It’s hard to believe that this season marks 26 years since play-by-play announcer Jon Miller signed off for the last time as the lead voice on an Orioles radio broadcast. The date was Oct. 12, 1996, as the Orioles were eliminated from the playoffs by the New York Yankees, four games to one.
That iteration of the Orioles had one more run in them in 1997, and then from 1998-2011, there was plenty of disappointment on the field and in the level of entertainment found listening and watching the games during what I like to call the Orioles’ years in the desert.
While the results on the field were awful during Mike Elias’ first three years in charge, there has been a plan, and the results have slowly begun to turn around. As the calendar page turned to August this season, the Orioles were shockingly very much in the wild-card hunt.
But one development that can’t be denied and in fact needs to be written about has taken place in the broadcast booth, where someone has begun to take over as the “voice” of the ballclub for the first time since Miller left for San Francisco.
All of the broadcasters since Miller have been solidly professional. However, none have touched Kevin Brown’s knowledge of the game and his sheer artistry in calling a game. He doesn’t make the broadcast about himself. Just listen to what he brings out of analysts Jim Palmer and Ben McDonald. It all makes for an enhanced experience for the viewer.
Brown came into our world in 2019, when he did a chunk of games for the Orioles Radio Network. With Gary Thorne the lead Orioles announcer on MASN, it looked as if the best Brown would do for the foreseeable future was radio. With all due respect to radio, the TV broadcasts are where the audience really turns.
But in 2020, the pandemic hit and all the games, home and away, during the short season were broadcast in Baltimore. Thorne and the club got into a contract dispute and suddenly the local broadcast landscape for 2021 had a big vacuum with no Thorne. The Orioles pounced on the young but skillful Brown to jump in feet first and do a solid amount of games on MASN.
Brown, 32, has done even more games this season. In fact, Brown and his wife moved into town full time. He suggests it was to better connect to the fans and the sensibilities of his audience.
It has helped a great deal that Brown has been partnered in the booth with a great analyst in Palmer. But as good as Palmer remains as an analyst, he doesn’t quite have the same natural chemistry that McDonald has with Brown.
That’s not meant as any knock on Palmer, who has aged like a fine wine. We are fortunate to still hear his insights and have his historical weight on the telecast. But McDonald, the former 1-1 pick from back in 1989, is doing the great work the Orioles envisioned him doing on the mound at Memorial Stadium and Camden Yards.
Still, the star of the show is clearly Brown, who unsurprisingly is no overnight success. He attended Syracuse University and more specifically the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications for his major in sports broadcasting.
With all that he did at Syracuse and with a reel of his work, he didn’t move too far, as he embarked on the dual job of public relations director and play-by-play voice for the Syracuse Chiefs of the International League. He did both TV and radio for the Chiefs from 2011-2017. He called college football and basketball for ESPN during his “offseason.”
What makes the listen so darn good? It’s like a good cook, with a great recipe and a plan for executing the planning and prep. Nothing in Brown’s delivery or manner is forced upon the listener/viewer.
Brown’s preparation is as good as it gets. In this day and age, it’s not just the preparation, it’s how quickly he is able to click into the analytical data at his beck and call and impart it to fans.
His use of the analytics is not thrust upon an audience in a way that will leave it forever playing catch-up on a vocabulary rough on baby boomers. But gradually, as he imparts an anecdotal use of exit velocity or batting average of balls in play, we start to hear insights into this magical new world of baseball in the age of the Jetsons.
Most of all, he is just soothing. And while I won’t say he is Vin Scully-like, Brown is the best play-by-play announcer Baltimore baseball fans have had since that awful day in October 1996, when the Orioles were eliminated from a postseason series against the Yankees and we lost Miller.
I don’t want to delve into the reasons we lost Miller. I just hope the Angelos running the show today gets it, that the play-by-play voice can greatly embellish the team you have painstakingly put together.
Anybody can go in the booth and spin a yarn or two and have a cliché or two. But someone like Kevin Brown enhances the experience and entertains and informs along the way.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles