When I first started as a broadcaster I was in Adelanto, CA. I lived in nearby Victorville since at the time you couldn’t live in Adelanto seemingly unless you were in the prison or had a trailer in the middle of the desert. It was 1994 and I had just been promoted from Account Executive/ Number Two Broadcaster to Director of Broadcasting. The Mavericks had won the California League Championship in 93’ as a Marlins affiliate but the Marlins had left town for Brevard County (which, by the way, is now a Brewers farm team. In 1994 minor league baseball was in flux. There were too many minor league teams and not enough major league affiliations to go around and High Desert was in the unfortunate position of being the odd man out. Since High Desert was guaranteed a team due to the agreement between minor league and major league baseball High Desert became what was known as a co-op team. Major League baseball would be responsible for hiring a coaching staff and trainer and cobbling together an A-ball team from a variety of major league clubs.
What it meant in reality was that we had a team of players that nobody wanted or really cared about. There was a bit of talent. The Texas Rangers sent a pair of infielders to be our double play combination and they had good years. Hanley Frias, the shortstop actually had some big league time with Arizona, Texas and Minnestota and Mike Smith eventually changed his name to Alex Smith and became the Assistant Player Development Director for the Rangers during the Doug Melvin era. Much of the remaining roster SHOULD have changed their name to avoid the ridicule they might receive for their performance on the field.
There was Rod “Hot Rod” McCall. A 6’ 6” first baseman of prodigious power from the Cleveland Indians organization who also accumulated a prodigious amount of errors. If he broke his glove, they called a welder. There was Jerry Augustine, a Louisiana good ol’ boy from the Indians who was so menacing that for a time our manager thought his life was in danger if he visited the mound. Ramy Brooks was a catcher loaned out to the Mavericks by the Royals who was a pretty good guy with a bit of power. He had the largest fists I have ever seen on a man and I am sure they helped in his off season job which consisted of entering and winning tough man contests in Oklahoma. A scout once relayed a great story about Brooks:
Brooks liked to mix it up and was a pretty successful brawler at Oklahoma. He would take on anyone and everyone. One night campus security got a call that Brooks was in front of the football team dorms, bleeding, cut up, soused and challenging the football team to a fight. Ramy’s reputation was such that nobody in the football players dorm would come out and take him on. The school had had enough. Brooks was arrested and the baseball coach called his father and told him that Ramy had gotten into serious trouble and was looking at possible conviction and expulsion. Ramy’s father responded, “Are you telling me he might be red-shirted?” To Ramy’s credit, by the time he played for High Desert he had married and started a family and had cleaned up his act a great deal and was a pleasure to deal with.
The Mavericks finished with the worst winning percentage in minor or major league baseball. In a 136 game season the mighty Mavericks went 44-92, capped off by an 18 game losing streak in August. One unforgettable memory from that year was early August. The team had already tumbled to their eighth straight loss when the major leagues stopped playing ball. The Mavericks were playing in San Jose at the time and San Jose is roughly 30 miles away from their affiliate, the Giants. The Giants decided to broadcast a San Jose Giants game with no major league games available and a number of their broadcasters made the trip down. Hank Greenewald, Mike Krukow and Bob Brenly showed up at the ballpark in San Jose to air the game. They were accompanied by an engineer and Hank’s 19 year old son Doug, who is now the broadcaster for the Fresno Grizzlies. The press box was not very large (this was A-ball after all) so we came to an arrangement. Hank Greenewald do play-by play for the Giants the entire game along with either Brenly or Krukow. The broadcaster not on the air would sit in my booth and serve as my color commentator for a few innings. I was ecstatic. Here I was a first play-by-play guy and I was already working with big league announcers!
The San Jose Giants, predictably, beat the Mavericks like we had insulted their mothers. If there had been a slaughter rule, the game might never have started. The team didn’t/couldn’t hit, pitch or field. Watching our 4th reliever in the sixth inning left Mike Krukow almost speechless, they were that bad. Both tried their best to be kind to the team but it was like trying to put cherries on top of one of those horrible English kidney meat pies. In the end, the English still can’t cook worth a damn. Though Brenly and Krukow were never in my booth at the same time, they both had the same farewell when they left to go back on the air in the Giant’s booth. As each got up to leave they would pat me on the shoulder and say, “Don’t worry kid. The season’s almost over.” If I hadn’t been so excited just to be a baseball play-by-play broadcaster, I might have quit the business after one season. My love of the game and my job glossed over a lot of warts.
Fast forward 13 years to 2007 and the Nashville Sounds. The Sounds have won the division 3 out of the last four years, collected a championship ring and currently hold the best record in all of AAA baseball. From an 18 game losing streak, I have now been lucky enough to see two perfect games and two no-hitters in the last four years. I have watched prospect after prospect make the jump from Nashville to Milwaukee and Pittsburgh and become star players in the big leagues (How bout’ that Ryan Braun?). I have witnessed great stories and good people. I have seen a manger who deserved to go up to the big leagues get that opportunity (Trent Jewett) and another who deserves the chance (Frank Kremblas) as well as a manger who deserved the opportunity but has had to go overseas to sieze it (Marty Brown).
I’ve gone from average crowds of 1,000 to great promotions like Faith Night and Thirsty Thursday that draw over 7,000 on a regular basis. I’ve managed to go from cities like Visalia, Modesto, Rancho Cucamonga and Zebulon, NC to Nashville.
There is a great brand of baseball being played at Greer Stadium and I hope that all of you out there that read this little blog get a chance to see it. It will be worth your while.
