(@JessieSanchezMLB file photo 2012) Oakland A’s Spanish broadcaster and author of That’s Amaury’s News and Commentary Amaury Pi Gonzalez (left) and Manolo Hernandez Douen bring you live A’s action from the Oakland Coliseum on 1010 KIQI San Francisco
Broadcasting Road Games from Home
That’s Amaury News and Commentary
By Amaury Pi-González
OAKLAND–This season the major league teams will not travel, all 30 of them. The road games will be broadcasted from the city where the visiting team resides, i.e. if the A’s are playing in Seattle, the A’s radio and television announcers are calling the game from Oakland. It could be from the park, or from the radio or television studios. Maybe a new experience for some of my younger colleagues.
Through the years I have done many games from home when my team was on the road. Sometimes at the baseball park inside the booth where the home games are done, many other times, (years ago) from the main radio studios.
Nowadays, it is probably easier, because of social media, you can have the lineups and all the stats you need to call a game in the palm of your hands on your smart-phone. But that was not the case before social media.
I remember if the team was away and I was at home (and I do not mean my house) but the park where my team played or at the radio station of my team. I would have to call the city where the team was playing and talk to a team media-relations person who would dictate to me the lineups, and some of the information I needed. Later when FAX machines ‘came about’, it became easier for me, since I would call the media person and request he/she fax me the game’s lineups as well as the team notes.
Imagine yourself sitting in front of your television, with a microphone that goes directly to the radio and it is live. This is what announcers do when they are “recreating” from the studio when they are not traveling with a team.
Here is a memory from years ago….a broadcast of the Oakland A’s from the Oakland Coliseum when the club was playing the Tampa Bay Rays in Florida. I remember that there was a delay during that game, due to a lighting strike that hit Tropicana Field. The lights went out. I was doing the game from our regular broadcast booth at the Oakland Coliseum. The television went black, my partner and I keep talking baseball explaining to the radio audience what had happened.
It was a coincidence that during that game Carl Stewart from the Bay Area News Group was writing a story about our production, and he was in awe as Manolo Hernández-Douen and yours truly, who kept talking baseball during blackout in Tampa. Many minutes later, the game was back on our screen and we continued the regular play by play and commentary coverage of the game.
Today, when the Athletics are at home and the game is on local television, you can go to the SAP channel and watch the game while you listen to our broadcast in Spanish. Today we have all the technology, but I understand what my colleagues, who used to travel all the time, will be going through, by calling these road games from the city where the team is from a television screen. It is not easy, even for the most experienced broadcasters, because there is nothing, like calling the game where the game is taking place, in the same stadium, the normal way.
Stay well and stay tuned.
Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the radio play by play Spanish voice for Oakland A’s baseball on 1010 KIQI San Francisco and does News and Commentary each week at http://www.sportsradioservice.com
