Baker isn’t ready to bring his career in for a landing
Dan Baker was 25 when he showed up at Veterans Stadium to work his first Phillies game as a public address announcer. First, though, Bill Giles would make another assignment. See what you can do, Giles would say, to add some fanfare to the pregame show.
“Kiteman,” Baker recalls.
A showman as much as a baseball executive, a ticket-seller as much as a team builder, a fun gentleman with a sense of business and humor, Giles wanted an enthusiastic, young voice for the newer ballpark, so who better than Baker, once a hype man for — don’t you know — Buddy Wagner’s Mustang Hell Drivers?
“It was a daredevil show that played around state and county fairs in New England,” Baker would recall, more than half a century later. “One time we performed before Evel Knievel jumped something like 20 buses. I also announced for Benny Koske, the Human Bomb. The Phillies wanted someone who could heighten excitement, so that’s what I did.”
So there he was, the
Vet microphone in his face and Giles at his back, encouraging enthusiasm for the home opener. Fortunately, Baker didn’t believe in omens.
“Paul Callahan was one of the Phillies’ sales directors at the time, and he was up there in center field with Kiteman,” Baker said. “I make the announcement: ‘Ladies and gentleman, here he comes, the man with the first ball of the 1972 baseball season, Kiteman!’ And I don’t know if he was reluctant or nervous or what, but he decided against it.”
At that time, Giles was in charge of business operations, and was having none of that, not with 38,182 assembled gawkers having been promised a stuntman hanging onto an over-sized kite while plunging from the far upper deck to the mound.
Introduce him again, urged Giles, who later would come to run the franchise. So just as he would have hyped Buddy Wagner, Baker picked it up a notch.
“I said, ‘Here he comes!” Baker said. Again, nothing.
“Bill was on a walkietalkie, and he kept saying, ‘He has to do it,’” Baker said. “He said,
‘Give him a little push.’”
Finally, Kiteman took off, skidded for about 100 feet and crashed into the center field seats, an appropriate foreshadowing of the Phillies’ 5997 season. Ever the professional, Baker had only one way to go at that point. “Ladies and gentleman,” he would bellow, “how about a big hand for Kiteman?”
Hours later, the thrillseekers would be disappointed in the Phillies’ 5-4 loss to the Cardinals, yet due to the stadium’s new voice, would have been convinced that at least some guy wearing a kite had given it 100 percent.
That’s all Baker ever promised Giles, 100 percent. For that, he endured as the voice steaming from the sound systems of two ballparks, through 50 years, five
World Series and too many nights that ended with the home team blowing up like Benny Koske.
Times have changed since 1972, but Baker never has. So that will be him, enthusiastically introducing “Nick Castellanos!” and the rest of a lineup the Phillies believe can be among baseball’s most entertaining when another season opens with an April 8 visit from the Oakland A’s.
Baker will cherish that moment, as he long has considered reaching his 50th season as a reflection of his dedication. Technically, the 2021 season was his 50th, but he was too professional to see it that way. That’s because in the pandemicshortened season of
2020, health issues had limited him to a handful of preseason games. So,
to him, Year 50 is ready for takeoff.
“I guess you could say it was a dream that I wished could happen,” he said. “But when you are first starting, you are just concerned about getting in there and doing a good job and lasting until the next year and hopefully continuing beyond that and to wherever it would lead.
“At that point, I wasn’t thinking in terms of 50 years.”
Baker never had a contract, just an understanding that as long as he kept showing up, projecting enthusiasm and properly pronouncing names like Kent Tekulve, he could come back the next year and do it again.
“I’ve just always loved baseball, loved sports, and loved being at the ballpark every night,” said Baker, who worked all 81 games last season.
“What a thrill. I am 75. It’s been a wonderful ride and one that can continue for several years to come.”
Unofficially, Baker is the third-longest tenured PA address announcer in major-league history behind Pat Pieper, who worked Cubs games for 59 years until 1974, and Bob Sheppard, the voice of Yankee Stadium from 1951 through 2007. That puts him in position to stalk the record.
“If God blesses me with good health and if the Phillies will have me and if I can still perform at a high level, I’d need another 10 more years,” he said. “So if all of those things line up, I’d be honored to make a run at it.”
He won’t even need a little push.