MLB Off-Topic

[DrJones]

Quote: Originally Posted by Blzer

No need to apologize! That was a wonderful read, and this is my favorite broadcasting duo of all time. It saddened me that we never got an "OUTTA HERE!" home run call, and in some ways I'm surprised to hear that they actually got to ad-lib some because a lot of it sounds like they're reading off a script (specifically Kuiper).

I remember being surprised as well that the "OUTTA HERE!" HR call was never recorded. (Or perhaps it was recorded, but the audio triggers didn't work.) And yeah, a lot of Kuiper & Krukow's lines would've written for them (probably by Ben Brinkman, aka Anthony Friese, who was production liaison at the time), but ad-libbing was always encouraged.

I never met Kruk and Kuip, as their recordings were done in California, and Ben (being a California native) was the natural choice to work with them. Each recording session typically included one EA producer (to work with the talent, make sure we got all the takes we wanted, player name pronunciations, etc.) and one EA audio engineer to deal with tech issues, etc.

I did work with Jim Hughson and Buck Martinez and wrote the majority of the dialogue for Triple Play 2001, including the goofy HRD stuff in the living room, etc. (They recorded their dialogue in Vancouver.) Also wrote a fair amount of Sean McDonough and Harold Reynolds' stuff in TP (no year) Baseball. Never met McDonough, but I worked with Harold in both Vancouver and Bristol, Connecticut (Harold gave me and an EA audio guy a tour of the ESPN campus, met Buck Showalter, Karl Ravech, and a few non-baseball folks like Mike Tirico, Steve Levy, Tom Jackson). I remember the exact date - October 21, 2001 - because it was Game 4 of the Yankees/Mariners ALCS and an Eagles/Giants SNF game. Bristol is a weird place.

Also worked with Bob Costas once in St. Louis. Costas is extremely guarded when it comes to his image. Rather than directly writing dialogue for him, I worked with his personal script writer (nice guy) instead. When it came to player names, he refused to record any names unless I was 100% certain of the pronunciation (with Hughson and McDonough, we'd often record multiple pronunciations for rookies & cup of coffee guys, then choose the correct version once we ascertained the proper pronunciation - this'd be easy today with MLB TV, more time-consuming 20-25 years ago). Sometimes I'd be questioned on certain things: "Are you sure about this, Jon?" and uh... well, I'm usually pretty confident in my baseball knowledge (or at least I was back then), but not at a "Bob Freaking Costas is calling me out" level of confidence, if you know what I mean. Kinda intimidating! Oh, and we were paying him 175K US for 5 days of work, LOL.

Quote: Originally Posted by Blzer

That's awesome that you were the one who signed the ball, too.

Yeah, that was fun. According to Ben, Kruk and Kuip enjoyed playing pranks on Barry.

[slickdtc]

So when’s the podcast coming out? Because this behind the scenes storytelling is gold. Got me feeling like a youngster again. I remember where I was when I got my hands on a copy of some of these old baseball games so to hear the background behind some of my favs is a sweet nostalgia trip.

[DrJones]

Quote: Originally Posted by slickdtc

So when’s the podcast coming out? Because this behind the scenes storytelling is gold. Got me feeling like a youngster again. I remember where I was when I got my hands on a copy of some of these old baseball games so to hear the background behind some of my favs is a sweet nostalgia trip.

I did a podcast a couple years ago with some Red Sox guys (one of them was Steve Perreault or something?) after they found out I was a "real person". Feel free to ask me Triple Play/MVP questions if you want.