Matthew Boyd eases a third-inning changeup over the plate and Ryan LaMarre lazily skies it into center field. Then LaMarre lets out an exclamation that borders on the profane.
“Did he just say, ‘Fuck?’” someone asks. “(We) better apologize.”
Inside the Fox Sports Detroit production truck, parked across the street from Comerica Park, there is a consensus that LaMarre did not drop an F-bomb. And it’s a good thing, too, because there is no “bleep” button in here. Instead of a quick apology from the broadcast team of Mario Impemba and Rod Allen, the show forges on without missing a beat.
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On Thursday, The Athletic was invited to see how a Tigers broadcast comes together on FSD. In Detroit’s 7-2 win over the Chicago White Sox, there were many things viewers didn’t see that made the on-air product look seamless. In reality, a great deal of preparation and attention to detail is required for every show, especially after the first pitch is thrown.
“Controlled chaos once the game starts,” Impemba says in his booth before the game. “You’ll enjoy it.”
Pregame
John Keating’s day probably starts the earliest. Thanks to the harsh timeline of a night game before a day game, his head didn’t hit the pillow Wednesday until 12:40 a.m. Still, his alarm sounded at 5 a.m. Thursday. The hour-long “Tigers Live” pregame show doesn’t write itself.
The pregame segments are the most scripted part of the whole broadcast, because they are based on events that have already happened, as opposed to what will happen in today’s game. The most obvious talking point is Boyd, who has put together several strong starts in a row and nearly no-hit the White Sox at Comerica last September.
Thursday just so happens to be Grandparents’ Day at the ballpark, so Keating, the “Tigers Live” host, welcomes season ticket-holder Ruth Ann Prey onto the set (located on the first-base side of the main concourse) to read the Detroit lineup. She takes her time announcing the names, but does so with admirable enthusiasm and near-perfect pronunciation. Until she announces starting pitcher “Mike Boyd,” that is. It still makes for good TV, in my opinion.
My day at the park doesn’t start until 11 a.m., when I meet FSD coordinating producer Brady Clyma. He escorts me across the street to a plain-white production truck sitting next to the players’ parking garage.
As I walk up eight steel steps to the door of the truck, I don’t expect to see much on the other side. Even with its slide-out expansion, the vehicle doesn’t look very big.
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But to my surprise, the inside is packed and buzzing with activity. There are roughly 20 people, most of whom are wearing headsets, and well over 100 screens picking up various TV feeds and camera angles. It is the nervous system of the whole operation.
The show’s director is Mark Iacofano, who has been with FSD since its inception in 1997. He shows up to work around 8:15 a.m., after roughly six hours of sleep, and meets with producer Brian Henry to go over plans for the day.
Iacofano’s main task is to call out which camera holds the live shot at any given point in the game. So when a player stretches a single to a double, or a pitcher whines about the strike zone, he is the one who ensures viewers at home get to see it. His last meal of the work day comes at 12:20 p.m. (a hot dog and a pretzel) because after that he must be locked in. But that’s a normal part of his routine.
“The adrenaline kicks in and it’s like, I won’t be hungry until I get home tonight,” he says. “And I’ll be starving by about six o’clock.”
The day game presents a bit of a hassle for Henry, whose work day technically started the night before. On his drive home Wednesday, he called the broadcast team to go over some material for Thursday’s show, in lieu of a 10 a.m. conference call the whole production team has on the day of a night game.
Once the game is underway, Henry’s primary responsibility is to identify which plays receive replays and to call out the sequence of camera angles to show them. He also finds logical spots in the broadcast to plug in sponsorship references (try counting them the next time you watch a game — there are several).
So, just like Iacofano, Henry must be attentive to pretty much everything that happens once the game starts. That goes for essentially everyone in the production truck. They can’t afford to let any part of this late-August game between two bottom-dwelling teams pass them by, the way an average fan would. Not even if the game drags past its third hour, as many do, and fatigue sets in.
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“You have to fight it,” Henry says. “Just because the game might’ve slowed down doesn’t mean we can slow down. And that’s absolutely a challenge for us.”
Both Iacofano and Henry have some last-minute work to do before the game begins, but that gives me time to head back to the park and spend a few minutes chatting with Impemba and Allen before they get on the air.
Together, Impemba, who does play-by-play, and Allen, who is an analyst, have more than 30 years of experience in the broadcast booth. They prepare differently (Impemba says he’s one of several broadcasters who “abuses” sites like Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, while Allen relies much more on what he sees on the field from game to game), but that’s also a product of being in differing roles.
One thing they both do: apply their own makeup. Allen jokes that having a makeup artist will hopefully be in next year’s budget, but it sounds like the broadcasters have their simple routine down.
“Here’s some powder, stick it on your forehead, kill the shine,” Impemba says. “That’s basically it.”
“That HD brings out everything,” Allen adds.
It would be much more difficult for either of them to try to apply cosmetics to this Tigers season, which will see the team miss the playoffs by a wide margin for a second-straight year. On top of that, the White Sox are in even worse shape in the standings. And these teams are in the middle of 10 games against each other over a 23-day stretch.
“We’ve seen these guys a bunch and we’ll see them a bunch more,” Impemba says. “It’s a real challenge to try and keep this fresh.”
But they must try, so they do. Sometimes it just means digging deeper into discussion of injury updates, roster moves, or those custom Boyd T-shirts.
The game
I return to the production truck, and Boyd throws the first pitch of the game at 1:11 p.m. The folks in the truck might be the only ones in the world irked by the fact this game starts one minute late.
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From there, the truck fills with constant chatter, both among the people seated near each other and into the headsets to communicate with Impemba and Allen. The broadcasters wear earpieces that allow them to hear the voices in the truck throughout the game, including a heads-up when a replay angle is coming, a quick stat about a player, an instruction to plug a sponsor, etc.
Likewise, the broadcasters can communicate with the truck by using what’s called a “talk back” button in the booth. They have a “cough” button too, so no one has to hear a sneeze or a throat clearing on the air.
Making sure to plug the sponsors is one of the most critical parts of the production because that’s where the money comes from. So it’s important to get started early on the 51 sponsor items required for this game. (Note: Some are just graphics that appear on the screen during the game, while others must specifically be referenced on air)
“McDonald’s if he walks him,” Henry says in the first inning, when Boyd reaches a full count on Avisail Garcia. The next pitch is a flyout to left, but the crew decides to roll with the promotion anyway. Seconds later, Impemba is reminding fans to stay tuned for the player of the game announcement on the postgame show, presented by McDonald’s.
Rule No. 1 of the broadcast, as Clyma explains, is to make sure you don’t miss game action. Replays are important, but not at the expense of what happens in the game itself. In the second inning, Boyd throws an inside fastball to Yoan Moncada — called a ball — that looks awfully close to strike three.
Henry wants a replay of the pitch to show viewers how close it was, but Boyd is already back on the mound ready to throw. The production team keeps its shot live, which is a good choice, because Boyd fans Moncada on a changeup a moment later.
In the third inning, White Sox starter James Shields makes Tigers outfielder Mike Gerber whiff on a nasty changeup. Gerber, who entered the game in an 0-for-26 slump, becomes a fascination for Allen.
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“Let me see that (changeup),” Allen says to the production truck with his talk back button held down. “Get the grip if you can.” Moments later, it appears on the screen in slow motion for Allen to talk about.
Gerber strikes out in that at-bat, and again in the fourth inning. So Allen’s voice comes back into the truck, requesting clipped footage of a few of Gerber’s swings to show he is pulling away from the ball. That footage ultimately airs in the eighth inning, coupled with a timely explanation from Allen, just before Gerber strikes out for the third time this afternoon.
Jumping back to the fifth inning, LaMarre hits a bloop single to center that causes a bit of real-time chaos in the truck. There are runners on first and second at the time, meaning Gerber has options of which base he wants to throw the ball to. Iacofano reacts, calling out the camera keyed on home plate, but the throw goes to third instead. By the time the camera angle switches, the runner at third has already been called out.
To complicate the matter, the White Sox runner advancing home does not reach the plate before the out is made, which is critical because it’s the third out of the inning and the run doesn’t score. The FSD live shot missed all of that. A quick scramble ensues, with Henry, Iacofano and others calling out which replay angles to use and what might be the best way to show viewers what happened.
The White Sox consider challenging the play, which buys the production crew some time. They settle on a slow-motion shot of the out at third, then they put together a side-by-side replay of the runners at third and home and show it the following inning (it also conveniently becomes the “1-800-Call-Sam Call of the Game”).
Thursday is the first day of Players’ Weekend at the park, meaning both teams are wearing eccentric jerseys with nicknames on the back.
In the eighth inning, Louis Coleman enters in relief for the Tigers, with simply “Harold” stitched on the back of his jersey. Henry advises Impemba to explain the nickname, but Impemba says he has no idea where it comes from.
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Someone in the production truck knows that Harold is Coleman’s true first name (Louis is his middle name), so that information is passed on to the broadcasters and Impemba explains it on air.
“You had to look that up, didn’t you?” Allen asks his partner.
“No, no, somebody told me,” Impemba replies. “The crew kind of got in my ear and said, ‘Here’s the reason.’”
When Zac Reininger enters for Detroit in the ninth and walks the first batter, there is a collective groan in the truck. Iacofano is anxious for the game to end, joking that one of the umpires will miss his 5:30 p.m. dinner reservation. But soon Jim Adduci squeezes the final out at first base, capping the two-hour-and-47-minute game. That’s pretty good by 2018 standards.
Immediately following the final out, Henry counts down from 20 to send the feed off to the postgame show. Three … two … one…
Postgame
Every Tigers home win is accompanied by what FSD calls a “walk off interview,” meaning a player is grabbed on the field for a few on-camera questions. Today’s guest is Ronny Rodriguez, who hit his first MLB home run. He is quickly doused with the contents of a Gatorade cooler.
The crew members will make sure this clip is shown, but they are no longer working under the constraints of live TV. Keating opens the postgame show with analyst Craig Monroe, as reporter Trevor Thompson conducts interviews with Rodriguez, then subsequently manager Ron Gardenhire, Boyd and other players in the clubhouse (today’s show even features some rare air time for reliever Drew VerHagen).
FSD runs hour-long shows before and after games, regardless of how long they take (unless they have a late start on the West Coast — some of those postgame shows are only a half-hour). That’s a lot of airtime, even with player and manager interviews sprinkled in.
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Keating, who has been with FSD from the start, has become an expert on filling that time, regardless of how interesting or boring a particular game might be. Even in a lost season for Detroit, as far as playoffs are concerned, Keating knows how to make each game an individual event that fans want to tune in for. This isn’t his first time covering a team with an underwhelming record.
“I got through the 2003 Tigers season, where they almost set the record for the most losses in a baseball season,” Keating says. “I can do anything.”
When the show wraps up, and Keating and Monroe sign off with a wave, the page turns. Another game, the second of three in this series with the White Sox and the 129th of the season, is right around the corner. There isn’t time for the crew to sit back and scrutinize its day-to-day production because they have to do it all over again tomorrow.
It can be mentally draining. It can feel never-ending. Most of the crew is made up of freelancers, which adds another challenge. Still, having a hand in Tigers broadcasts in some form or another is a dream that not many people are able to realize.
“And every once in a while, if I’m walking into a ballpark or walking around and people see me, (they’re) like, ‘You’ve got a great job,’” Keating says. “And it’s like, you need to be reminded of that. Especially when you’re getting on airplanes at dawn and those kinds of things. But, I mean, I’m trained for this job.”
(Top photo: Allison Farrand/Special to The Athletic)
