Katie Nolan on Why She Went Dark on Her First MLB Broadcast | SI Media Podcast
Episode 387 of the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina features a conversation with Katie Nolan, who is part of AppleTV+' s MLB coverage.
The following transcript is an excerpt from The SI Media Podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.
Jimmy Traina: Are you actually checking your mentions during the game? Please tell me no. If you say yes, I'm really gonna have a major problem.
Katie Nolan: I'm going to be honest with you. Week 1 I did, because my goal is ... listen, listen, listen, listen! What I'm there for, I can be the voice of the fan. So if something is happening that we didn't notice, and because you know me, I'm digging through notes like crazy, if I missed something that actually would have been funny and someone's like, hey, this is interesting–I thought that's what I was gonna get my first week. I checked it in like the fourth or fifth inning, and then you can tell from the fifth inning on I'm silent. Because I just was in my head, I was freaked out, I was worried I was going to get fired after one shift of this gig. And since then I've stopped.
Jimmy Traina: That is amazing to me that you just admitted that. Because there was a night, it was a Friday night. I wasn't watching the game, forgive me because it wasn't a Yankee game.
Katie Nolan: We're doing a Yankee game later. I don't know what to do about it, please bookmark that as something we need to talk about.
Jimmy Traina: OK, I'll give you all the scoop. Anyways, I saw a tweet from someone that night that said something like, 'I don't know what's going on with Katie Nolan, she hasn't talked for like four innings or something.' And so that was actually accurate.
Katie Nolan: Yes. If you know me, you're like, what, where's Katie? If you don't know me, when I speak, you're like, why is she speaking? And so it's this weird, I'm trying to not piss off the people who don't know me yet and also just being the third voice who will always lay out if somebody else has something to say. And so yeah, the first week I think I defaulted more to being a person who helps get more out of Hunter [Pence], because he hasn't been in the booth that much. And I sort of took that on as my role, which I'm not proud of, I should have just stuck to my guns and been me. But the way I see it, I'm looking at this season like I want to learn something new every week and get better every week. And so Week 1 I had to forgive myself and say look, 'don't turn the ball over,' as your biggest goal. Like don't screw up so badly that they're right. So the safest thing for me was to just talk less. It's gotten better, but I'm still trying to figure out how to be less long-winded and just sort of get in the thing. It's hard to have comedic timing in a sport that has its own timing of like when to talk and how to move and it's a challenge.
Jimmy Traina: But you've only done what, three games, four games?
Katie Nolan: Just finished our fourth. We're going into the fifth.
Jimmy Traina: Cut yourself a little slack. It's been four games.
Katie Nolan: I'm not good at self slack, you know? It's sort of like the thing that I'm like, you're the luckiest person on earth. You are a sports fan who has somehow snuck her way into the actual broadcast of the game. Not a backup broadcast, not a simulcast, the broadcast of that game. And there is a responsibility to it.
