Public address role at Coliseum suits her just fine
When Amelia Schimmel was growing up in Oakland, she and her sister, Joanna, were regulars at the Coliseum, massive A’s fans who got the shivers listening to publicaddress announcers Roy Steele and, after the “Voice of God” retired, Dick Callahan.
Now, Schimmel, 33, is subbing for Callahan, her friend and mentor, while he sits out the season for health reasons. During Monday’s exhibition game against the Giants, the A’s executive producer of ballpark entertainment became the first woman to handle the microphone duties at the Coliseum.
“I was practically born at the Coliseum. My parents were huge fans, diehard,” Schimmel said. “I thought this was a dream come true getting the executive producer job but then
this happened — I didn’t realize how cool this could be. My A’s fandom has really given me everything in life. It’s my whole world. It revolves around sports.”
Callahan will be back next season, and Schimmel has no desire to usurp him. She’s among his biggest fans.
“Nothing replaces him, obviously,” she said. “Dick did give me pointers, and he’s such a good person. He called and said, ‘You did a fantastic job.’ I know how hard it is for him not to come in this season and he was so sweet about it. He said, ‘Your voice sounded great on the broadcast.’ I think he’s trying to let me know he approves and that support is really, really appreciated.”
The A’s received numerous inquiries about the position when Callahan stepped aside for the season, but in order to adhere to MLB’s safety protocols, the decision was made to fill the job internally, with someone already designated a “Tier 3” employee. Schimmel realized that she was the only one who wasn’t already doing necessary tasks throughout games.
“I said, ‘I’ll do it!’ ” she said.
“There are other people here with great voices but they all have roles in the control room, and my team is such a welloiled machine with everybody working together to make the games happen, so I said, ‘Let’s try this out, and if I’m not too distracting, we’ll keep doing it.’ ”
The A’s might use Callahan to record a few announcements for games, and they’re still considering adding some celebrity voices to the mix. But the bulk of game duty will fall to Schimmel, who has not had any previous PA experience, nor has she worked as a broadcaster or had vocal training.
Schimmel did spend eight years as a production assistant and segment producer at MLB Network and has worked in the A’s control room for three years. On Monday, she sounded like a longtime pro, with a strong voice and smooth timing.
“I thought she did great,” A’s outfielder Mark Canha said via text. “She’s a natural and has a really good voice for it!”
“I heard through the grapevine that she would be on the PA. I was very pleased!” said Giants PA announcer Renel BrooksMoon. “The only other female PA voice I’ve ever heard is my dear friend Marysol Castro with the Mets. How cool was it to have two women on the mike in both Bay Area ballparks on backtoback nights?”
Schimmel said she also considers BrooksMoon an influence, going all the way back to BrooksMoon’s days at KISSFM, and Schimmel hopes to meet her at some point.
“I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have more women in roles across the league, not just PA, but you saw the Giants have a woman coach, Alyssa Nakken. That was great. When you work in baseball, you notice how few more women there are and you’d like to see more, but you see people one by one breaking these barriers.”
No one who knows Schimmel is surprised she’s doing what she’s doing at the Coliseum. Among other things, she played on the boys’ baseball team at College Prep in Oakland for two years before starting the school’s first softball team.
“I never thought twice about doing something that a guy was doing,” she said. “If people assumed women couldn’t do it, it didn’t really faze me — but I realize the context for everyone else who isn’t used to seeing it and I know how cool it is for girls to see. If I’d grown up hearing a woman on the PA or seeing a woman coaching, I would have been even more inspired.”
The Schimmel sisters are both making their marks in Bay Area sports. Joanna, who is 2½ years younger, is the Sharks’ manager of media relations and broadcast operations. The family members joke they need to adopt another sibling to work for the Warriors.
“It’s so much fun. We both grew up huge sports fans and played sports our whole lives,” Joanna Schimmel said. “To both come back to the Bay Area after college and work for teams we grew up rooting for is so exciting. It’s nice for my mom (Sydney), too — she gets to see us at games she would have been going to anyway.”
Amelia Schimmel knows the PA mike is hers only temporarily, but she’ll enjoy it while she can.
“I’m not here to replace Dick, but to make sure the batters know the order until he gets back,” she said “For three years, I’ve gotten to see how Dick does what he does and now I have a newfound appreciation for him, because it’s not easy. He says the fans don’t buy tickets to listen to him, he doesn’t want to stand out — so that’s my goal here, too.”