Voice of the Fuego no easy task
When I had a chance to sit down with the late Stu Walker not long before his passing, he told me there’s one thing every public address announcer needs to remember when speaking into a live microphone.
I’m paraphrasing here, but he basically said the worst thing they could do was overtalk.
“People don’t want play by play,” he said. “If they did, they’d be listening to the radio.”
Don’t overtalk, no play by play. Got it. I had the giant voice of the Lobos and Isotopes rattling around my brain bucket before making my PA debut at Thursday’s Fuego baseball game at Fort Marcy Ballpark. It was a gig I halfheartedly volunteered for when general manager Yvonne Encinias told me during spring training that they had yet to find any takers for the post.
Through the years, the team has had some decent voices. There was the one who had a habit of nicknaming players as the game went along and the one who objected to The New Mexican’s own annoying habit of hanging an “F” out the window of the press box every time he used the word “fine” to describe a play. The record that year was 21.
It seemed simple enough. I’ve been in this business long enough that I’d done my fair share of radio and TV spots. The open mic doesn’t scare me, nor does the idea of speaking in front of large groups of people.
Besides, this was hardly the 18,000 Walker entertained in the hey day of The Pit and nothing at all like the 10,000-plus he would frequently speak to at Isotopes Park.
By my count there were 43 people in the park when I was given a 10-second tutorial on how to run the sound system by Fuego scorekeeper Moni Rivera.
“Slide this switch up and the mic is on,” she said. “The thing over here is your volume. You don’t really need to worry about that.”
While it was Walker’s voice I heard in my head, it was Jim Brockmire’s delivery I was picturing in my mind. The fictional PA man for the Morristown Frackers in Brockmire would feel right at home in the Pecos League, an indie league held together by spit and duct tape.
In truth, I had flashbacks to the days of yore when I was handed a bullhorn and told to introduce my kids’ flag football team in a church league back home. Every week I’d tap into my inner Vin Scully and share a sentence or
two about each player. Within a couple of games it had become a 30-second intro for each kid, one with made-up tales that were so far off center that the league asked my to do it full time for every team.
I went into that night at Fort Marcy thinking it would be easy to rattle off a few words about every player before each at bat.
“Now batting for the Fuego, centerfielder Matt Haskins,” I’d say. “For breakfast he eats bowls of rusty nails and for pregame warmups he pushes giant boulders up the Sangre de Cristos.”
Yeah, not so easy. Baseball moves faster than you think and I learned fairly quickly that people would rather hear the walk-up songs than commentary from the faceless PA guy. No one appreciated the tidbit about first baseman David Stone being the resident musician or that pitcher Ed Brandsema claimed to have eaten 43 hot wings in one sitting.
While some laughed when I reminded fans to visit the concession stand where every alcoholic beverage was on sale, it was apparent not everyone appreciated a good joke.
“It’s Thursday, which means every single alcoholic beverage is $3 off,” I said, channeling the cheesiest baritone voice possible. “In case you’re scoring at home, our beer is cheaper than our water. Have fun with that.”
They did seem to enjoy the play-by-play during the kids’ fun run around the bases in the fourth inning which, I found out later, was actually supposed to happen in the fifth. They also liked finding out that outfielder Erick Magee claims to be the nephew of Will Smith and shortstop Aaron Stubblefield has a dog named after Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez in The Sandlot.
It was that surname that threw me off when introducing Garden City’s Ray Hernandez. While telling Moni how much I like that movie, I accidentally called him Ray Rodriguez. I knew immeditately I’d butchered it when he stepped out of the batter’s box and looked around.
“My bad, Ray,” I announced. “I was thinking of The Sandlot.”
The biggest forehead-slapping moment came late in the game when birthday girl Kate Shuler came to the press box to have the fans sing to her on her seventh birthday. With Encinias propping her up on the sound system next to me, I proudly introduced her as Sarah — her mom’s name.
My bad, Kate. I have no excuse other than it was your mom who was standing right behind me making me nervous. It’s her fault because, as Brockmire might say, it’s easier to blame someone else than take accountability yourself.
Somewhere Walker was shaking his head.