Locked in from afar: Calling road games at home

The Lansing Lugnuts completed their first road trip of the season on Sunday, having split six-game sets against both the Dayton Dragons and Fort Wayne TinCaps. Lugnuts broadcaster Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and his partner, Adam Jaksa, were on the call for all 12 games, narrating every moment of the action.

There was one significant wrinkle regarding these broadcasts, however, as Goldberg-Strassler and Jaksa called the entirety of the road trip from the Lugnuts' home of Jackson Field. This has been a common scenario during the early stages of the 2021 season, as COVID-19 restrictions have forced many Minor League broadcasters to call road games remotely. It's a challenging situation, to be sure, but what is baseball if not a game of adjustments?

Lansing's road trip kicked off in Dayton on May 11, with Goldberg-Strassler and Jaksa calling the game from the Lugnuts' home broadcast booth. They later switched locations to a ballpark conference room, as the booth became unavailable due to Jackson Field hosting a collegiate baseball tournament. In any case, the set-up was the same. Key elements include the MiLB.TV broadcast of the game, a Zoom feed of the entire field provided by the home team, the MiLB.com Gameday box score and play-by-play log and, of course, an audio mixing board.

"From my personal laptop I'm feeding in canned crowd noise that I recorded at a Lugnuts game, and then it's 'Off we go!'" said Goldberg-Strassler, now in his 13th season with the Lugnuts. He added that, throughout the game, he also captures video highlights to convert into GIFs, checks emails to see who answered on-air trivia questions correctly and consults team rosters taped to the table. "There's a lot going on, just so much happening," he added with a laugh.

Goldberg-Strassler initially supplemented his remote broadcasts with sound effects created on the spot, such as the crack of the bat and a baseball hitting a mitt. (As the creator of an annual sight-unseen "game re-creation" broadcast, he's long been adept at such old-school audio enhancements.) He abandoned this plan after one game, however, finding that it adversely impacted his ability to follow the play in real time as well as his conversational flow with Jaksa. Like with so much else in sports, and in life, it came down to this: Minimize distractions and control what you can control.

"Calling a game off a screen feels disconnected until the first pitch, and then as soon as the first pitch happens I’m locked in," said Goldberg-Strassler. "It's just like I'm there with [Lugnuts] players in Dayton and Fort Wayne."

A brief thread on calling games while not actually being at those games, one day in.@TomNichols02 set up a camera and a Zoom for @AdamJaksa and I to watch the All-9 from Dayton.

Adam and I set up in the space of the Lansing press box. (I'm on the right, preparing for tonight.) pic.twitter.com/t4Aj1KXcBC

— Jesse Goldberg-Strassler (@jgoldstrass) May 12, 2021

The challenge of calling road games remotely is one aspect of a larger issue this season, regarding the extent to which broadcasters are able to interact with the team. The Lugnuts entered 2021 having changed their affiliate (Toronto to Oakland), level (Class A to High-A) and league (Midwest to High-A Central), so there has been much to learn in a short amount of time.

"When the players first arrived [in Lansing], we held a media day with our production manager," said Goldberg-Strassler. "One thing I made sure to do was have a sign-up sheet, for me to send the players photos of themselves. I've learned that's important, to get players photos from throughout the baseball season. And because I have that info, it doubles as a way to set up Zoom interviews with me and to set up interviews with members of the media."

Today's @LansingLugnuts conversation is with infielder @ElvisPeraltaJr1, talking about bringing energy to each team he's been on, his baseball experience at Crowder College and Marshall, earning his degree, and now learning the guitar! Give a listen:https://t.co/n14e9Y2lc0

— Jesse Goldberg-Strassler (@jgoldstrass) May 23, 2021

Goldberg-Strassler's Zoom interviews have given him, and Lugnuts fans, an opportunity to learn more about the players. But for a broadcaster, this type of conversation does not serve as a substitute for actually being around members of the team.

"The difference is that in a Zoom conversation, I get their interaction with me. Whereas at the batting cage, or in the clubhouse, I get to see them interact with each other," said Goldberg-Strassler. "I see other facets of their personality. Who's funny, who's quiet, who's a leader. Those ways of seeing who they are, relating to their teammates, that's what is getting missed.

"An extended metaphor that I've thought about has been cooking," he continued. "That if I have these ingredients, then this is what I have to cook with. In years past I've been given a certain number of ingredients, doing things like standing at the batting cage, cooking up a great broadcast. This year, it’s making sure to use the certain ingredients that I do have, to make sure I'm cooking up something good each night."

While it may not be the sumptuous buffet of years past, Goldberg-Strassler nonetheless expresses confidence that he can create an appetizing broadcast. The game itself is the main ingredient, and right now that's enough.

"It's such a sight to see, broadcasting from a conference room or empty press box, where we're living and dying with every pitch. Because if I can’t feel it how can the audience feel it? I’m right there with [the players], locked into the action. ... It’s about the baseball. It's always about the baseball."