The baseball season is a long grind. There are days when you just don’t want to do the game, but you have to suck it up and do the best job you can to give the viewers what they deserve.  

During the season, there are some really good games, and some really bad games.  The really good games are fun, because it is easy to get in a groove and produce an Emmy Award-winning caliber show.  The bad games are a real challenge. The bad games usually lead to us providing more entertainment than game coverage because the game is so bad.

You may hear Jerry remark during these games “this is going to get dangerous,” because we really don’t know where the conversation is going to go. On July 13 against the Orioles, we had such an “incident.” The funny thing was that the game had yet to begin.

It was Vermont Day at Fenway Park. On the broadcast side, we try to mention the state day with showing the state flag flying over the press box, showing signs that mention the state and showing scenics of the state. Ironically a lot of the New England states look very similar (rolling hills, covered bridges and cows). We usually get the scenics from the state’s department of tourism. They really try to convey “New England” when shooting and distributing the footage.  

Well,  in the break prior to coming back to the start of the game, Russ Kenn and I were telling Don and Jerry that we would be showing some scenic’s of Vermont for our opening billboards, and the conversation turned to talking about cows for some reason. We started to get silly and were speculating that the cows in the scenics were the same cows that were in the Connecticut scenics, or that they were actually professional cows from Hollywood who travel around the country acting for scenics.

The laughter started to build, and about 10 seconds before we got back it became uncontrollable. Don was unable to read the billboard copy because he was laughing so hard…Jerry was rolling in his chair with his finger on the “talk-back” button…the button that allows him to talk to the truck without his audio going out on the air.

Two of my cameramen, Bill Titus and Matt Johnson, immediately shot the booth so we could see what was going on. If you click this link, you can see the video from the booth during the laughing fit. During the whole thing, somebody in the truck…I won’t say who…was whispering moos as well as other less-flattering sound effects into their ears to keep them laughing.  

Don was unable to read the lineup. Thankfully, it was Sunday, and we had a young lad reading the lineup for Junior Announcer Day. Jerry said a couple of words about the starting pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, and all he could muster for the defense was, “and it’s a good one.”

Things settled down by the end of the inning, and I believe we had a good broadcast. We try to provide the highest quality baseball broadcast every night, but it is these moments that help us get through the long season. And we thought it was going to be just another day at the old ball yard.