Hockey announcer Doc Emrick once called a college baseball game featuring Thurman Munson
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It's pretty difficult to imagine Mike "Doc" Emrick in any situation other than calling a hockey game. He's already in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and the vocabulary he uses during broadcasts is newsworthyandsoundboard-worthy. But this spring, the life-long Pirates fan will try his hand at calling a ballgame.
The Pirates Spring Training game he ends up calling won't be Emrick's first baseball game, either. He's announced only one other, but it was pretty good practice. Emrick told the story to reporters at Pirates camp:
"On late notice, they needed somebody to go to Miami Field to do a game between Miami [University of Ohio] and Kent State -- so Stan [Savran] and I went down. Stan, of course, knew some of the players personally. I didn't know anything. All we had was a lineup -- no media guy, nothing. And so we shared innings, doing the Miami-Kent State game. I don't remember who won. I do remember that you can only mention the flag blowing a certain way in center field so many times without driving people nuts, but there was a lot of time to fill between pitches.
So, I was awful. Stan got through it OK, and he reminded me a few years ago that Thurman Munson played in the game, and that Steve Stone was available to pitch but did not. That's my only baseball game."
So, Emrick's sole baseball game featured a future AL MVP and almost featured a future AL Cy Young Award winner. That's not a bad precedent -- especially considering the game he calls will very likely feature at least one former NL MVP.
If he keeps this up, maybe one day baseball will have its own 150 of Emrick's words.