Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Severino: ‘It’s a new challenge’
Broadcasters are navigating oddity of calling road games remotely
In one of the Miami Marlins’ two exhibition games at the Atlanta Braves this week, there was a misplayed fly ball in right field. Paul Severino, the Marlins’ play-by-play voice on Fox Sports Florida, joked that he wished he could tell the audience it was an abrupt gust of wind that caused Garrett Cooper to let it drop.
He couldn’t because he wasn’t there at Truist Park.
While it wasn’t a serious excuse he floated for Cooper’s error, there will be some gray areas that Severino and color analyst Todd Hollandsworth have to maneuver around when describing the Marlins on-field action to their viewers.
The broadcasters, in their third season together, will not travel with the Marlins for road games in the 60-game season as a precaution during the coronavirus pandemic. Getting their first two cracks at calling an away game from their “den” setup at Marlins Park on Tuesday and Wednesday in exhibitions, they’ll begin in earnest on Friday night when Miami plays at the Philadelphia Phillies in their opener at 7 p.m..
“It’s different. It’s fun. It’s a new challenge,” said Severino in a phone interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “The second one was easier than the first, and the hope is that the first regular-season game will be all right, and then the second one will get easier and on and on it goes.”
Hollandsworth, who played 12 big-league seasons, is appreciative of getting to be part of the action regardless of the circumstances, after the scare of possibly being without baseball this year.
“The new normal is not normal, and I think we’ve all kind of embraced this system that we have to play by,” he said. “The human element is that we’re all experiencing a new world right now. We’ve gone into this with open eyes, open ears to what’s in front of us and what’s going to work.”
When the Marlins play at home, Severino and Hollandsworth will get to watch the field from their usual booth, albeit at a safe distance from one another and separated by plexiglass.
Once the Marlins hit the road, that’s when the broadcasters go to the spacious den that’s near their booth at Marlins Park. Severino notes difficulties from catching bullpen action to identifying defensive changes or even the elements like an imminent rain delay when scanning various monitors instead of having the field right in front of his eyes, but it helps to revert back to something he learned early in his broadcasting career.
“Whatever’s on the television screen, the monitor next to you, is whatever someone’s seeing at home, so you still need to have a connection with that,” he said. “You might see something crazy going on in right field, but if the director doesn’t take that shot, you wouldn’t necessarily mention it until it’s on the screen.”
Then, there’s the challenge of adequately matching the magnitude of a moment with the energy of a call when there are no fans in the stands to reciprocate the atmosphere. They ran into such an instance when the Braves’ Matt Adams hit a walk-off home run on Tuesday night.
“Normally, in that ballpark, 30,000 people would be going bonkers, there would be every person in a Braves uniform dogpiling him at home plate, and that was not allowed to happen,” Hollandsworth said. “I know it’s an exhibition game and that probably wouldn’t have happened in an exhibition game, but I do know that we’re going to have walk-offs this year that are going to be celebrated differently.
“We’ve taken some of that emotion out of the game, and it’s on us to, Paul and I, to bring it back as best we can through the television set.”
The broadcasters are also adjusting in developing the same relationships with players and coaches, unable to chat with them one-onone in the clubhouse or batting cage before games to get valuable insight to use on the broadcast.
Preparation for the season was also altered. Had the normal schedule played out, Severino and Hollandsworth would’ve researched AL West opponents this year, but the shortened season will keep the Marlins facing the AL East and divisional rivals in the NL East.
Given that fans won’t be able to attend Marlins games and the unique circumstances of the season, Severino and Hollandsworth feel an added value to broadcasting games.
“It’s, hopefully, more excitement,” Severino said. “From a fan’s perspective, more hunger for just seeing baseball and seeing live sports again. That’s our responsibility. We’re excited to be working again. We’re excited to be calling games, seeing baseball again, and we just have to make sure that that excitement bleeds through.”