NBC's Jason Benetti on Calling National Baseball & March Madness

All right.

Joining me now, someone we are going to see a lot of now that the baseball season is here is the new voice.

Of baseball on NBC Sunday Night Baseball.

Jason Bennetti.

Jason, how are you?

I'm great, Jimmy.

How are you?

I'm good.

Baseball's here, so that's a good thing.

I, I like this time of the year too.

We have the tournament and baseball starting at the same time, you know, weather getting a little better, so.

It's if you're a sports fan, everyone should be good right now, um.

Uh, speaking of the tournament, I, I, you know, I know you filled in for Brian Anderson last week, so I, I wanted to do that before we get to baseball because obviously, we're gonna do a lot of baseball.

But I have to say, and this sort of ties into the talk, my plan was to start about filling in.

And then in doing research for the podcast, you have one of the great sentences I've ever seen on someone's Wikipedia page.

I don't, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but it goes through your, you know, your life, your career, your resume, and all that.

And then there's a sentence on there that says, He ran the school's NCAA tournament pool.

When you were in high school, the fact that that would make a Wikipedia page, I, I, I had a chuckle at that.

Yeah, I don't know why that's there.

I haven't looked at my Wikipedia page in a while, uh, so, you know, like, minor racketeering evidently is the is the charge, uh, literally, um, but I did, I did, and, and even back to, like, junior high, maybe, I would come in with, like, a two pocket folder of brackets.

Like, you know, pretend that I was handing them out away from the teacher's view and thought I was getting away with it, when instead, I'm sure the teacher was like, look, like give the, give the kid this, let him run the pool, right?

He's not gonna go play basketball, let him run the pool.

So, yeah, I, I definitely did that.

These kids today, they don't know the, the great feeling of running the pool and marking all the brackets with a pen and paper.

That's exact, no, that's exactly right.

I'd have a highlighter and then a pen and, like, you get it right, you get the highlighter, you slash it.

It got to the point , honestly, where I kept getting sick.

On that Wednesday night before the first games that my parents, by the end of my senior year, probably junior year too, they simply said, just stay home.

Right.

Don't pretend, we're not, and then, and then senior year, I had a group of, like, 6 friends over watching all the games and we just all decided, you know what, like, enough with the pretense.

I was very lucky as a kid.

I, my parents always let me stay home from school on opening day, because back then, Opening day was always in the afternoon, always, yeah, and the Yankees back then were on, you know, WPIX and over the air TV and, you know, Phil Rizzuto and Bill White and I stayed home every year to watch the Yankees on opening day.

So I'm glad you had to at least stop pretending to be sick.

I mean, you know, save some dignity.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I just love that I saw on a Wikipedia page ran his high school's.

NCAA tournament, but it's a phenomenal thing to have on a Wikipedia.

Who put that there?

Why is that there?

What, who spent the time to do that?

I hope it's got a super script on it.

I hope it's like citations needed.

Well, now we're confirming.

So there you go.

Oh, that's true.

That's gone now.

So tell me, tell me, take me through, uh, um, last week.

So Brian Anderson loses his voice, um, and then you get the call, which I thought was interesting because you don't work for CBS or Turner.

You work for NBC now.

How long did you have, did you, were you told in advance that you were good, you, the offer to fill in for Brian, and were you nervous?

Did it, was it easy to do?

Talk, take me through it.

You know, I, it was, it was like 11:30 that I got, maybe 120 that I got the first phone call.

I, I knew Brian was under the weather from the night before, but I, I, I had no concept as we were going into the arena.

And for Westwood One, we do interviews with each of the coaches on radio so we can run them in the pregame show if necessary or just soundbites from it or whatever.

So I, I was in that room just doing these interviews.

And I got a call from Mike EB at Westwood One, and he said, hey, CBS called.

They're asking whether or not you could jump over.

Would you want to do this?

And I said, I, I would, I would love to, but only if it doesn't put you in a bind.

And Mike was awesome.

I've known him for 20 years now.

He was fantastic about it, and NBC was great about it, but I, I got that phone call, and then he told CBS to call NBC and see if NBC would be good with it.

And, you know, Sam Flood and Rick Cordella knew that, you know, just over the course of our conversations about the job, that I, I really, the NCAAA tournament is something that's pretty close to my heart and something that I, I love to do for Westwood One, and I've done it now for like 10 years.

Uh, but, uh, uh, you know, they were willing to let me do it.

And I said yes, um, but two things.

Number one, I had the boards built, right?

I, they are, I will say the prep for radio and the prep for TV is a little bit different for the tournament specifically, because, you know, doing it on radio, it's so much about description and where the ball is and the vivid imagery of what people are wearing and the pink shoes that they have on and the colors of the jerseys and all that stuff.

And so I did have to dive a little deeper on some of the stories that we were going to cover visually and, and that Ali would have and that Jim wanted to talk about.

So there's, there's kind of integrating yourself into the team, but it wasn't a super heavy lift because I had already built the boards for the teams, and I just You know, having, having run the pool, the NCAA tournament on TV was truly number one on the list of things that I'd ever want to do with this career.

Uh, that's awesome then that you got to do that.

Yeah, that I never, that I never thought that I would get the chance to do.

Um, because it's so limited, the number of seats to do it, right.

But it's, you know, it's a, it's a joy for me.

I mean, my senior year at Syracuse was the year that Syracuse got bounced by Vermont and Tom Brennan in Worcester, Massachusetts.

So, my, my friend Lauren and I were, were calling the game and, you know, they get, they get beat by TJ Sorrentin from the parking lot.

And I, I've always wanted, from that moment, I was like, I gotta get back here and do this.

I just love the event.

I love that it's win or go home.

You know, so, but, so your dream, you, so your dream was to, the number one thing you wanted to do was the tournament, but you didn't care, TV or radio.

No, I didn't actually.

I grew up, I grew up a radio announcer.

I mean , what I loved in the 1st 10 years of my career was almost exclusively radio and finding the right word and describing and bringing that energy and all that stuff and And, uh, TV kind of happened to me, right?

I only, I only asked it that way because obviously once you sign with NBC then you realize you're not gonna be doing the tournament on TV, um, so it is, it is.

Funny how it all.

All right, so just to take my listeners to it.

So Tuesday night, Brian Anderson's doing the 1st 4 game with Charles Barkley Vita, has no voice.

Wednesday morning, they call you.

Thursday, you're there on TV.

You're already gonna be there for Westwood One.

You slide over to the TV side.

What, what, so you get to do the tournament on TV.

What, what, when it was all over.

Was it a rush?

What was the experience like for you?

Because even though you say radio is what you want to do, it had to be really cool to be there on that first day on that Thursday of the tournament when everyone's watching, everyone's into it, you get a game there on television.

It was a total blast.

I mean, I didn't care.

We had 3 blowouts and I didn't care, you know, 22 pieces of it were, were awesome.

One, I was wearing not my suit.

Uh, the one thing I didn't bring because I was doing radio was a suit and tie.

And so Turner went out and bought me a suit and tie.

So I was just, you know, one day rental and then one day rental suit as well.

But, you know, the, the last game of the day, and I didn't say anything about this on TV, it wasn't the place, but the last game of the day when Saint Louis blew out Georgia.

Uh, Josh Shurtz, the, the St.

Louis head coach, was at points during my tenure at High Point University right out of college doing basketball on the radio there, was my roommate on the road.

He was an assistant coach, uh, for High Point, and Bart Lundy was the head coach at the time.

Uh.

And so Josh and I every once in a while would room on the road.

And on that same day, High Point got its first NCAA tournament victory.

It felt a bit like a reunion, but, but the other small piece of it is, uh, is that my broadcast partner doing those High Point games, a long time ago is a guy named Stafford Stevenson, who was an assistant coach for the Evansville team that had the plane crash back in the day, but Stafford was out recruiting.

And he just, you know, he and another assistant coach were survivors of that season, and he just loved basketball so much that he stuck around it.

And he was a marvelous human being and taught me so much about just having a good time on the air and being a good partner.

And Stafford passed away about 1.5, 2 months ago.

Uh, he was dealing with dementia at the end of his life, but I, you know, being there watching Josh's first NCAA tournament win on the same day that High Point got its first NCAA win after losing a guy who loved basketball so much, you know, it makes, it makes you believe in something else at that point.

Yeah, for sure.

It's almost it's eerie the way that all, all went down all because Brian Anderson loses his voice basically.

And then who would have thought a High Point over Wisconsin?

Crazy, crazy.

Take me through, I should have mentioned at the top ed job by me, but I, I said Jason's obviously gonna be the voice of Sunday night.

Baseball on NBC.

Diamondbacks, Dodgers on Thursday night will be the first game.

Now you, are you still doing Westwood One radio for the tournament this weekend?

No, I'm , I'm, uh, I'm, I finish after rounds 1 and 2 for OK, OK, but you still have, you're still doing the Tigers game.

Take me through, I'd be curious, starting Thursday, take me through like your next 7 days, what your schedule is, how, like what your games are, because I know you're also doing the Sunday night on Peacock.

Take me through how many games you have in the next 7 days.

Yeah, so, to Rob Manfred in the league office, thank you for understanding how important Pacific Time is to the Tigers right now.

So, Thursday night, uh, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, as you said, uh, drive to San Diego Friday morning, Tigers, Padres, Friday, Saturday.

Uh, which is a very fortunate bounce, and then fly from San Diego to Seattle Sunday morning for Guardians Mariners Sunday night.

And then, then the next morning, Monday morning, fly to Phoenix for Tigers, Diamondbacks, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

So it's all on the West Coast, thankfully, unbelievably, um, but that, those are, that's the schedule as it stands.

That's, that's, so the, so where you, where it's tight is you're gonna fly Sundays to Seattle or do this Mariners Guardians on Peacock.

That, that'll be the one I'm coming in.

I'm coming in not smoking hot, but you know, a little bit up the Scoville scale.

Yeah, I'm, I'm blown.

I get into all this sports media nerd stuff and you know, I know no one, but like I'm blown away by the fact.

That we're taping this.

The pod comes out very, very early, like 4 or 5 a.m. on Thursday.

We're taping this Wednesday.

Um, I'm blown away by the fact that Matt Vascursion is going to do Yankees, Giants on Netflix 8:05 Eastern Wednesday night and then somehow be at Citi Field at 1 o'clock on Thursday for Mets Pirates.

If you had to do that, how, what would the nerves be like?

So I, the fun thing is, I think the travel just takes your nerves completely out of it.

I mean, if it doesn't happen, if for some reason the flight doesn't go, I mean, what, what can you do about it, right?

I just, I think you're going on adrenaline at that point, but I, you know, the, the real 30 for 30 is on how much he sleeps after game two.

Right , right.

Uh, it would be, I mean, that is some turnaround.

And then that I should mention the Pirates-Mets game that Matt calls will be on NBC as well.

Um, all right, so let's get into.

Sunday Night Baseball, NBC.

I, I think the biggest piece of news to come out of it is you'll be working with different analysts every week.

NBC is not hiring a full-time analyst.

They're gonna use local analysts each week.

Did you have any say in that decision?

Let me start with that.

Did they come to you and ask your opinion?

The say that I had is that I, I, You know, I, I had the choice and they had the choice not to pick me and I had the choice not to say yes.

And it was a, it was a quick yes for me, honestly, having done it in 2022.

So when they picked you, you knew that was gonna be the plan going in.

I had a good idea.

They hadn't cemented it, but since they had done it in 20202, I figured that would be more likely than not.

So for you as the play by play guy, what does that mean to you in terms of work and preparation and, you know, usually, I would, you know, if you're doing it on a national broadcast, I would think at the top is trying to build some chemistry with your analysts.

You don't have to worry about that because you're gonna have a different, different ones every week.

So what is the challenge and the pros and cons of this setup?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of the, so, so I went to, uh, the sphere to see U2 with a friend of mine a couple of years ago.

And it was the night that Lady Gaga showed up at the sphere, and as we were walking in, one of the ushers was like, Oh, you're really gonna like this, and we're like, Yeah, we know it's you two at the sphere , it's gonna be great.

And she said, No, no, no, there's something else going on.

And I was like, Well, what, what is it?

Can you, and she's, I can't tell you.

But then Lady Gaga showed up, and I can't tell you how much I hate when people do that, just as a side note.

What , like, oh, I know so, yeah, like I know.

Oh, I know, yeah, yeah, it's gonna be great.

It's gonna be a good time.

I know something you did, yeah, I mean, what, what does that get you?

Because you can't answer the follow-ups, right, right?

Right.

What are we exactly?

Yeah, I got irritated just listening to you tell me that, but I'm, I'm great.

I'm glad I made your morning.

So the, it was, they don't play together all the time.

So it either works or it doesn't, and I'm sure they rehearsed, but either it works or it doesn't.

And I, as like a quote unquote performer, if you can call it.

sports play by play announcer, a performer.

Absolutely.

I really love the idea of it works or it doesn't.

And you dive in and nobody at home cares, right?

Like, if you've seen Elton John before, and then you go see him again and he's not as good, you're gonna be disappointed, even though you know what he is, right?

And nobody cares if you, as the person at the piano, didn't sleep the night before, or you have a new band member or what they just want to show.

And so I think it's exhilarating as a performer to want the show to be great no matter what.

Like, throw some variables in, let's see what happens, because the upside of that is you never get the same show every night.

And that is, that is, um, I think a place where performers who kind of have wandering curiosity tend to thrive.

I, I, I like the difference of the show every night, every Sunday.

That appeals to me as a person.

Uh, do you have in your head any analysts that you, you want to work with this season and can you, Go to NBC and say, oh, I'd love to, you know, as an example, you know, I'd love to get Keith Hernandez when we have the Met.

Like, can you do that?

Will you do that?

Well, Bill Walton has passed, so, you know, that, that would have been my first to them like, hey, what about, what about Bill in the booth at some point.

He did a baseball game, right?

Didn't ESPN do something?

Didn't, am I remembering did a White Sox game with me.

OK, that's what it was.

He did a, I knew I would have loved to have seen him in a three-man booth and like get Mike Fratello back or, you know what I mean, like do, do that sort of thing.

But, um, I, it is, it's hard to pick one.

Right, I, it's hard.

Well, I didn't mean, do you have one?

I meant, do you have, you could have more than one in you.

Oh, I have a bunch, I have a bunch in my mind that I think are really good around, like, I've never worked with Orel Hershiser.

I think he's fantastic, you know, I've, I've heard a lot of great things about Anthony Rizzo.

I don't know him personally well, but I'm excited to work with him and I don't.

I haven't even seen the grid of who's like confirmed confirmed at this point.

But there are some names that have gotten tossed around that are just off the field that are kind of in the Clayton Kershaw mold that I'm like, oh, that, you know, they're going to know the people on the field in a way that will be intriguing for the viewers.

Yeah.

Um, when you, you, you, you left Fox to go to NBC for this gig, when you were at Fox, you were doing college football, and I know they use you on an NFL game and Uh, do you know, will you be doing anything besides baseball here at NBC?

Has that been determined yet?

Because they do have a college football package.

They have the NBA.

They've got plenty of things in their portfolio.

Um, so just curious if we'll be seeing you elsewhere.

Yeah, so I don't know what we have, we have truly, and I'm not playing coy, we've truly not talked about what assignments within the sports, uh, because we've been so locked on the baseball stuff, but football, basketball is gonna be a part of it.

So, and then, and then I would assume the Olympics as well.

Yeah.

Do you, is Is baseball your favorite thing to call?

I mean, it, it, it depends on the season, honestly, like I do love the crush of doing a college football game a week, or an NFL game a week and just diving in with a team of people and making 3 hours of television about one game.

There's a whole camaraderie and togetherness that comes from that, and it built, you know, it built a great friendship between me and Brock Heart for a bunch of years and then RG3 last year, but I You know, and then, and then basketball is this 2 hour bang bang bang, like, stakes are high on every possession.

So I, it's hard to pick a favorite just because I, I really do like each of them for what they bring.

What I would say is I would feel hollow without any of them, because I think they all contribute some piece to, to, to me and to the enjoyment of the fans.

It's interesting because I, I would think if you do local baseball, you, you, you do the Tigers games for anyone listening who might not know, um, uh, you know, I feel like baseball is so different from everything else because of the 162 games and you do get that bond with the local, do you, do you feel a strong bond with the Tigers fans after doing it for these years now?

I do.

I, they, they've been really good and welcoming to me after coming over from the White Sox and , you know, it's, it's.

I, I totaled it up the other day for our crew, for the Tigers, that if you take the, if you take the average game time of a Major League Baseball game from last year, which was 238.

And you multiply that by 162 games.

We are on the air together, assuming we do every game and I don't, and our producer doesn't and our analysts don't, but it is 17 3/4 days.

Of Tigers baseball.

We are on the air for more than 17 days of the summer doing Tigers baseball.

And if you look at the entire run of Succession or Parks and Recreation or whatever, we clear the entire run of those shows after a couple months.

Right.

So, so it is, I, I think it is the biggest challenge longitudinally in sports broadcasting, not.

Again, like our jobs are not that challenging compared to the rank and file of humanity.

But it 17 days in an era of short attention spans, people are going to tire of something that you do, that's you're just going to miss sometimes.

And it's just like, you need to have a crew, and we do, that thinks of it a little bit like a show, like a scripted show.

You need to have people in the truck who feel like writers.

To deal with the, the moments where nothing's happening.

And it probably would have been 25 games before the pitch clock.

You're totally right.

You're totally right.

If you, if you add 40 minutes or what, I, I, I shudder to think what that number is.

You know, the pitch clock, uh, uh, uh, from the 1st 2nd I saw it in a spring training game, I loved it.

I wanted it in the sport.

I think it's been an, it just, you can't put it, you can't quantify how important it's been, I think, to the sport.

And this year now we have the ABS system which I, I think is gonna be great too, and I actually, I wrote this in my column today.

What I wanna see, and I hope it happens early in the season.

I want to see a walk-off ABS win.

I want to see a challenge that leads to like the end of the game.

Have you thought about seeing that as a play by play guy because you're gonna have to have some special call ready to go if that happens.

Yeah, it's funny.

It's like, you know, people always used to say, when you're a young announcer, like, you don't, you don't get it back, like you don't get that call back, you don't get a second chance at it.

It just flies by and what an industry and all this.

Now we get a second bite at the apple.

Now we get, I mean, but you almost have to.

You have to stop , right?

It's like catching the ball in the post as a basketball player and then, like, shot fake and then you go up again, like, can you explode without a dribble into then that call, but it, it's, it's gonna be weird, I think, Jimmy, because, because you're, you're gonna get, it's, you're gonna get these moments where you have one reaction and one team goes ballistic, and it's, you know, it's like the Vanderbilt shot.

That almost went down, right?

But it didn't fall.

But it's from a standstill.

And the, you know, I, I just hope that there's maybe on a play like that, and I know they're going to try to get us the feed of the, the, you know, reenactment, the, the animation.

Of whether it's a strike or ball, I would almost hope that they actually take half a beat longer with that one, right?

Because I think the drama is so important, not that they'd wait 15 seconds or whatever.

Everybody wants to be uniform with it, but I do think that the drama is going to be fascinating.

I don't even, I don't even know how it's gonna hit the audience, you know.

I agree with you.

I think if you get it, you know, late in the game, tie game, one run game.

You could really build up some drama there in that few seconds where they go to the T-Mobile thing and that video comes up.

I think it's gonna be, and you know what I really love too, you know, listen, you could sit here all day long and go through things, baseball gets wrong, but they, I love the fact that if the manager of the team wins the challenge, they keep their challenge.

Unlike in what we're seeing in the tournament, which is a disaster, how that role is going on in college basketball, I don't understand because it makes no, it makes no sense that the refs will get a call wrong.

You challenge it, you're right, you lose the challenge.

Where's the common?

Just give me common sense.

I agree with you.

I, and I think, I think this is where sports put pressure on each other.

I think when this works for baseball, I think it's gonna.

Um, and the NCAA will, will change that, or the Rules Committee, whoever it ends up being, is gonna change that because I think, I, I know they wanna keep game times down and all that, or they're gonna, they're gonna change the, the, the, the skeleton of how to do challenges in some way.

Um, tell me, I, let me backtrack just to go back to Sunday Night Baseball going to NBC.

You know, NBC, I, I feel they do a great job.

They've always done a great job with Sunday Night Football.

We're seeing them doing a really good job with Sunday Night basketball .

So I know NBC is gonna do a good solid broadcast.

Obviously, hiring you goes a long way to that.

Give me like, what are you guys looking to do with Sunday Night Baseball?

You know, you gave me a good tip there where you mentioned you want maybe to get the replay, the video of the, of them doing the replay.

Give me what you, the philosophy, what Sunday Night Baseball, what you want it to be.

I mean, you talked about it being a show and the performers.

Give me a little more on, on what you want.

That game to be on Sunday nights for the viewers and for yourself.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I truly.

I think we're gonna find out in some regard, based on who the analysts are that week, but I I feel like baseball is a haven for people who love detail in sports.

I mean, there, if you, if you learn Statcast, not the exit velocity stuff that people, like, you know, people immediately go, oh my goodness, I can't.

If, if I wanna pull up all of the home runs that Freddie Freeman has hit against Zack Allen in his career, I can search for it and see the pitch location.

And where it is and how those sequences went and all of that.

There is absolutely a tactical battle between every pitcher and every hitter nowadays.

And doing regional baseball, it is difficult to get that deep in the weeds.

Over 162 games because of the bandwidth.

But when you have somebody like Adam Ottavino or Clayton Kershaw or whoever down on the field along with or wherever they're gonna be, along with who's in the booth.

I think you can dive into specifics that make baseball tick nowadays.

I think, I think there's that, and there's also the fun of showing people who've never seen Dodger Stadium, and I know, you know, like people have seen Dodger Stadium, but is there something we can Do that's a little bit different at Dodger Stadium.

Is there something that we can do on a weekly basis that makes it feel like the place to be in Major League Baseball?

And I don't want to claim that I have all the answers to that right now, because I do think if you watch like the first episode of Sunday Night Football.

It's gonna be there, like, you, you have to find your footing as a group to know what stuff you end up repetitiously doing that lands with an audience.

So, I think it's a little bit, um, it's a little premature, or it's like forcing it on people.

If I said, well, here are like 3 tenets that I really think are gonna, you know, we're going to do this every week and boy is it going to be great.

I think we'll figure out what the audience wants, but I think the North Star is, we want it to be really interesting, we want the detail to be fun and neat, and to have you go, oh, I, like what what Sunday Night Football does so well is they identify matchups and skill sets of a defensive back or a defensive lineman, and they ID how that person is gonna do against the offensive line across the way from them.

So I think, I think baseball has these tactical matchups or where to deploy a reliever or how to attack this hitter that people are gonna find fascinating when you do it routinely.

And there are some regional shows that do it very well, but I think we want it to, to feel, um, important in its detail is what I would say.

It, you know, it is crazy in this day and age of social media.

Like, I think about it.

And I said, you know, something like baseball does a great job, you detailed what they do, but like, The biggest thing to come out of Sunday Night Foot, I should say football, was the Cris Collinsworth slide, like something totally natural and out of left field like you would never expect it and can't plan.

No, I mean, when we did the Peacock games in 2022, the Sunday leadoff games, one of my favorite moments that happened was we were doing, we were doing Orioles Angels at Camden Yards, and it was Ben McDonald and Mark Gubiza, two very good analysts.

It was a really good booth.

In our open, I was standing in the middle.

Of the two of them.

And I tossed it to one of them first, and then that person tossed it to the other person and didn't include me as like that silly bridge, like, and to you, Ben, right?

Right.

And they literally talked over my head because they're both like 6'7.

They literally talked above me.

And I looked and I said, guys, That, that was demeaning.

That was, that was awful.

Uh, and we had a good laugh about it, but it was like, it was like a plane buzzing over the town.

But, but you, you don't know, right?

You don't know until it happens.

And so we'll try stuff at the beginning and some of it will land and some of it won't.

But I think in general, the concept is really strong because you're, you're just going to have novel conversation every week.

And where do you stand on working in the analytics?

Like, do you like an analytics-heavy broadcast?

Do you want to rely on those stats?

Do you want to keep it casual?

What's sort of the philosophy on the analytics?

Yeah, it, you know, it, it better tell a story.

I think, I think every front office in Major League Baseball is using analytics of the as the underpinning of what they do and how they find hitters and how they find pitchers.

But we need to convey it in a way that's interesting to an audience.

And so like, for example, Mookie Betts said in a story, maybe a week and a half ago that he felt like his swing was slower last year after the illness he had.

In Japan to start the season.

He lost 20 pounds and all that.

Oh yeah, right, I remember that, yeah.

And so his swing was slower.

If we can show that Mookie Betts at some point this season has his swing back up to the speed that it should be or he feels like it should be, I think that's a really good use of a number because you can measure that and you can say, no, he's back in that place, or if somebody's slider isn't moving like it was supposed to.

And we say, oh, here's his average slider, and here's the one that he's been throwing tonight, here's why it's happened.

I, I think that illustrates something.

But people don't want to hear, people don't want to do a math test just to do a math test.

And so, if it's illustrative, if it shows you something about why a player or how a player is doing what he's doing, great, awesome.

Is this You know, you get the, you're gonna get, you'll have wild card games with NBC this year.

Have you done wild card, have you done MLB playoff games in the past at all?

Cause I know, you know, locally, You get booted out of there when the postseason starts, unfortunately.

Is this gonna be the first time you're doing postseason games if, you know, when NBC has the wild card games?

The way you said that about getting booted out of here, I think we should do videos now where the national announcers actually come into the booth and eject the local announcers.

I think that would, that would be a hilarious concept.

The, uh, I even said it that way because I, I did a podcast earlier this week with Gary Cohn, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez, and I asked Gary Cohn about this.

And Gary Cohen actually, he used the word painful.

He said it's painful when that happens.

I agree.

I mean, I, you're with the team all year and you wanna, you wanna do it.

I, but, you know, two things.

Uh, one, I like the concept of what NBC's doing because I, I have to imagine we're going to have the local analysts in the wild card round.

Uh, and then number two, I, I actually did our first ever Statcast alternate telecast at ESPN was that Cubs Rockies wild card game in 2018 that when I want to say 14 innings.

So it was the first time we did, we had done the home run derby as a Statcast edition that year.

But we, we did that telecast as a Statcast wildcard game and it was great.

And we did from home in 2021, some Statcast wildcard alternate telecasts as well.

So I've, I've done, and then, um, Red Sox-Yankees in, I'm sorry, that was 2020 that we were at home.

Red Sox-Yankees was 21.

We were back in the booth at Fenway for that game where that had the weird send from third base.

I don't remember the exact circumstances, but it was, um.

It was at Fenway, so I've done playoff baseball before, but it was as an alternate telecast, yeah.

All right, before we wrap in, in doing the research.

I saw that you had worked at Fox college basketball with Bill Raftery, and I usually, anyone who comes on this podcast who's worked for Raf worked with Raftery, I asked them for a Raftery story.

Um, John Fanta shared a couple of great ones last week about Raftery almost ruining his relationship by saying that you saw that.

Uh, so do you have a, you know, you told that great story about Ben McDonald, Marcusa, you got anything with Raftery that you can share?

I love that man more than life itself.

I mean, I, so yes, before you, I don't wanna cut you off, but on a serious note before we get to, I mean, I marvel this weekend, 83 years old in a month.

I, I don't, I can't, you know, you had Vern go late in his career, Vin Scully, but There's not a 1% drop off with Raftery, not one.

He's a medical marvel.

He's a medical marvel.

So we had a game in February, and I'll, I'll get to the story that you asked about, but we had a game in February where he was under the weather and he wouldn't tell anybody, and I was like, stay, stay back, like, don't go to shootarounds.

He had, he had had Ohio State like 4 times already that year, so I convinced him to not go to shootaround because he just saw them over the weekend.

But he wanted to be there and he wanted to do the work and all this stuff, and I, for the first time ever, I was like, man, is he gonna, and he gets on the air and he was better than I was.

I mean, nobody had any idea that he was really in a bad way, just with some virus or whatever it might be, and nobody had any idea and he cares so much.

Much about honoring the job and doing right by the job.

I mean, it is, it's something that literally everybody in the world can take from because he just cares so much about doing right by not even the broadcasting gods, but like his work ethic or wherever he learned that.

But my, my, my first year at Fox, we did a Michigan State Purdue game.

And Zach Eadie was playing at Purdue, the 7 footer who's now with the Grizzlies in the NBA.

And Raff and I never rehearsed opens because he doesn't need to, and I wanted to see what kind of reaction he'd give me out of the blue.

So it was weird when we were sitting at the table 30 minutes before air and he said , hey, in the open, ask me how you guard Zach Eadie.

I was like, Weird.

I mean, I guess he has something specific he wants to do, or they have a video package I didn't hear about or whatever it is.

So we come on the air, welcome to the Breslin Center, big game in the Big 10.

Jason Bennetti, Bill Raftery, and Bill, how do you guard Zach Eadie?

He goes , I thought I was working with a pro.

You see how tall he is?

I don't know how to guard him.

And I give him this look and he's got this wry smile on his face.

If you watched it back, you could see the lip just kind of like, got you.

That is good.

That is good.

Love it.

Love it.

Yeah, how dare you ask such a stupid question.

Right?

It was awesome and he, you know, and he gives me the look and he moves on and he nails the open and he knows he got me, but nobody at home does, and that is the essence of that man.

He is the most reliably.

Funny, nails every line like the take me to the Balkans line on that Avis stitch dunk out of nowhere, from a standstill, he nails the funniest thing.

His vocabulary is totally underrated.

The words he thinks of, the combinations of words.

There was, there was a John Oliver comedians in cars getting coffee, where he said to Jerry, Uh, you know, my wife still doesn't understand that sometimes I just say words in an order because it's funny, and I don't even mean the words.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doctory has this uncanny ability to hit you with a proper noun or a word that you wouldn't think of or whatever it might be just in his deep vocabulary that I think is an underrated piece of it.

He's just, he's like a very strong linguist under all of the fun.

Yeah, yeah.

But even in the fun, there is, I mean, lingerie on the deck, like to come up with that.

It's just, and even onions.

I mean, it's so simple, but um, There is, there has to be a layer of intelligence slash creativity to come up with lingerie on the deck.

I mean, it's because it works perfectly, but who would have ever thought to say that phrase in the basketball game?

Correct.

And if you ever called him the poet laureate of college basketball or something.

You know, equally elegant.

He'd, he'd, he'd give you the greatest self-deprecating line anybody could ever think of.

I almost wish he was here right now for me to say that to him, because he'd say like, yeah, I got a minus in English lit, or like, you know, like.

Something there.

Right, right, right.

He is, he is the best.

Appreciate you sharing that.

All right, so we've got Sunday Night Baseball.

It's coming soon because you still have the basket Sunday night basketball going on here.

So I guess you're gonna have a handful of Sunday night games on Peacock while the NBA is on NBC until I guess their season wraps.

It'll be Jason Bennetti with rotating analysts every week on Sunday Night Baseball and uh looking forward to that on NBC.

Jason, this was great.

Thanks for doing this and enjoy the season, the slog of the regular season.

Enjoy it.

Jimmy, thank you for having me.

My pleasure.

Thanks.