Trail blazing runs in family for announcer
Amelia Schimmel to take over for the late, great Callahan as Oakland’s third PA announcer.
TEMPE, 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 53year 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 Base
ball team, joining the San Francisco 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 problem. 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.
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 a 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 Brooks-Moon 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.