Radio call-up Wagner paid his dues
Howarth’s successor embraced play-by-play down on the farm
When your first real job is the hot, hard work of baling hay, any diversion is welcome.
For Ben Wagner, the escape from working on his family’s farm in rural New Paris, Ind. — a small, flat town of about 1,500 that sits 55 kilometres south of South Bend — was a baseball game playing on the radio in the background. It was the way the game sounded, the rhythm and the intimacy, that enticed him.
“I first fell in love with it being on the farm and just bouncing around on the fender on a tractor in the fields as a kid,” Wagner said. “That’s where I was really drawn to baseball on the radio. It was an easy entertainment for me, too.”
Now Wagner’s voice is the one on the radio.
He began calling baseball with the Philadelphia Phillies’ Class-A affiliate, the Lakewood BlueClaws, in 2004. Like the players whose afternoons and evenings he chronicled, Wagner moved up through the minor-league system over 14 seasons, the bulk of them spent with the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons, affiliated with the Cleveland Indians and New York Mets before their relationship with the Blue Jays began in 2013.
In March, shortly after the longtime voice of Blue Jays baseball, Jerry Howarth, announced his retirement, Wagner was called up to the big leagues as Howarth’s replacement. He’s working alongside Sportsnet regulars Mike Wilner and Dan Shulman, with a rotating crew of analysts. The 37year-old Wagner said he felt “every emotion” when he received the job offer toward the end of spring training, after weeks of auditions calling Grapefruit League games and the most “stressful fun” he’d ever had. He had been a finalist for other big-league openings without success, and was start- ing to question the process he’d set out for himself back in 2003 — when he went to Major League Baseball’s winter meetings looking for a job, hoping that a minor-league gig would eventually lead to The Show.
“That’s something that I really battled with in the last three or four years,” Wagner said. “I really struggled with: Was I doing the right thing? Was I doing the job the right way? Was I in the right spot? Were all these things supposed to connect? Because guys with less experience, or even really minimal professional baseball experience, were getting major-league jobs and that was really frustrating for me. Really frustrating. That’s what makes all of this even more gratifying.”
Like most Blue Jaysfans, Wagner found out about Howarth’s retirement when the 72-yearold announced it on the Jeff Blair Show in February. About a week earlier, the broadcasters — who have known each other since the Blue Jays and Bisons linked up five years ago — had exchanged emails, with Wagner wishing Howarth safe travels to spring training and no hint of what was to come.
“My jaw hit the floor,” Wagner said of hearing the news. “I was saddened, one, and taken aback because it was such a jarring moment.”
He recalls emailing his future colleagues at Sportsnet 590 The FAN that evening, “essentially saying if there’s a conversation to be had, I’d love to be a part of it.”
Ten days later, he was holding a plane ticket to Florida.
It is in no way lost on Wagner that he is a replacing a legend who called more than 7,500 Blue Jays games — including two World Series championships — and was honoured by the Canadian Baseball Hame of Fame with the Jack Graney Award for lifetime contribu- tions to baseball in this country in 2012.
“And I’m not replacing Jerry, either,” he said. “It’s a role I’m filling. It’s something that’s humbling. It’s overwhelming. It’s very encouraging and exciting all at the same time.”
Howarth — who called Jays games for 36 years — recalled that when he was began searching for a big-league job in the 1970s there were two play-byplay announcers in every radio booth, and today about half the jobs go to former players. It’s a hard industry to break into, but he says Wagner has what it takes: “When someone like Ben puts in (14 seasons) and gets an opportunity, I couldn’t be happier.”
Wagner calls his style “infotainment,” a lively mix of entertaining stories and the game’s big moments.
“If there’s a runner at third and there’s less than two outs in a tie game, I want you to throw the car in park in the driveway and not leave,” he says. “I want you to hear the end of the inning.”