Tonight, the 91st MLB All-Star Game will take place at Coors Field in Colorado. Joe Buck and John Smoltz will be on the call for the event that hasn’t been played since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There will be fans in the stands and it will feel like somewhat of a normal atmosphere.
While Buck was playing in the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship in Lake Tahoe last week, he took the time to join the Green Light with Chris Long podcast. The two went over what happened in Seattle last week when Yankees radio announcer John Sterling did his home run call that was actually replay of a previous home run due to having to call the game remotely from Yankee Stadium.
Buck sympathized with the decision. He noted that announcing games remotely has been challenging.
“I’ve done games remotely now and while there are benefits of getting in your car and going home from a studio and not dealing with traffic after a game, you don’t want to be that myopic with your view,” Buck told Long. “I want to see everything. I’ve done games remotely where there’s a ball on the field, where did that come from? If the camera is not showing it, you are just guessing.”
Not everyone can tell when Buck, Smoltz, or any other broadcaster is working from a remote studio. Joe Buck says he has been calling games long enough to pick up on some major audio differences when a broadcast team is in the booth versus when they are not.
“We have audio mics all over the stadium…There’s also a lot of natural crowd noise that comes out of the mic that is right in front of my face. A lot of times you can hear when an analyst or play-by-play guy hits the kill switch on the mic. Part of the audio goes out. I can almost hear someone sound like they were removed from actually being immersed in the stadium. I didn’t love it.
“I couldn’t really tell with the level of play-by-play or analysis if they weren’t there or not, but it just was a sound thing. You just have to be really careful and you have to take your time and you can’t jump the gun.”
With fans now back in the stands, Buck makes it a point to use the crowd noise in his broadcasts as much as he can. Some people may think he doesn’t care, but as he told Long, it is exactly the opposite:
“I ride the crowd noise as much as I can. I don’t feel like there’s anything more important that needs to come out of my mouth right now than listening to a great crowd. A lot of the times people say he’s too nonchalant, he doesn’t care. It’s actually the opposite. I would rather you hear the crowd and make you on the couch feel like you are there than just me dominate and talk wall-to-wall. I don’t feel the need to say anything other than put a stamp on what just happened and then shut up and let the crowd go crazy.”
