Thursday, April 7, 2016

Here's The Pitch

With all the talk about how well the Princeton baseball team did last weekend, TigerBlog completely forgot that the Major League Baseball season has started.

Princeton, in fact, is already 1-1 on the young season.

Ross Ohlendorf got the win on Opening Day for the Cincinnati Reds, who beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-2.

At one point, which lasted about 100 years or so, the Reds always played the first game of the season. These days, Opening Day is a bit different (read, commercialized).

Now 33 years old, Ohlendorf is with his sixth Major League team. Can you name them? You get a few paragraphs to do so.

Chris Young is with his fifth team. Can you name them?

Young's current employer is the Kansas City Royals. Young is coming up on his 37th birthday, which is making TigerBlog feel pretty old.

Young was the losing pitcher Tuesday against the Mets. Young went five innings, allowing two runs, both on a Neil Walker home run, and three hits, while striking out four.

In his win against the Phillies, Ohlendorf threw five pitches. In his loss to the Mets, Young threw 92 pitches.

Oh, and their teams?

Ohlendorf started out with the Yankees and then went to the Pirates, Padres, Nationals, Rangers and now Reds. Young started with the Rangers and has gone to the Padres, Mets, Mariners and now the Royals.

While Young got a loss Tuesday, he also picked up something pretty cool. His World Series ring.

If you remember back to October, Young was a key reason why the Royals defeated the Mets to win the World Series. Actually, it was October into November.

If you forgot about it, then click HERE.

Princeton alum Matt Bowman, another pitcher, is on the St. Louis Cardinals. Bowman made his Major League debut last night, throwing two scoreless innings in relief in a 5-1 loss to the Pirates. Bowman allowed one hit and struck out two.

TigerBlog wishes him a long career. Let him pitch well into his 30s, just like Young and Ohlendorf.

Another Tiger alum in the Major Leagues is Tom McCarthy. Well, sort of.

McCarthy used to be the radio play-by-play voice of Princeton football and basketball.

His two most famous calls at Princeton came at the end of the Princeton-UCLA men's basketball game in 1996 - "there'll be a new champion in the NCAA tournament" - and during a football game in Palmer Stadium - "Washington up the middle, gain of three, and Walt, don't even think about eating my cookie."

The "Walt" of that other story is Walter Perez, who is a longtime reporter on the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia. TigerBlog was standing in the entry to their booth when Tom said it; TB is pretty sure the crowd mic picked up his laughing.

Like Young, by the way, McCarthy also has a World Series ring. And some choice radio gigs in the off-season, like NFL football and the NCAA basketball tournament.

Then there's John Sadak, another former Princeton radio voice.

Sadak did Princeton basketball for several years. He is now the radio voice of the Yankees' Triple-A team in Scranton-Wilkes Barre. Their nickname is the "Railriders."

TigerBlog is pretty sure Sadak is headed to the Major League job as well.

For now, he's also doing college football and basketball. In fact, he was the national radio voice of the women's Final Four, which means that pretty much everyone who was listening to him turned the game off as UConn completely blew out the field again.

Princeton's current basketball play-by-play man is Derek Jones. He and Noah Savage are a really good combo.

Jones, when he's not doing Princeton games, runs the radio station at Rowan College in South Jersey. He also does football there as well.

TigerBlog can see both Derek and Noah making it big. At the same time, it would be great if they could stay doing basketball at Princeton for the next decade or two though.

Then there is another new voice at Princeton. That of Cody Chrusciel.

Cody is one of Princeotn's two video guys. On his interview for the position, TigerBlog thought his voice was a natural for broadcasting.

As it turns out, it was. Cody has done a lot of on-air work in his life, and he asked for the opportunity to do some broadcasting in addition to his video work.

Since then, he's done radio for basketball and lacrosse and Ivy League Digital Network work on any number of other sports. Cody is a great broadcaster.

And apparently TigerBlog knows on-air talent when he sees it. Or hears it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cody definitely has a face..errr..a voice for radio!

SJF '68 said...

You mentioned that Tom McCarthy received a World Series ring but failed to mention the team he was connected with or when he won the ring. I would assume that he won the ring as announcer for the Phillies when they won the World Series in 2008.

haphar said...

John Sadak did the University of Delaware women's basketball games at the same time he was doing the Princeton men's games. Many of his classic Delle Donne calls have been imitated ad infinitum on ESPN. Hope he gets a chance to move up. He's good.