Flashback: My Minor League Baseball Intership
In the Spring of 1998 I was all but done with college, the only thing left was my Summer internship. It ended up being in my hometown of Buffalo, N.Y. with the minor league baseball team, the Buffalo Bisons.
For the most part, I was behind the scenes, but my boss knew that if I wanted to do anything in radio, I needed to have a demo tape of some sort. I had a few clips from my WFAL years, but I needed some variety on the resume. So once in July, and on the last day of my internship at the end of August, Jim stepped out of the booth and allowed me to be the color commentator while his color guy Duke did play-by-play.
I did my best to stay out of Duke’s way, and for the most part I succeeded during my brief moments in the booth. The key, of course, is to know when to shut up. Baseball radio broadcasts don’t require constant banter. Much like the game itself, as someone said a long time ago, it’s long stretches of boredom punctuated by quick bursts of excitement or terror, just depends which side your on.
Keep in mind, there was no computer in the press box for me to pull out of town scores. Those came off of a dot matrix printer in the general press that continually updated scores. I had to write them down and deliver them to Jim and Duke every couple of innings. Now, you’d just have a laptop or tablet computer with the scores streaming off ESPN or some website.
For the most part, I was behind the scenes, but my boss knew that if I wanted to do anything in radio, I needed to have a demo tape of some sort. I had a few clips from my WFAL years, but I needed some variety on the resume. So once in July, and on the last day of my internship at the end of August, Jim stepped out of the booth and allowed me to be the color commentator while his color guy Duke did play-by-play.
I did my best to stay out of Duke’s way, and for the most part I succeeded during my brief moments in the booth. The key, of course, is to know when to shut up. Baseball radio broadcasts don’t require constant banter. Much like the game itself, as someone said a long time ago, it’s long stretches of boredom punctuated by quick bursts of excitement or terror, just depends which side your on.
Keep in mind, there was no computer in the press box for me to pull out of town scores. Those came off of a dot matrix printer in the general press that continually updated scores. I had to write them down and deliver them to Jim and Duke every couple of innings. Now, you’d just have a laptop or tablet computer with the scores streaming off ESPN or some website.