Oakland Athletics’ radio broadcasts going old school amid coronavirus
His real name was Garland Bunting. He was a revenue agent for Halifax County, North Carolina, whose specialty was destroying moonshine stills with an ax.
He was better known as Teddy the radio announcer in “Bull Durham,” whose calling card was a crack-of-the-bat baseball sound effect made by knocking mallets together — part and parcel of the once common practice of radio stations re-creating road games to save on travel expenses.
It’s that character with whom longtime Oakland A’s announcer Ken Korach now identifies.
The Aviators’ parent club hit the road Wednesday for the first time during a Major League Baseball season postponed by a deadly pandemic. And for the first time in 25 years, the club intentionally left Korach behind.
“I’m actually drawing inspiration from that,” the Henderson resident said of broadcasting ballgames from a booth in deserted RingCentral Coliseum while the A’s are shagging fly balls 800 miles away against the Seattle Mariners. It’ll be the A’s first game back on traditional radio after switching during the offseason to a live streaming format which will remain.
“I think you have to be willing to use your imagination,” Korach said. “That is a little bit of what you do now when games are on the road.”
It was how Ronald Reagan first made a name for himself.
The former U.S. president was proud of calling Chicago Cubs games for WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa, that he had not seen — thereby placing him on equal footing with legendary Harry Caray when he broadcast from the Wrigley Field bleachers and the Budweiser was flowing.
A shift in focus
With every game now being shown on TV and transmission rarely interrupted by technical glitches, Korach said at least concocting elaborate explanations for teletype breakdowns no longer is necessary.
“Obviously, we’re not using bat-crack sounds like they did then,” said the former voice of the UNLV Rebels, who at 68 is old enough to recall re-creations of San Diego Padres games when they played in the old Pacific Coast League. “But there’s a lot of things you take for granted when you are home — looking at the flag to see how the wind is blowing, the marine layer coming across in the evening, things like that.
“There’s an understanding that we are going to miss some stuff.”
Such as ground balls to shortstop that may be fielded by another player.
Back in Reagan’s day, an announcer could surmise who would field a ball by the direction it flew off the bat — except when Ted Williams was up. The extreme infield shifts used against the Splendid Splinter are common in the modern game. Korach said one can no longer assume from the center field TV shot how the defense is aligned.
Despite training himself to sneak a glance at the “All 9” — an auxiliary monitor showing the positioning off all nine defensive players — he said the early innings of the A’s recent exhibition game at San Francisco probably won’t make his highlight reel.
Calling baseball on the radio requires different skills than in the TV booth. On the radio, one describes the play as it happens, whereas the camera can fill in the blanks when the TV guys are telling baseball yarns from yesteryear or welcoming the Knights of Columbus to the ballpark.
That is, when local civic groups still were allowed inside of one.
Virus still swinging
It already has been a season like no other, Korach said, noting the daily temperature checks, queries about one’s health and remote pregame show interviews of A’s manager Bob Melvin via Wi-Fi connection.
At least there’s still the roar of the crowd, even if it is no more real than the chance of witnessing a sacrifice bunt.
A disdain for the fundamentals and a lack of control by the Dodgers’ Joe Kelly are probably the only things that haven’t been blamed on the pandemic as the national pastime is trying hard to avoid becoming a national calamity by electing to play ball outside a bubble.
“Like anyone, everything I do is framed by the virus,” Korach said after most of the Miami Marlins’ roster tested positive for COVID-19. “I never get away from that bit of neurosis or anxiety.”
But when he’s in the booth, a warm breeze is blowing off the bay and engineer Mike Baird cues the audio background loop of the Coliseum’s right field drum crew and Tom Hanks hawking hot dogs (per the actor’s first job), Korach said it feels like home. Or at least rounding third base and heading there.
“I can hear the crowd in my headset, I can hear all of that, and it seems …”
He hesitated, seeking just the right word to describe baseball nirvana during the pandemic era.
“Seminormal.”
Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.