BECAUSE TV often makes no sense at all, the most diffi cult on-air job in the business usually is assigned to the newest and least-experienced person in the mix.
In other words, it’s so easy to fail as a sideline or roving, in-game reporter and interviewer – you can make an absolute fool of yourself every old time – that the successful ones tend to stick out like the kid at the middle-school talent show who actually can play the trumpet.
To that end, Kevin Burkhardt, SNY’s fresh-faced, first-season, roving reporter on Mets’ telecasts, keeps hitting those high notes. And that ain’t easy.
“I try to keep it short,” Burkhardt said Friday, “but the one time I had a longer story to tell, one about Carlos Beltran, he swung at the first pitch and hit into an inning-ending double play. ‘All right, gotta go! Hope you enjoyed it!’ ”
Burkhardt, 33 and a Point Pleasant resident with a wife who teaches, an infant son and a degree in communications from William Paterson, has to poke around then do both standup and improv at the same time, five, six nights a week. Yikes. But it’s work. And it’s working.
It helps that producer Gregg Picker doesn’t throw it down to Burkhardt just for the sake of showing Burkhardt’s in the house and what SNY can do. That’s what makes so many sideline reporters (“The rain has made the field wet”) look and sound so ridiculous.
It further helps that Burkhardt, even in his most mirthful appearances, doesn’t endeavor to be known as “Kevin the Klown.” He’s pleasant, sharp, modest, quick on his feet, and has a strong feel for what’s interesting. His appearances rarely seem intrusive. Overall, and most significantly, he has what’s hard to coach: likeability.
Small wonder he has drawn the attention of national networks. Heck, we can already see him, this October, on a football sideline, with something worth hearing to report.
Wednesday, during Twins-Mets, Burkhardt was invited into the booth to do a half-inning as prep for calling the next night’s Staten Island Yankees-Brooklyn Cyclones game on SNY. He hadn’t done play-by-play of any game, radio or TV, high school, college or minor league, in four years.
And he did just fine, especially in the candor department. Burkhardt freely admitted he knows little about the players on either New York-Penn League team, but he’d keep trying.
Then he did well in the light-humor department, reasoning aloud that he could say anything about the players because most viewers wouldn’t know any better. (Ron Darling suggested he say, “Everyone’s from Iowa.”)
Though Burkhardt’s success on SNY was instant, his arrival wasn’t. There were the little radio stations, the play-by-play gig for the Northern League New Jersey Jackals, the spot duty as a sports anchor on WCBS-AM, the WFAN utility man role – “WFAN’s Joe McEwing,” as Burkhardt describes it – and even time spent selling Chevrolets (“Here’s the pitch . . .”).
“Working overnights on WFAN, talking to myself for five hours, helped. I figured that if I could do that, I could be on my feet at Met games for three hours,” he said.
“It’s different every game. Sometimes it’s goofy, sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it’s human interest. Some games I’m on five times, others only once. Just don’t force it. It’s not what interests me; it’s about the game. And I love it.”
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Dept. of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: Wednesday, during Yankees-Rockies on YES, Michael Kay read a promo for MLB.com, about how, once you buy in, you’ll never miss a pitch, catch every game, etc. and so on.
He wrapped up the ad with MLB.com’s catch-phrase: “With MLB.com, baseball is always on!”
Then he softly added, “Blackout restrictions apply.”
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If you don’t think MLB is playing both sides of the street in this Barry Bonds HR chase, showing him its disapproving side while milking him for every nickel he’s worth, consider the Giants’ interleague opponents this season included the Red Sox and Yanks, both made-for-national-TV series. . . . Nike has thus far rejected demands from an animal-rights group to drop Michael Vick from its paid endorsement roster. Of course, if the animal-rights group better understood Nike, its members would know Vick is exactly the kind of bad-dude Nike has long chosen to push its products.
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Like it or not, there’s a Red Sox fan in all of our lives, and if he or she is worthy of your affection, you might consider buying him/her a newly released DVD set, “Impossible to Forget: The Story of the ’67 Sox.”
Produced by the non-profit Sports Museum in Boston, the two-DVD set contains the once-lost telecast (Boston’s WHDH, Ch. 5) of the Sept. 30, 1967 game against the Twins that the Red Sox had to win to clinch. The package can be purchased on shop.mlb.com for $25.
Or, because he (or she) is a Red Sox fan, you can tell him to buy it himself.