On a cold November night in Cleveland, a packed house of 38,104 spectators looked on as the grounds crew rushed to pull the tarp over the diamond at Progressive Field. While the rain delay turned out to be just 17 minutes, it came at a pivotal moment in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. Cleveland had not won the World Series in 84 years, while the Chicago Cubs had a longer streak at 108 years. Chicago Cubs radio play-by-play announcer Pat Hughes felt the same tension and excitement as the fans, but in being tasked with delivering the action to listeners, he could not stay silent.
If he decided to forgo his announcing responsibilities, the consumers would not know what was happening. As an innumerable number of listeners tuned in, he set the scene as the game approached extra innings. Once the Cubs took the lead in the top half of the 10th frame, the feasibility of a world championship became more palpable, and Hughes reminded himself to remain calm and keep his intonation and diction under control.
With the tying run on first base, Cubs reliever Mike Montgomery delivered an 0-1 breaking ball that was chopped on the ground to third baseman Kris Bryant. As he scooped the roller and fired the ball to first baseman Anthony Rizzo to make the final out, Cubs fans and the city of Chicago breezed into a euphoric state. Once Hughes saw the umpire signal an out, he extemporaneously dispatched a message of a century and change in the making – the Cubs, being declared World Series champions.
“The Cubs come pouring out of the dugout, jumping up and down like a bunch of delirious 10-year-olds,” Hughes exclaimed. “The Cubs have done it!”
Hughes had been with the Cubs for two decades and waiting for that moment, something many of his predecessors in the role had never been afforded a chance to see. At the same time, he had to be cognizant to keep his call within a short window because of something he discovered the morning of the game.
While working out at a local gym, Hughes received a text message from Audacy executive and Chicago Cubs radio executive producer Mitch Rosen to immediately call him to discuss an urgent matter. Once they connected, Rosen informed Hughes that State Farm Insurance had made the network a lucrative offer to interpolate an advertising spot within 30 seconds of the final out.
“Mitch said, ‘Pat, are you okay with that?,’” Hughes recalled. “I said, ‘Well, do you have a choice? I know you want the sponsorship dollars, so yeah, I can do that.’ So whatever I said, I had to be done and leave about two to three seconds of dead air before I read the commercial.”
As Hughes drives to the ballpark through the neighborhoods surrounding “Wrigleyville,” he frequently observes construction workers on the side of the road. Equipped with jackhammers ramming into concrete and battling the ornery, pugnacious trajectory of dust and particles, they engage in strenuous physical labor to earn their keep. Hughes knows that play-by-play announcing is not easy and has its own challenges, but still considers himself extremely fortunate and is humbled by his position.
“Being a baseball announcer for a great American franchise like the Chicago Cubs – are you kidding me?,” Hughes said. “I get up for every single game.”
Hughes immersed himself in the idiosyncrasies of the English language as the son of two educators, both of whom stressed the importance of literacy through reading. Today, reading is an essential part of his game preparation, extrapolating storylines, correlations and new ways to compose phraseology within the broadcast. He does this each morning for no less than one hour, sipping coffee as he completes this part of his homework assignment.
Akin to many broadcasters, Hughes originally desired to be a professional athlete. One year of occupying the bench on the San Jose State University basketball team confirmed to him that he was not skilled enough. Play-by-play announcing, he perceived, was the next best thing, compelling him to join the student-run radio station – KSJS – to try and attain opportunities. Luckily for Hughes, his older brother was working as its sports director and helped immerse him in football broadcasts as a sideline reporter.
“I was aggressive and I probably was not very good,” Hughes remembered. “I certainly wasn’t as good as I thought it was, but that was my start.”
Throughout his college years, Hughes actively sought chances to hone his craft and called football, baseball, and basketball games. On the side, he would file sports reports, host interview shows, and harshly critique himself after reviewing recordings of his work. By the time he graduated, Hughes estimates he called nearly 200 play-by-play events, and his hard work earned him a fortuitous break before he accepted his diploma.
The San Jose Missions, former Triple-A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, fired their play-by-play announcer after the first month of the 1978 season, which would turn out to be their last in the locale. Needing to expediently bring someone new on board, the team publicized the job search, and Hughes made sure to apply.
Even though he was a senior in college, his skillset and acumen ended up being sufficient enough for him to land the job. As he was earning his final credits, Hughes suddenly found himself one step away from making it to the major leagues and knew just how lucky he had been. Yet he positioned himself to be in line for these types of situations and maximized the opportunity by compiling calls for a new demo reel.
The portfolio of work, conspicuous attention to detail, and passion imbued therein landed him a role with a local sports channel where he called a wide range of different offerings. For three to four nights every week, Hughes would bring viewers action from a plethora of different events, including gymnastics, bowling, and sumo wrestling.
While he was with the station, Hughes had met John Petri, an employee who left shortly thereafter to work on a new media venture in Columbus, Ohio. Warner-Amex QUBE, an interactive and immersive television viewing experience, revolutionized the industry and granted people the ability to communicate with their entertainment systems. With up to 30 channels, including pay-per-view events and other services, the project introduced technology that advanced future developments in television.
Looking for a sports commentator, the outlet hired Hughes, who called high school and collegiate football and basketball games each week. The station also covered approximately 10 baseball games for the Columbus Clippers, the then-Triple-A affiliate of the New York Yankees, granting him additional repetitions in that setting.
“I put together an audition tape from that work,” Hughes said, “and that led directly to me going to the big leagues in 1983 with the Minnesota Twins.”
In being hired by the Twins at the age of 27, Hughes was one of the youngest play-by-play announcers in all of the major leagues. Working alongside Dick Bremer, who still serves as the voice of the Twins today, the duo called games on Spectrum Sports and KMSP-TV in what turned out to be a disappointing 92-loss season for the team.
While the Twins went on to win the World Series four years later in a seven-game battle against the St. Louis Cardinals, Hughes had already departed Minneapolis, Minn. to take a radio job with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Deviating from the common path many broadcasters take to try to succeed in television, Hughes knew that his broadcasting style and the way he communicated with the audience was most conducive for the aural medium. In reviewing the sports media landscape at the time, he felt that radio jobs were more stable, leading him to ink a two-year contract with the Brewers that paid him better money.
Inspired by the voices of his childhood including Russ Hodges, Lon Simmons, and Bill King, along with other voices of the game such as Ernie Harwell and Harry Caray, he sought to forge a strong affinity with his audience. He saw the power of the medium firsthand in working alongside Bob Uecker, who has his name in the rafters at American Family Field and continues to call games for “The Crew.”
“I think radio sells the game of baseball better because you are there every day and you become part of the family,” Hughes said. “I’m not bragging or anything, but people invite me to graduations and bar mitzvahs, and they invite me to birthdays and special events in their family. I don’t know if TV guys get invited too, but I sure do, and it’s because of that intimate feeling that they have with the radio guys.”
Hughes expounds on his thinking by outlining a typical ninth-inning scenario – the bases loaded with one out. As the hitter grinds through a consequential at-bat, fouling off pitches to stay alive, a television announcer, he affirms, says, “Another foul.”
Conversely, radio announcers are filling a blank canvas with the soundscape of the crowd in the perimeter, splattering the mural with parlance evoking both timbre and ambience. In describing an invigorating and unnerving scene, Hughes is able to capture the scope of the occurrence and subsequently let it guide him to the finish line.
“‘Here’s the windup, and another foul. It remains 2-2. The drama continues to build; the fans turning inside-out in their seats,’ or whatever it is you say,” Hughes said as he narrated a hypothetical call. “But you’ve got a steady – like a companionship dialogue going with your listening audience that the television guys do not.”
Shortly after the ratification of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated facets of the business that allowed entities to compete against one another, Hughes prepared to broadcast his first game on WGN Radio with the Chicago Cubs. The city has been delineated as the No. 3 market in the United States since Nielsen began tracking designated market areas (DMAs) and garners almost 3% of the total American marketplace share. Before his first game on the job, radio color commentator and Hall-of-Fame third baseman Ron Santo called Hughes to alleviate his angst and express confidence in the broadcast.
“He says, ‘I know you’re nervous. Don’t be –you’re going to be fine. You do your job; I’ll do the color. We’re going to laugh; we’re going to have fun [and] the audience is going to love it,’” Hughes remembers Santo telling him. “As he is saying that, I can actually feel the tension draining out of my body. It sounds corny, but it’s true. I hung up the phone and I was ready to go to work the next day on Cubs radio, and we clicked immediately.”
The contrasting lives of Hughes and Santo made for an informative and entertaining on-air product referred to as the “Pat and Ron Show” over the ensuing 15 years. The duo dominated in the ratings and presented broadcasts of games filled with undisputable chemistry and discussion about the team. At the same time, Hughes was working with another venerable analyst who made the broadcasts enjoyable and distinguished them from other programming.
Hughes had been the announcer for Marquette University basketball games since 1988, but he did not have Hall-of-Fame basketball coach Al McGuire joining him until the 1996 campaign. McGuire had served as head coach of Marquette for 13 years and led the team to an NCAA championship in his final year with the team. One day after having done a game from historic Freedom Hall in Louisville, Hughes told McGuire that they would get a cab to go to the airport and fly home. While they needed to catch flights back to Chicago and Milwaukee, respectively, McGuire had other plans in mind.
“He says, ‘Pat, we don’t need a cab. We’re going to hitchhike – somebody’s going to recognize me; they’ll pull over; they’ll give us a ride and we’ll save the cab cash,’” Hughes remembered McGuire explaining. “I said, ‘Okay Al, but I’ve got to say I’ve never hitchhiked.’ He says, ‘Well listen, it’s real complicated. You stick out your thumb and start shaking.’”
On a cold winter day in Louisville, Hughes and McGuire hitchhiked on the side of the road, and just as McGuire had hypothesized, he was quickly recognized by a driver. Agreeing to take them to the airport, McGuire regaled the driver and his passengers with stories about coaching and basketball in general for the entirety of the journey.
By the time they reached the airport, Hughes was stunned at what had just happened, and he asked his partner if he would turn in what it would have cost to reach the airport on his expenses. “No Pat, I don’t cheat the small stuff – I’ve got enough big scams going,” McGuire replied. The duo called an estimated 50 ballgames together as part of a local television package, and Hughes does not remember having a single bad moment with him.
“He was so much fun, so knowledgeable, so crazy and so Irish,” Hughes said of McGuire. “I’m Irish myself, and we had many, many laughs and shared many beers and had so much fun.”
Today, Hughes works on the Cubs broadcasts with color commentator Ron Coomer and host Zach Zaidman, both of whom he considers to be superb at their craft. For each broadcast, Hughes has the goal of being accurate, prepared and detailed in his descriptions. Additionally, he does not try to suggest to others how to do their job or take “cheap shots” at anyone involved. While he prefers the Cubs to always be winning and competitive, he seeks to be objective and knows everyone around him shares the same goal.
“We always laugh,” Hughes expressed. “I think that’s important because going back to when I was 10 years old, I think that was something I just enjoyed. Being at the ballpark, playing ball and laughing. Having fun – batting practice was fun; infield practice was fun; winning was fun, always. I played to win, but I enjoyed it.”
Baseball is a game filled with numbers that penetrate beyond the basic hitting and pitching statistics. The advent of sabermetrics and technological evolutions have refined methodologies to better project individual and team performance with a strong correlation coefficient. Broadcasts around the league reacted by adopting differentiating approaches as to how often these metrics are integrated into the call.
While Hughes understands many of the numbers, he knows that various members of the listening audience are casual fans who do not have time or interest to delve into the specifics of how they are calculated. As a result, it is difficult to contextualize and have an understanding of the science behind these data. Rather than inculcating these phenomena by prosody, he simplifies and renders qualitative figures naturally into the flow of a game.
“It makes me angry almost when I hear some of these announcers throw out these WAR statistics or OPS statistics,” Hughes conveyed. “I feel like saying, ‘What are you trying to do? Are you trying to show us how smart you are or are you trying to actually educate and entertain the audience, which is really what your job is, so which one are you doing?’”
For the first time in his broadcast career, Hughes called the games to the cadence of a pitch clock, part of rules adopted by Major League Baseball to hasten the pace of play and augment offensive output. These rules helped catalyze a 9.6% rise in attendance and 24-minute decline in game time year-over-year, a triumph for a sport balancing tradition and innovation while fighting irrelevancy. Hughes noticed that the game at a more swift pace, and around the league at large, ballparks were more full in the latter innings than in previous years.
The challenging part of the job comes through travel and being away from family for nearly 100 days per year, something he found especially strenuous as his kids were growing up. Constant bus rides, flights, and hotel stays can be taxing over the course of a 162-game season, but Hughes has always tried to keep it all in perspective and remember just how felicitous his situation is.
“Easy doesn’t even enter into the equation – it’s not supposed to – but I’ve learned how to handle it, I think, to the best of my ability, and I like the product that we turn out every day,” Hughes said. “We have fun; we try to get the proper information disseminated to the audience.”
While Hughes just completed his 40th season working in Major League Baseball, he has been a fan of the sport for as long as he can remember. The innate love of the game and appreciation for its past, present and future galvanizes him to continue working, and while other jobs have appealed to him in the past, he does not wish to go anywhere else in his career. Hughes has found a home at the corner of Addison and Clark and is genuinely fond of his profession.
“I have no interest in being a voice for any other team at this stage,” Hughes said. “I don’t think that’s even possible, so I have the job that I want.”
Over the past season, Hughes made road trips to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; Citi Field in New York City; and Fenway Park in Boston in addition to several other venues to document Cubs baseball. He had one additional stop on his schedule this year when the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum informed him that he had been named the winner of the Ford C. Frick Award.
The prestigious honor is bestowed on a broadcaster who has made major contributions to the sport, and when Hughes found out he had won, he was in a state of disbelief. Within 30 seconds of the announcement, he saw a text message from Bob Costas, who had won the award himself back in 2018. Moreover, he received congratulations from his broadcast partners and industry executives, many of whom were in his living room with him as he learned of the news.
Hughes accepted the award in a ceremony during Hall of Fame Weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y., where he was joined by his broadcast partners, friends and family. Even after being in the booth for Game 7 of the World Series and punctuating a final call fans had waited over a century to hear, he still felt nerves in making the speech. Before arriving, he deliberated whether or not he wanted to memorize the address but decided against it to ensure he would be prepared and focused in the 15 minutes he was allocated.
“It was the best thing that can ever happen to a baseball announcer; there’s nothing even close,” Hughes said. “I was very pleased the year before to be inducted into the Cubs Hall of Fame – that was a great thrill – but the capper was Cooperstown.”
Even though his voice was already etched in posterity, Hughes can now officially say that he is a part of baseball immortality. Making it to Cooperstown, however, does not mean he has reached the conclusion of his career. Instead, he wants to stay engaged in the sport and hopefully return behind the microphone for another seventh game of the World Series.
“I’ve been the voice of the Cubs now for 28 years,” Hughes said, “and when a franchise that special puts you in charge, I still consider it an awesome responsibility day in and day out.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
