Oakland A’s Spanish announcer Amaury Pi Gonzalez (left) and former A’s announcer Evelio Mendoza (right) were a broadcast duel during the A’s glory years of 1988-1990 (photo from Amaury Pi Gonzalez)

Back to the Future: FOX to Pump Crowd Noise

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

Talking from personal experience. During a recent interview with Joe Buck of Fox Sports said the network will use artificial crowd noise during games with no fans, old stuff comes back, because this has been done decades ago. Although with a high degree of technology nowadays, this method was used decades ago. When a baseball team didn’t want to send me on the road, to call the games because of budgetary reasons. I got permission to call the games from the radio station studios. This was done with the teams express permission; I also called games with “crowd noise” for television.

But it was not only on the radio. In the 1990’s when I was sports anchoring during the 6PM newscast at Telemundo CH 48 San José, Joe Cruz was the General Manager and he had the station build a set, especially for the games that we were going to broadcast on the road for the Oakland Athletics. The set had the colors of the team ‘green and gold’. If the A’s were in Baltimore, we would get the lineups via FAX. I would have the lineup and be ready for the game.

There will be a green screen behind and the moment we got the feed from the A’s regular flagship TV station we would be “on”. I needed a partner so I called Erwin Higueros, now with the Giants (who had his start with me on the radio) and we called a handful of away games from the Telemundo studio in San José, This was years before Telemundo was bought by NBC/Comcast and became a much bigger station with a much larger audience because the proliferation of the Hispanics in the Bay Area. As of today (prior to the US Census that was to take place this year) approximately 2 million Hispanics make their home here in the nine-county Bay Area.

But even way before that, I called games for radio from the radio studios, when the team was on the road. Evelio Areas Mendoza was my broadcast partner in the 1980’s on KNTA 1430AM Santa Clara. We would be at the main studios at the radio station at that time we will call the city where the team was playing, directly to the media person connection to get the lineups hours before the game. There was a “continuous cartridge with crowd noise” that would run during the whole game, sometimes it was not synchronized with the action on the field, so it was a little odd. For example, a player of the opposite team to the A’s will hit a home run and the crowd noise behind the call would not coincide with the sound. Nevertheless, the job was done. The games were called live from the studio when the team was on the road.

Everything has been done in sports broadcasting, really. If you like to adventure into the past. Ronald Wilson Reagan 40th President of the United States re-created baseball games. Reagan was a sportscaster for several radio stations between 1932 and 1937. This was more of an acting job, since he had to read the “baseball wire”, first read each play and then bring it alive with his imagination on the radio.

If there is a season this year, FOX Network will use “crowd noise” behind the games that would be played at empty stadiums. Not a surprise and nothing really new, maybe millenniums think that is cool and “new” but they will find it easy to research that this is really, old stuff.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez does News and Commentary each week and catch Amaury’s podcasts Tuesdays at http://www.sportsradioservice.com