In the 45 minutes after his phone first rang with the news he’d be heading to New York, Kevin Brown’s mind wasn’t on baseball. It would get there, with excitement at the prospect of calling his first televised baseball game at a stadium he used to visit while growing up.
But first, there were more pressing worries for Brown, the lead Orioles play-by-play commentator on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, and his wife. He didn’t expect that call, the one telling him he’d be calling Tuesday’s game against the Yankees in under 24 hours. Brown and his wife had to figure out whether they’d take the train or their car and who would take care of their dog.
Only then, with those logistics straightened out, did Brown shift his attention to the next night’s broadcast.
“Now I just have to call a baseball game,” Brown said Tuesday afternoon on the field at Yankee Stadium. “What could be easier than that?”
It hadn’t been so easy in past years, when Brown called games off television monitors at Camden Yards even with the team on the road. And entering 2022, the Orioles and Nationals — which both air on the Orioles-owned MASN — were the lone sets of commentators still doing virtual broadcasts.
But at 8:30 Monday night, Brown received a call from Adam Martiyan, a coordinating producer at MASN, telling him to pack a bag. It was an unexpected turn of events. For Brown, though, in his first year as the Orioles’ lead play-by-play broadcaster, the prospect of calling his first in-person road game in three years was made more special by the location of that road game, where the Long Island native used to come to games with his father.
“It feels weirdly appropriate that it’s this city, this park,” Brown said. “Makes it more special.”
Brown is a self-described subscriber to coachspeak. He focuses on the day-to-day process, on what he and his wife will eat for lunch in an hour. His wife, by inverse, is more concerned with where the couple’s kids will spend Christmas in five years — “and we don’t have kids,” he added.
But even Brown, a stringent day-at-a-time observer, admits his first Opening Day at Camden Yards this season sticks with him. He arrived early, walked through the concourse and saw more fans in the stadium than there have been since he joined MASN in 2019. He soaked in the atmosphere, the orange carpet, the introductions.
That’s as big-picture as the 32-year-old allows himself to get.
“That felt like a moment,” Brown said. “That was a capital ‘M’ moment that I’m lucky to have, because in four years here, being a part-time person, I never had the chance to call the home opener. … That was probably the moment that I was most like, ‘This is something special.’”
By the time the new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009, Brown’s dreams of playing shortstop on that field were remnants of the past, a younger self yet to learn the limited prospects of making the majors as a player. Instead, his vision had shifted to the broadcast booth — an equally challenging prospect, but one he proved capable of achieving.
Still, his first full season as the primary play-by-play commentator started out with various trials. He had grown accustomed to calling games virtually the past few years, but there were still aspects that left some of the viewing experience wanting.
Against the Angels last week, for instance, there was a ball hit down the line that Brown thought hit fair, judging off an initial camera angle as he called the game from the other side of the country. He was shocked when it wasn’t, and he was equally shocked the Orioles didn’t challenge the call.
“I’m sure if we were in the park, we would’ve looked right down the line and seen it was foul,” Brown said. “But the camera angle was a little off center.”
Other technical difficulties have cropped up, too. During one spring training game, an on-site MASNsports.com reporter called the game because of technical difficulties. Brown highlighted how there was a noticeable delay on the feed compared to the voices and an echo was present.
“I would have to imagine that played a part in the calculus [to travel again], but I don’t know,” Brown said. “Nobody said, ‘You’re going for ‘X’ reason.’”
Whatever prompted MASN to send Brown and color analyst and Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer to New York doesn’t matter to Brown so much as the fact they’re in the Bronx at all.
There’s the personal connection to the stadium he visited growing up. But there’s also the professional competitiveness Brown has, the one that drives him each night to make the broadcast as “informative and entertaining” as possible. When he’s virtual, that’s still the goal. But when in person, that goal is only more easily attainable.
“We have the tools to put together a great broadcast, and this is going to make a huge difference,” Brown said. “I kind of feel overwhelmed with gratitude that we get to be here, and I think people are going to notice it. I really do.”
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