My Happiest Place

 

My view from right field

Despite the sunshine, today was a fairly chilly day with the temperature hovering in the mid-50s.

But baseball was being played and I was on the air.

Win. Win.

It was my first baseball broadcast since the "rogue" call of the Babe Ruth World Series in Fredericksburg, VA last August. 

It wasn't perfect. Oh, it never is.

I was just happy to be back to the very thing that I love to do.

Fellow broadcasters grumble when they see our setup at Brunswick.

"Why are you calling the game from beyond the right field fence (harrumph!)?" they ask.

If you know the setup of the field, it sort of makes sense, like it or not. We need power for the camera, and there's an outlet on the scoreboard. It also helps me power my computer for my mixer and the Robcasting feed.

Doing it near home plate tightens things up, including my standing in the visitor's on-deck circle and just outside their dugout. We've done it but it also means the camera is shooting through the backstop.

Again, it's not ideal.

We dare to dream about a press box one day and a permanently installed camera but for now it is what it is.

No, the view isn't perfect from right field. It's hard to pick up a variety of things but, as I said to Brunswick's athletic director, a competent announcer is needed to fill in the gaps.

"I hope you guys find one," I said, and we laughed.

But, oh, baseball. The announcer's game. More to the point, the storyteller's game.

I can beat the proverbial dead horse to explain why the sport is so great but I'm not going to convince people (you know, the haters). Even in a game that ended 10-2 (Brunswick won) with 17 walks, two wild pitches, three hit batters, and eight strikeouts, lasting two-and-a-half hours, it was still mostly blissful.

Oh, and there was nearly a decapitated broadcaster. OK, that's extreme, but hear me out.

Remember, I said we were beyond the right field fence.

Loomis Chaffee's first baseman Gabriel Tirado launched a high fly ball to right.

Now, in the several years I've stood out there and called games, I've always been aware of the possibility of a ball getting to me. Obviously, my concern would be that the ball doesn't hit me, the camera, or my equipment.

And now I'm watching this skyscraper heading toward me.

Brunswick right fielder Reed Hyde drifted back to the fence, knowing he would likely run out of room. As the fence is movable, he'd possibly bump into me, the camera, or my equipment.

I continued to call the action. I watched the ball. I glanced at Hyde.

The ball went over my head and hit the scoreboard. A moment later, the ball rebounded to me and clipped off the back of my calf before rolling under the fence where Hyde picked it up.

Tirado also hit a second one later on and I thought for sure it was gone. It was foul. Oops.

A couple of Bruins players came out and got the equipment from me after the game and we laughed about the foul ball. You can laugh when you win. You can also laugh when the ball goes foul, especially since one of the players was the pitcher who gave it up.

The Bruins are 3-0 and I'll see them again this week.

And whatever was wrong with my call doesn't worry me. It's the first game. 

Baseball is back.

And it was also the 27th anniversary of the first time I walked into WGCH. What started as me being a rarely-used fill-in board operator turned into me being the board op of choice and co-hosting shows that I probably didn't belong on and doing anything the station asked me to do before beginning to work on football broadcasts and, yes, getting my chance to do play-by-play.

Now, I'll do play-by-play for basically anyone who asks. 

This game wasn't on WGCH. I've moaned about that enough times to fall on deaf ears.

Out of that came things like LocalLive and, yeah, Robcasting.

That's where I called baseball today and it made me happy.