of the game, with the pause between pitches, and between batters, gives the announcer time to explain that. In a close game, those breaks provide time to discuss the strategy going on. Or, if it’s not close, there is time to weave a story, and the best announcers are masters at story-telling. Moreover, players and even managers change, but many play-by-play announcers stay with the same team for years.

Why am I talking about radio announcers? We went to tonight’s game in Sacramento with my friend Dan Cavanagh, whose career included Spring Training baseball play-by-play, among other radio jobs. Not surprisingly, Dan has a radio voice. I’ve only gone to a couple of games with Dan, but we often talk baseball, and I love talking about the art of announcing with him, and an announcer’s perception of various players and announcers. Furthermore, he's got one of those qualities of good play-by-play announcers that I admire the most. He's a great story-teller. That makes is a great way to spend an evening.

So some thoughts about baseball play-by-play.

Baseball’s perfect for radio, but football is a sport that is perfect for television, and I think it’s not a coincidence that the popularity of football soared in the 1960s with the rise of instant replay. Maybe a savvy football fan can watch a game and understand, in real time, which defensive back missed a coverage that allowed the receiver to be open, but I think it’s a lot harder, with 22 players active for a play that only lasts a few seconds, to see what’s going on. I spent a few years as a sportswriter, and covered a lot of high school football, and I remember one successful coach who, when I would ask him after the game how he’d felt about the way his team played, no matter how I asked the question, would always say, “I’ll have to look at the film to see how we played.” If someone as good as him has to look at the film to understand how his team played, how am I supposed to understand it?

Ice hockey is a game I love to watch in person or on TV. I don’t know enough hockey to see why a play develops the way it does, but unlike football, I do know people who can watch a hockey game and see the things happening away from the puck that are going to be important a few seconds later. But listening to a radio broadcast of an ice hockey game is effective only in that I know if something big happens at the time that it happens. The only hockey announcer I really liked listening to was Dan Kelly, and I noticed that the game seemed much less chaotic when he was announcing than when watching it, because he tended not to say anything if the puck was loose at center ice. Dan Cavanagh spent a period of time broadcasting volleyball, a sport he wasn’t particularly familiar with, and got the advice to limit the amount of detail he tried to describe. I think that’s what Dan Kelly was great at.

But a good baseball radio broadcast is sublime. There is even a Wikipedia page about the history of baseball on the radio.

I think my favorite baseball play-by-play man ever was the late Vin Scully, who moved with the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, and continued to broadcast games until just a few years ago. I always thought that one of the perks of having a meeting in Los Angeles was getting to listen to Vin Scully (Dan C. says he’s a wonderful gentleman, too).

I also thought Jack Buck was fantastic. That is partly because he was the Cardinals’ lead play-by-play announcer when we lived in St. Louis, but I’d adopted the Cardinals before I moved to St. Louis, in large part because of Jack Buck.

On the other hand, I really disliked Harry Caray. He’s a legend in Chicago, but he spent years in St. Louis first. I remember watching a Cardinals’ game on TV as a 10-year-old, when televised baseball was still a rare occurrence, and Harry Caray was calling it, and I thought that while his descriptions were dramatic, they didn’t necessarily coincide with the video I was seeing.

Actually, I think the Harry Caray/Jack Buck dynamic is one of the reasons why I became a Cardinal fan instead of a Cub fan. In 1963, I moved to a town in Illinois that was split between Cardinal and Cub fans (there was also one White Sox fan in town, but he doesn’t count). At first, I tended to root for the Cardinals, probably in part because my dad had been a Cardinal fan growing up, and in part because they had a great team. But within a couple of years, I was rooting for the Cubs when the two played. A decade later, I was rooting for the Cardinals, and then when I moved to St. Louis a few years later, the deal was sealed. But why had my allegiances switched back and forth? Years later, I realized that it coincided with Harry Caray. When I first got to Illinois, he was doing Cardinal games, and I soon became a Cub fan. Within a couple of years of him moving to Chicago, I became a Cardinal fan again. It didn’t hurt that his move to Chicago meant that Jack Buck was the lead play-by-play announcer in St. Louis.

As I said, play-by-play announcers are a part of the game.

The venue:

I’ve really enjoyed the three AAA parks we’ve seen this week (we were in Las Vegas and Reno earlier). Las Vegas is the newest, and feels it (in a good way), but Reno and Sacramento have classic downtown ballparks with great views. The picture is of the setting sun hitting the towers of a bridge over the Sacramento River.

However, it doesn’t feel like a major league park, even though it will be one for the next three or four years. The Athletics are moving from Oakland to Sacramento for 2025 through 2027, with an option for 2028, while Las Vegas builds them a new stadium. But Sutter Health Park’s capacity just over 14,000 people, and has only 10,624 fixed seats (the rest of the capacity is the grass seating area in the outfield. The next smallest MLB park seats 25,000, and no other MLB team has grass seating, although many AAA teams do. It will be interesting to see how it works.

The game:

Sacramento (San Francisco’s top farm team) beat Tacoma (Seattle) 4-2. Tacoma’s pitcher, Jhonathan Díaz, was outstanding, giving up only one run, while pitching into the 6^th inning, but Sacramento scored three runs with two outs in the 8^th inning to win it. The  most interesting play was Sacramento’s final run. With a tie game and runners on first and third base, the hitter lined one into right field for a clear hit. The right fielder hustled over to get the ball before it could bounce to the wall, and we all knew what the outcome was going to be: the runner on third scores, the runner on first goes to third, and the batter gets a single and ends up on first base. But it didn’t end up that way. The runner from first scored, too.

Minor league baseball isn’t like the majors, where you can find a video on the web of every play that’s even remotely interesting, but Dan and I discussed it, and if I saw it right, here’s what happened. The right fielder made the same assumption that all of us in the stands made, and just lobbed the ball in to second base to make sure that the batter didn't go any further than first base. But the runner who had started at first, Brett Sabol, was pulling in to third as the throw drifted toward second, and either Sabol or the third-base coach realized that there was an opportunity. So Sabol accelerated around third, sprinted toward home, and slid in just ahead of the tag. The right fielder probably threw to the right base, but should have either made a stronger throw, so that whoever took the throw would have had more time to throw to the plate when Sabol made his dash, or should have paid more attention to Sabol, and perhaps thrown toward home, where there should have been someone 40 or 50 feet in front of the plate, probably the first baseman, who could see all the runners and catch the throw (“cut it off”) if the runners stayed where everyone expected them to, or let it go through if Sabol was running. In any case, it was great baserunning, because Sabol took advantage of a subtle mistake. But in a low-scoring game, a subtle play can make a lot of difference.