Benjamin Hill travels the nation collecting stories about what makes Minor League Baseball unique. This excerpt from his newsletter -- which he reported on from Greensboro, N.C., on July 28 -- is one of those stories. Read the full newsletter here, and subscribe to his newsletter here.

Get up, get outta here, gone!
You can kiss it goodbye!
Adios, pelota!

If you’re a baseball broadcaster then it’s likely that, sooner or later, you’ll develop your own home run catch phrase. It’s practically a job prerequisite.

Andy Durham, voice of the Greensboro Grasshoppers, came up with his catch phrase some three decades ago. On paper, however, it seems too commonplace to classify as a catch phrase at all. Just two words, short and simple: Long gone.

But, as with so many things: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. The “long” in Durham’s “long gone” is true to its definition, the "o" elongated past its breaking point until it dissociates from the word itself and takes on a new existence as a piercing, insistent hum. It’s attention-grabbing, polarizing and more than a little surreal. No one else does it quite like Andy Durham.

Durham has been the voice of the Grasshoppers, High-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, since 2004. For a decade prior to that he called games on a fill-in basis, and in this earlier phase of his career he received a piece of advice from Greensboro's play-by-play man, the late Bill Wardle: “You’ve gotta get a home run call.”

Durham gave it some thought, cycling through ideas for catch phrases and trying to one-up them. Finally, inspiration struck.

“Mine will be, ‘That sucker is long gone,’ with long gone [going for] as long as you can carry it,” said Durham, prior to a late-July Sunday matinee at Greensboro’s First National Bank Park. “Sometimes, I’ll cut it off at second base just to make it different and more outlined. Sometimes, if it’s a real good home run, I’ll bring it all the way around the bases, stretching it out.”

It may sound like a contradiction of terms, but Durham relays these anecdotes in a rapid-fire Carolina drawl, seemingly impatient to end the sentence he’s speaking so that the next one can begin.

“My strike-three call is pretty interesting too. If it’s a called strike three I say, ‘Strike three, strike three, strike three, strike three!,'” he said, smashing the words together at a staccato clip. “Close your eyes and say it. 'Strike three, strike three, strike three, strike three!'”

Durham’s on-air mannerisms aren’t the only thing that’s unique about his broadcast. He only calls home games for the Grasshoppers and is not employed by the team, instead describing himself as an independent contractor.

“I don’t exist unless I sell those ads,” he said. “So you sell it, you write the commercial, you produce it, you send out the invoice, you collect it and you broadcast. And you just keep going.”

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The Grasshoppers are just one aspect of Durham’s many-tentacled operation, the extension of a sports media career that began on local radio in the ‘80s. He runs a constantly updated news website, Greensboro Sports, and streams high school basketball, football and baseball games via Greensboro Sports Radio. Before one season ends another has begun, resulting in a steady blur of local sports the whole year through.

“The fun part is doing the games,” he said. “You take care of all your business work, it’s almost like your reward is doing a game.”

Durham said that he hardly ever mentions his own name while on the mic, but his style and cadence are unmistakable. His 2023 call of a Will Matthiessen inside-the-park home run, featuring an on-the-spot rendition of “Row Row Row Your Boat,” could almost be classified as performance art.

That inimitable effort, as well as several of his drawn out “Long gone” calls, has attracted attention on social media. You might love it, you might hate it, but one thing is for sure: You won’t forget it.

“You gotta be known for something,” he said. “If when I’m done ‘Long gone’ is what they remember, that’s fine with me.”