Levering to see expanded TV role in 2022

MILWAUKEE -- Brewers fans will see more of Jeff Levering on their televisions in 2022, and the club is beginning the search for an additional radio play-by-play voice to reflect a number of moving pieces on the broadcast team.

Here’s a rundown of what is expected on the air next season:

• Brian Anderson is scheduled to work 50 Bally Sports Wisconsin telecasts, a reduction from his role as primary play-by-play man on television since 2007 that reflects his growing national profile. Anderson, who said in September that he’d signed a multi-year extension with the Brewers, worked about 90 games last season around his obligations calling baseball, basketball and golf for Turner Sports and CBS.

• Ten-time Wisconsin Sportscaster of the Year Matt Lepay’s tenure with the Brewers is coming to an end after eight seasons. Lepay, the voice of University of Wisconsin athletics, joined the Brewers on a part-time basis in 2014 to help cover play-by-play duties on TV while Anderson was away, but Lepay’s duties in Madison are expanding and his attention was required there, according to a Brewers spokesperson.

• That means an expanded role on television for Levering, the 2020 Wisconsin Sportscaster of the Year who has called Brewers games on the radio for the past seven seasons and has increasingly been lent to the TV side. He is expected to call all of the remaining games on Bally Sports Wisconsin when Anderson is away.

• Every expectation is that Bob Uecker will be back for a 52nd season on the Brewers Radio Network, continuing his recent practice of working only home games alongside either Levering or Lane Grindle. But with Levering on TV more frequently, that leaves 40-plus road games for which Grindle will need a radio partner, and the Brewers are beginning that search now.

It will mark the latest in a series of additions to the broadcasting crew over the past decade, including Levering and Grindle on the radio side and Sophia Minnaert, Tim Dillard, Vinny Rottino and Chris Singleton on TV.

Brewers On Deck remains 'paused'
The Brewers won’t host a fanfest in 2022, the club said Friday. The event typically is held on a Sunday in January between the NFL’s conference championship games and the Super Bowl, but it was paused amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The club plans to revisit the event at some point in the coming year to decide whether to bring it back in its current format or to make some changes. Those plans probably will not be settled until late 2022.