Flemming looking like a keeper in Giants’ booth
Other jobs beckon, but radio man says he isn’t looking to leave S.F.
That 2018 free-agent class in baseball is going to be something: Bryce Harper, Manny Machado and Dave Flemming.
As strange as it seems, because he still looks like he should be seeking prom dates instead of signing new contracts, Flemming is entering his 15th full season in the Giants’ radio booth.
Many fans who love his expertise, sense of humor and repartee with partner Jon Miller express fear that every year will be Flemming’s last with the Giants, that he will move to a grander stage because San Francisco is too small to hold him and national networks would pounce if he decided to leave.
“That’s flattering to hear, but I don’t think they have to worry about that,” Flemming said. “I think I’ll be here for a long, long time.”
Flemming offered that declaration in the kitchen of the Inner Richmond home in San Francisco that he shares with his wife, Jessica, and their three children. They just bought the house and remodeled it.
If Flemming thought he was going to turn his ESPN side work doing baseball and
college sports into a full-time gig, would he have spent that time and money?
“I don’t want to say never,” Flemming said of the possibility he might leave the booth he shares with Miller, “but there’s a gratification that comes with doing the local games that you just do not get doing the national games. As much as I love doing the ESPN stuff, I’ve just fallen in love with doing local baseball.”
At 41, Flemming is a picture of eternal youth. It’s easy to imagine him looking the same two decades ago when he simultaneously completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in classic literature at Stanford.
He loved Homeric poetry long before he loved calling homers, and he read it in Greek.
At 25, with just four seasons of minor-league play-byplay on his resume, Flemming accepted Larry Baer’s offer to replace Joe Angel in the radio booth alongside Miller.
When Flemming was a kid, he listened to Miller do postgame shows while facing backward in the family station wagon as they drove from Orioles games to their home near Washington, D.C.
Now they are one of the most tenured radio teams.
“It’s very hard to believe,” Flemming said. “Fifteen years to me almost sounds like a career. I feel like I’m still getting started, but 15 years is longer than a lot of majorleague broadcasters go.”
Flemming calls about 130 games for the Giants and just signed a three-year deal with ESPN for 70 events a year, mostly baseball and college sports. A new Giants contract is a formality.
Other major-league teams have tried to pry him from the Giants, and why not, with the experience he has had calling big events?
Flemming called Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 715th home run, although nobody heard it because of a suspicious, Nixonian failure of his KNBR microphone. He called every inning of Matt Cain’s 2012 perfect game, too.
Flemming’s voice famously cracked when he excitedly described Edgar Renteria’s World Series-winning home run in 2010, but sounded firm when he announced the Sergio Romo fastball that froze Miguel Cabrera to end the 2012 World Series in Detroit.
He sounds just as comfortable, smooth and witty doing football and basketball, which is why Giants fans fear that he might go national for good.
“He could do it right now,” said Giants television play-byplay man Duane Kuiper. “I’m biased. I don’t hear all the younger guys doing all the sports, but I think he’s the most versatile guy out there. When you turn on a basketball game and Dave’s doing it, he doesn’t miss a beat.”
Flemming’s multiple gigs are symbiotic.
Phil Orlins, the ESPN senior coordinating producer for baseball, said the need to prepare anew every day for baseball is a critical skill that helps Flemming across all sports.
“If you plopped Dave down 15 minutes before a game and said, ‘This is the game you’ve got,’ he would nail it,” Orlins said.
Flemming believes his national baseball work makes him a better Giants broadcaster because of all the information he gleans and the contacts he makes covering other teams.
Flemming traveled 160,000 miles for ESPN last year and 40,000 more with the Giants, a lot of takeoffs and landings for someone who went to Stanford thinking he might follow his father into law and perhaps work on Capitol Hill.
When Flemming told his freshman adviser that he would miss the sports he played and watched in Alexandria, Va., the counselor suggested he try out for the campus radio station. Flemming eventually did play-byplay for Stanford football, basketball and baseball.
Longtime major-league executive Larry Lucchino was an old family friend and running the Padres when Flemming was at Stanford. Flemming accepted an invitation to visit Lucchino in San Diego and was stunned when Lucchino invited him to call an inning on Padres TV.
“Can you imagine a team doing this now?” Flemming said.
He spent a postgrad year at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Broadcasting, which led to a job as the voice and assistant general manager of the Visalia Oaks in the California League.
Assistant GM duties are a bit different in Class A ball: painting, cleaning, moving furniture, administration and worse.
“Our clubhouse guy quit, so I was buying watermelon and peanut butter sandwiches for the players,” Flemming said. “That was back in the first dot-com boom, so all the Stanford kids were making money and founding companies, and I spent my 24th birthday, in 2000, in the Lake Elsinore Hotel and Casino at 2 a.m. washing the players’ uniforms.”
After one year in Visalia, he began a three-year stint broadcasting Triple-A baseball in Pawtucket, R.I.
He was fortunate that Pat Gallagher, the Giants’ longtime marketing executive and president of Giants Enterprises, was part owner of the Oaks.
When Flemming sent a demo CD to the Giants, Gallagher helped push it to the top of the stack. When Lon Simmons announced his retirement after the 2002 season — he was doing weekends only by then — Baer hired Flemming and three others to split Simmons’ games in 2003.
Flemming’s second game was Kevin Millwood’s nohitter against the Giants in Philadelphia, which he called alongside Angel. By the end of that season, Baer offered Flemming — then just 26 — a full-time job to replace Angel.
“I was scared when the Giants hired me full time,” Flemming said. “Even those fill-in games. I thought this is the worst possible scenario. I’m working with the best people in the business, and I’m going to sound like an idiot. I’m next to Jon and Duane, and I’m going to sound like a buffoon.
“It was the exact opposite. It was the best thing for me. They carried the broadcasts in my early years. I didn’t have to. All I had to do was be solid, say the score and be likable. They were so established, so comfortable in their own careers and places in the game, they were fully supportive. There was no jealousy. Nothing.”
The older broadcasters took to Flemming because he came prepared and understood how not to step in Miller’s way. As Kuiper put it, “It took us about five seconds to realize this kid was going to be the real deal.”
Miller’s respect for his young partner was never more evident than in 2012. The prearranged schedule had Flemming calling the 10th inning of any postseason game. When the Giants took a 4-3 lead in the top of the 10th in Game 4 of the World Series at Detroit, Flemming offered to let Miller call the bottom half and the potential clinching because Flemming thought the “voice of the Giants” should have that opportunity.
Absolutely not, Miller responded. It was Flemming’s inning and Flemming’s call.
After 15 years, Miller and Flemming sound like two fellows sitting in a den at home laughing through a ballgame while letting the fans back home know what is happening.
“I hope it sounds that way, because that’s who we are,” Flemming said. “First and foremost, we’re buddies.”
Who are not going to be separated anytime soon.
Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hschulman@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @HankSchulman