I got a first hand look at what it takes to announce a Little League Baseball Central Region game and learned a couple valuable lessons. One... it's really hard and second... don't quit your day job!
!http://www.eteamz.com/llbcentral/files/Tom-Announce.jpg|height=216|style=padding:10px;|align=left|width=342|src=http://www.eteamz.com/llbcentral/files/Tom-Announce.jpg!As you know I've been here in Indianapolis, IN with blogging, Twittering, taking videos and pictures and volunteering as a Team Host for Nebraska. Well yesterday, I was asked if I would if I could announce the first game of the day between Michigan and Illinois. Now, I've announced plenty of our local Little League games back home in Kalamazoo, MI but never at anything at this level of play. My initial response was... "are you kidding me...?" But they weren't....
Just about every job here at the regional tournament is handled by volunteers. From the people in the gift shop, the grounds crew, the people who take care of the media, run the music between innings, scorekeepers, scoreboard operators, 50/50 raffle ticket sellers, umpires, Team Hosts, etc.... all of them volunteers. There are only a handful of full time employees of Little League here like Mike Legge, the Regional Director and Nina Johnson, the Assistant Regional Director plus a very small support staff. They credit the volunteers who make the tournament run smoothly. Without these dedicated volunteers, many who have been coming here for over 15 years, the tournament wouldn't be the class act it is.
So, when asked to be the volunteer announcer for a game... how could I refuse... other than I didn't think I would be very good and was thinking they were making a terrible mistake!
The first thing I had to do the "booth" was to get the team lineups written into my scorebook. I say "my" scorebook because not only did I have to announce, I needed to know the player positions (and where they moved to), who was batting, who hit what and where, the player names and coaches (and how to pronounce their names phonetically), and keep track of the pitch count. Are you kidding me??!! But, the guys maintaining the "official" scorebook (both paper and on the computer) made sure I didn't make any huge mistakes. Mark Commons and Bob Monday are two of the volunteers that have been coming here for many years and take the job of keeping score seriously and score most if not all of the games during the tournament. I also did a video interview with them that I hope to have posted shortly.
To say that announcing a ball game at this level is hard is an understatement and I truely respect the other volunteers who announce these games. I had to write down little "cheat" notes and lists just to start the game with. I had to remember the sequence to begin announcing the game. For example, reading the "Welcome message" and what teams were playing, announcing the team lineups, who the President of the league is, who's District Administrator, the Team Host's, stand for the National anthem, who was going to read the Player and Parent/Volunteer Pledge.... I was doing fine until announcing the teams. The Illinois team went fine other than mispronouncing a couple of names but I announced the players, coaches, President, DA and team hosts. Then came the Michigan team (my home state) and totally forgot to announce the coaches, President, DA and team hosts. I kidded about that a lot later.
The game was an exciting one with Illinois winning 6-5 and are 3-0 in their pool while Michigan drops to 1-1 and plays their third game today. I must have not done too badly because at dinner last night, I was asked to once again to step into the booth and announce the first game today. Pretty funny too because Michigan is playing again. Hopefully I won't forget to announce everyone this time. I'll let you know...
Until later...
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