Amelia Schimmel ready to take PA mic.
For new PA announcer Schimmel, trailblazing runs in the family
TctPc, ARIZ. >> Amelia Schimmel used to spend home games seated next to PA announcer Dick Callahan. Now, she’ll slide over one seat and take the mic.
Of course, Schimmel’s ascent to become Oakland’s third PA announcer in the organization’s 53-year history is not as simple as a chair slide. Not only will she take over for the late, great Callahan, who passed away this January after 15 years lending his booming voice to the Oakland Coliseum, the 33-year-old will be the third woman PA announcer for a Major League Baseball team, joining the Giants’ Renel Brooks-Moon and the New York Mets’ Marysol Castro.
The new job is a dream for Schimmel, an Oakland native who watched hundreds of A’s games at the Coliseum with her family. Admittedly, it’s a dream she didn’t even know she had.
“I’d be lying if I thought, ‘Hey, I really want to be a PA announcer’ when I grew up, because I didn’t even think it was a possibility,” Schimmel said. “And that’s, I think, the prob
lem. Growing up in the Bay Area I watched Renel, I was always inspired by her. But there were never a ton of women doing this.”
Becoming part of history might not have been Schimmel’s long term goal — all she knew from a young age is that she just wanted to work in baseball. But shattering glass ceilings is certainly in her blood.
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In 1965, Gertrude Schimmel became the New York Police Department’s first female sergeant. The accomplishment came after a three-year courtroom battle that went all the way to the New York State Court of Appeals. Schimmel, an overnight policewoman, became disillusioned by laws that only allowed men to become superior officers. So, she and a colleague, Felicia Shpritzer, sued the NYPD. They won.
Well before Amelia was born, her grandmother served as sergeant, lieutenant and an NYPD captain.
But to Amelia, Gertrude the trailblazing NYPD captain was just granny and, for a time after college on the East Coast, a roommate who’d spend nights out playing poker until four in the morning.
It wasn’t until after Gertrude’s death in 2015 that Amelia internalized her grandmother’s impact.
“Anna Quindlen, the
Pulitzer Prize winner and novelist wrote about her once and said that she had a voice that could crack rocks,” Schimmel said. “She had this grisly voice. I thought about that when I got this job, it’s so funny.”
But Schimmel’s voice is anything but grisly or gravely. It’s smooth, and already blends into the familiar baseball sounds that ricochet through the ballpark. For the first time, fans get to hear it as she announces A’s at Hohokam Stadium this spring.
Schimmel dipped her toes into the job last year, during the truncated 60game season. As the A’s executive producer of ballpark entertainment since 2017, Schimmel was always by Callahan’s side during home games in the control room. When Callahan decided to sit out the 2020 season as a health precaution, it was only natural for Schimmel to slide over and take the mic.
In a way, Schimmel is grateful that her first taste of the job happened in small doses. Only cardboard cutouts, the players and media heard her live. But Callahan and BrooksMoon could hear her over the telecast. Callahan texted her advice.
“Last season he’d call me and text me and say, ‘You’re doing a great job’ and ‘slow down’ and all sorts of constructive advice,” Schimmel said.
Brooks-Moon would text her support, too. She’s been advising Schimmel before
the 2021 season begins.
“My first reaction was, ‘And now there are three!’” Brooks-Moon said in a message. As the first woman to be a PA announcer for a MLB team, Brooks-Moon feels a responsibility to help out the ones that follow.
“It was a very lonely road for me until then,” she said. “For both Marysol and Amelia, I want to be for them the woman that I did not have for advice and support. I welcomed her into our three woman exclusive club! And I told her she is now my “baseball daughter.”
Brooks-Moon has been the PA announcer for the San Francisco Giants since the team moved to their new digs at Third and King in 2000. She was the only woman in the role until the Mets hired Castro in 2018. Before that, BrooksMoon was a longtime radio voice in the Bay area, working the waves at KMEL, KFRC and KISS FM before coming to the Giants, taking over for Sherry Davis. With 20 years experience, she knows how to lend her voice to a game.
“The advice I gave her is the advice I’ve given all whom I’ve mentored throughout my career: Be your genuine, authentic self,” Brooks-Moon said. “Fans and listeners respond to that. Pick and choose your moments in terms of what level of energy you give to your delivery. Let the game action and fan energy be your guide. But she knows exactly what to do based on her softball career, being a lifelong A’s and baseball fan and having worked at MLB Network. She’s way more qualified than I was, quite frankly. I’m thrilled for her and proud of her.”
Schimmel isn’t trained for this job — Brooks-Moon wasn’t, either. But she’s realizing quickly how much works goes into saying a name. She’s working with a voice coach and watching plenty of instructional YouTube videos about how to manage her breath and preserve her voice.
“It’s now an instrument that I didn’t even know I really needed to take care of,” Schimmel said. “Staying hydrated, all of that really matters now.”
One thing she knows well is how to rise and fall with the waves of a baseball game.
The Coliseum was a second home growing up. She remembers watching Eric Byrnes taking the scenic route to fly balls in the outfield. She was there for Game 162 in 2012, where the A’s rallied for four runs late and Josh Hamilton dropped a fly ball to let the A’s take first place for one, most important day.
In her years working at MLB Network, she worked with Byrnes but had to suppress her fandom. Now, still working in baseball for her favorite team, she gets to help narrate the moments that shaped her love of the game.