Yankees announcer Michael Kay discusses changes pandemic to cause.
Major League Baseball like we’ve not seen it before begins next week. Players aren’t allowed to spit, they must separate themselves in the dugout, and the stadiums will be empty.
They aren’t the only ones whose jobs may be discombobulated by COVID-19 safety measures.
Team announcers will have no fans to enhance their words at home games and won’t even be on site on the road. By MLB rules, they will have to call away games off monitors.
“Everybody’s working under these same conditions,” said Michael Kay, entering his 19th season at lead play-byplay announcer for Yankees games on the YES Network, “so I’m certainly not going to complain.”
Kay, who said he has never called a game off a monitor, gets his first chance Saturday night when the Yankees face the Mets in an exhibition game at Citi Field. He and analyst David Cone will be at Yankee Stadium, looking at monitors and hoping things sound as smoothly as they do when they’re working telecasts at home.
“Because I started in radio, I never really work off a monitor,” Kay said Thursday. “I always work off the field. That gives me a broader scope of what I’m seeing, where the outfielders are, how they move when a ball is hit.
“The most difficult thing is going to be probably gauging a ball off the bat. The director can show only what the director can show, and sometimes when you’re watching on TV, a ball that looks like it’s well-struck really isn’t. So maybe I’ll have to hang a tick back so I don’t get burned on that.”
Complicating the situation is that the YES production team won’t be permitted to go on the road.
For the first four regular-season telecasts, all of which will be on the road, the network will be at the mercy of the opponent’s production crew.
“I don’t know if the average viewer understands what we’re going to deal with,” Kay said. “Like if I happen to be talking about the bullpen catcher, we’re not going to get a shot of the bullpen catcher. I’ve already been told to do my broadcast and don’t worry about it.
“Each home team’s director and producer have been told that it can’t be home-team centric. Even if we’re doing a game at Yankee Stadium, (director) John Moore and (producer) Bill Boland can’t show the bullpen catcher three times if I’m telling a story about them because it’s not fair to the team we’re playing. It’s going to be a different world. It’s not going to be a team-centric broadcast, at least picture-wise.”
Another obstacle will be preparation before a game. Clubhouses and the field are closed to media.
“There aren’t going to be interviews with any players at all except for the players that the team makes available on Zoom,” he said. “Usually before a broadcast, at least during the week, I’m doing my radio show, so I’ll just monitor what’s being said on Zoom by what people are tweeting out, the guys and gals that cover the team. Meredith (Marakovits , YES Network clubhouse reporter) will get us up to speed, as well. In terms of talking to a player by his locker, that’s not going to happen.”
Kay said he believes he and Cone will call regular-season road games from YES studios in Stamford, Conn. He said it is possible that Ken Singleton or Paul O’neill could be included, but they would contribute from home.
“This is strange,” said Kay, who has covered the Yankees since 1982 as a newspaper reporter, radio analyst and now TV announcer. “It really is. It’s scary. There’s a lot of anxiety involved in it. I don’t know how this is going to turn out. I’m just hoping for the best.”