NPR’s Scott Simon talks to NBC’s Jason Benetti about his new gig as lead play by play announcer for Sunday Night Baseball.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
NBC Sports has a new lead play-by-play announcer for “Sunday Night Baseball.”
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JASON BENETTI: Two and two. Tigers win again.
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BENETTI: A city that doesn’t care about the odds has a baseball team to match.
SIMON: That’s the great Jason Benetti. He is also chief announcer for the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago White Sox before that, the Syracuse Chiefs before that. And oh, by the way, he’s a lawyer. Jason Benetti joins us now on the road from Minneapolis. Thanks so much for being with us.
BENETTI: Scott, always glad to be with you. Thank you.
SIMON: What does doing these Sunday night games for a national audience mean to you?
BENETTI: Yeah. I mean, as a guy who grew up with cerebral palsy, to have a network decide to put somebody like me, the way I look, in the lead chair for something, I think, means a lot to me, first of all, certainly. And then second of all, I think for anybody who’s a little different to have somebody who’s also different physically be in that chair, I hope it matters. It feels important to me, and I didn’t know whether or not that would ever happen.
SIMON: You’re such a great announcer. I don’t want this to take over everything, but can you help us understand what kind of challenges cerebral palsy has posed in your life?
BENETTI: Yeah, I kind of hit the cerebral palsy lottery in that I have clean speech and my body moves mostly OK. And there are a lot of people with CP who deal with paralysis or use a wheelchair or a technology device to be assisted to speak. And I haven’t had that. Most of my challenges are perceptual. Most of my challenges are people thinking that I don’t understand them, or thinking that I can’t get around or whatever it might be. And, you know, that’s what I’ve dealt with for the most part.
SIMON: How do you convey excitement when you’re the play-by-play announcer?
BENETTI: I’ve learned over time from a lot of great announcers that it’s about the eighth steps and 16th steps in between notes. This is more melodic of an undertaking than I think I thought at first. But the build to a play is so important, knowing the difference between B sharp and B and then C, and knowing the difference between melancholy and despair. I think there are almost infinite emotions you can convey with a combination of words and tone and feeling from the heart. And I think that’s where the magic lies.
SIMON: Is there a sporting event that you would really like to do but haven’t been asked yet?
BENETTI: The answer three weeks ago would have been doing the NCAA basketball tournament on television. But Brian Anderson of Turner and CBS and Milwaukee Brewers is a – he’s a great announcer. He got sick before the first round of the – first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament. And so I happen to be in Buffalo at that site doing radio for Westwood One. And CBS Turner asked NBC if I would be able to do it, and they asked Westwood One if they’d be willing to shuffle the deck, and I ended up doing the first four games of the first round of the NCAA Tournament. That’s one of those things that I never, ever, ever, ever, ever thought would happen. There are only eight seats to do that every year. They don’t – they never change hands. And so, you know, my bucket list is pretty empty now, Scott. And “Sunday Night Baseball,” to be on this crew every week and be able to be kind of the destination for baseball at the end of the week, I’ve been very fortunate.
SIMON: The Olympics? International cornhole championships?
BENETTI: (Laughter) Well, I got – I – you know, it’s funny, a friend of mine actually does the cornhole championships, so I’m going to leave that to him. But I got to do Olympic baseball from Stanford in 2021 in the kind of COVID Olympics from Tokyo, but it was from Stanford in the NBC studio. So, yeah, I would love to go to the Olympics and be able to be there and see the pageantry and the international flair for myself.
SIMON: Jason Benetti is the new lead play-by-play announcer for “Sunday Night Baseball” and NBC Sports. 7 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow, Atlanta Braves versus Cleveland Guardians. Jason, thanks so much for making time for us, and we’ll be there with you.
BENETTI: Thank you. Always great to talk to you.
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