So You Wanna Be a Sports Broadcaster?

Shortly before the end of the minor league season, Kyle Tait was gracious enough to arrange a visit for me to talk with a few of their players.  You’ve already seen those stories in recent days.  But I also spent some time with Kyle to learn a bit about him and his adventures through the Southland as the radio voice of the Mississippi Braves.

The Office

I’m sitting with Kyle in a dark visitor’s radio booth in Huntsville, Alabama during perhaps the last week of baseball life for 30-year-old Joe W. Davis stadium.  Amenities are few, but it’s been a serviceable facility for the AA Huntsville Stars (Brewers affiliate) over the years as they are now bolting for new digs under construction in Biloxi, Mississippi.

The room has one usable window and is perhaps 6 feet wide at the window, expanding a bit as you go further back in the 14-foot long room.  It’s located on the third floor of the stadium, behind and to the left of home plate, which at least provides a view toward the visiting bullpen out along the right field line.  The ‘Home’ radio booth is probably triple this size.

There’s a shelf along the window, a table, and 2 chairs.  Just about everything else is improvised.  Well — let me just show you (click the pic for a better look):

Kyle Tait: the tools of his trade.

Mandatory photo credit: Alan Carpenter, TomahawkTake.com

Everything Kyle needs to broadcast with – save for the headset and microphone – is contained within that mini-shelf to his left.  As long as he has an internet connection, he’s good to go from any venue.

As you can see, he is organized to the hilt.  He has to be – he’s a one-man band on this show:  if he doesn’t see it and say it, it didn’t happen.  There are really no breaks.  Even between innings, he is checking who is coming up next, whether there is a new text, a tweet, an email, a lineup change, a pitching change, a first AB for a recent callup, a promo, out-of-town scores… whatever.  Yet all of this appears to happen seamlessly for this radio veteran.

Example:

It’s August 31st:  Sunday night on what proved to be the next-to-last day of the season.  Rain had washed out the Saturday tilt, and had further delayed the doubleheader, pushing the start time back from 4pm to 7pm.  It was going to be a long night (which finally ended just after midnight).

At about 8:53 local time, Kyle solicited his listeners to send in tweets.  One of those came from this writer:

"@MBravesRadio:  There’s a Starbucks down on Airport Rd, just SE of you.  Perhaps a 6-pack of espresso shots for Gm 2?– @carpengui"

Yeah, like I’d catch this guy off his game.  Not 5 minutes later, I hear him read that tweet on-air, with a follow-up that sounded something like this:

"Funny you should mention that, Alan:  my wife – the saint that she is for putting up with this radio lifestyle – is at this very moment going into the very Starbucks you mentioned.  So we’re way ahead of you!"

We all had a great laugh over that – including his wife Megan, who was listening in at that time and told me that she had a surreal “whoa… what’s all this?” moment as she was entering the Starbucks that evening.

How He Got Here

For me, radio is where it’s at.  To be your own director, your own cameraman – whatever I describe, whatever I say, is where the listener’s eyes shoot to.

Kyle was born into a military family and quite literally traveled the world before he got out of grade school:  Guam, England, various US destinations.  Once his family opted to settle – Atlanta – and that became “home.”  He therefore counts himself as a Southerner and Atlanta native.

Kyle graduated from Georgia Tech in 2010.  While there, it is evident that Kyle already knew what he wanted to do in life and chased that dream with vigor.  Starting in 2007, he worked his way into the business by calling games for various Tech sports: baseball and basketball among them.  He managed to get himself into baseball as a fill-in for Ben Ingram who now handles post-game radio for the Atlanta Braves, but then was the regular in the M-Braves radio booth.

You need to stop and think about this for a second:  Kyle lived in Atlanta and provided backup support for a team normally based in Mississippi... and I’m betting that some of those fill-ins were done on pretty short notice.  Clearly Kyle has not just dabbled in this field:  he dove into the deep end of the pool.

The result?  That experience and demonstrable dedication led directly to the job he holds now – and has held for the 4 years since graduating in 2010.

The Work

You might think “this is cool:  he gets to watch baseball, call the play-by-play and take the rest of the day off.”  You would be wrong about that.

The fact about minor league baseball is that the staffs are typically minimalist – a few people wear a lot of different hats.  The fact that this team is owned by the Atlanta Braves National League Baseball Club, Inc. does mean that things are a little better in that regard, but the tasks are still not trivial.  In Kyle’s case, here are the things that I have observed him doing:

• Social media PR
• External media liaison – he arranged for my player interviews
• milb.com website game write-ups on a daily basis, plus occasional special posts elsewhere.
• Responsible for all of his own gear – transportation, setup and troubleshooting.  If the gear fails – he’s done.

Kyle, along with Media Relations Manager Miranda Black, are effectively the team responsible for presenting the M-Braves to their fans across the country.

Such a life is also not for those opposed to the work:  you really have to want this – just like the ballplayers, it seems.  Excepting the athletic activities, Kyle shares in much of their grind:

• He rides the bus with the team on at least one multi-hour bus ride every week.
• Roughly 6 months away from home each year (recall that reference to his wife of 18 months as a ‘saint’?  Understandable)
• Hotels… and we’re not necessarily talking ‘major league quality’ either
• Meals.  He gets to eat at a lot of ballparks.  A lot of concession food.  There will be an occasional ‘spread’ provided by the clubs (the M-Braves have a Head Chef on staff), but that’s more the exception than the rule.

The “off-season” isn’t exactly a vacation either:  Kyle still calls basketball and does PA work for Belhaven University whenever he’s available.  This is what we call “paying your dues” in this business.  And like the role of the minor league baseball player, budding radio men have to keep working to get noticed and await their next break up the ladder.

That’s what happened with Ben Ingram.  I expect that for Kyle someday as well.

The Kyle Style

The Braves do allow creative freedom for their broadcasters – not all organizations do.  So I asked Kyle about his style – and we started by talking of the role of advanced metrics in broadcast media.

“Stats do have a place in this day and age, but you can’t get too heavy and weigh the broadcast down with that.  I like to think of myself as more on the Old School side.  I pride myself on trying to expand my vocabulary and expand my knowledge of the game – and talk about stories not only from today’s day and age, but [also] of the past – even though I wasn’t alive back then [he’s 26] – so I wasn’t alive like Vin Scully was to describe Jackie Robinson stealing home and such.”

“I want my broadcasts to sound like I was around – or to at least that I’m knowledgeable enough to tell a story about the past and relate it to what’s going on down on the field today.  The game has changed a lot, and I’ve only been around for the latter part of those changes, but to learn about the previous part and be able to talk intelligently about it and make my broadcasts entertaining in that way:  storytelling is an important part of it.”

It’s fairly evident to anyone taking in a sports broadcast these days that the “ex-jocks” are a dominant part of the media that we as fans are presented with on the airwaves.  So here is Kyle – a career broadcaster – trying to break into an industry in which typically half of the jobs are filled with the (relatively) untrained players.  I wanted to know what he’d run up against already in that regard.

Kyle related that he once interviewed “Braves’ Color-commentator Don Sutton” – and was immediately stopped by Don when he said “wait a minute!  I’ve worked a long time to become a broadcaster and not just a color guy!”

Don Sutton is clearly unique in this regard, but Kyle recognizes what we see in today’s media:  the ex-players are there primarily for their insight, their experience, and their analysis…some better than others, obviously… but he feels there will always be a role for the trained broadcaster who can handle the play-by-play, who can tell the stories, paint the pictures, and be the eyes and ears for those who rely on them for firsthand accounts of the game we all love and cherish.

This is a distinction Kyle recognizes clearly:  “On television, the picture is painted already:  you are adding accents and shadow.  For me, radio is where it’s at.  To be your own director, your own cameraman – whatever I describe, whatever I say, is where the listener’s eyes shoot to.  If I say ‘there’s a foul ball down the left field line and a fan makes a great catch’, they’re not thinking about the field any more:  they’re thinking about the fan making a great snag.”

The Southern League Broadcaster of the Year

Nope – I had no idea there was such an award, yet literally as I was arriving at his ‘office’, the congratulations were coming in rapidly.  The most effusive of those praises came from the Huntsville Stars’ General Manager, Buck Rogers (yes, seriously: this space-themed club actually has a GM named Buck Rogers), who spent ten minutes telling whoever would listen (me) everything that Kyle would never say for himself:  about his preparation, his professionalism, his skills, and his presence.

Buck confessed that he was one of the nominees of Kyle for the award – making a point that this was done even without having seen Kyle in 2014 up until that point (this series was the M-Braves first/only trip to Huntsville).

High praise indeed – and clearly well-deserved.

So you wanna be a sports radio guy?  You’d better get busy… and stay that way:  Kyle Tait is already way ahead of you.

During the season, Kyle can be heard on WYAB (103.9 FM), available online through their website.  Examples of his work in the booth can be heard at HearKyleTait.com.