ESPN’s Andrews enjoys grandstanding in Omaha

To Erin Andrews, college baseball’s World Series is a family reunion, except that each year it’s a new group of families for her.

Andrews will be in the stands and near the dugouts at Omaha’s Rosenblatt Stadium this weekend as a sideline reporter for the best-of-three championship series between Oregon State and North Carolina.

“It’s a great atmosphere,” Andrews said in a telephone interview. This is her third College World Series for ESPN but she also reports for the network’s Major League Baseball and college football telecasts.

“I love talking to the parents as much as the players,” she said of the college series.

Unlike their professional counterparts, whose comments tend to be guarded in interviews, college players “are raw and green. Their innocence is refreshing,” she said.

Andrews, who was born in Boston, started following sports while growing up in Florida.

“Although we lived in Florida, we were fans of the Boston Celtics and the Red Sox,” she said. “I’d sit on the couch with my dad and we’d watch Larry Bird on TV, and then the Red Sox, who would break our hearts.”

Andrews began her career while attending the University of Florida, majoring in telecommunications.

She worked as an intern at a Tampa television station where her father, Steve Andrews, was an investigative reporter. She helped cover both the Gators’ football and basketball teams.

After graduation, she was hired as a sideline reporter covering the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning for the Sunshine Network. At first, both team and station officials were concerned about the lanky, blond Andrews working and traveling with a club of mostly young, immature hockey players.

But Andrews says she made it work until Turner Sports two years later offered her a chance to be a studio host on Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Thrashers telecasts.

“I called my dad and he said it was time for a change,” she said. She went to TBS but lasted only two years.

“I wasn’t ready,” she admitted. “I embarrassed myself on the air and they let me go.” Her contract was not renewed and she found herself back in Tampa in the spring of 2004.

At that time, the Lightning was entering the Stanley Cup playoffs. The young players that Andrews had covered four years earlier had matured into one of the elite teams in the NHL. When the Lightning, coached by John Tortorella, faced off against the New York Islanders in the first round, ESPN asked Andrews to help work the series.

“The coach and players had become brothers to me,” she said. Of her performance, she added, “I knocked it out of the park.”

ESPN responded by hiring her as a full-time hockey reporter.

After the College World Series, Andrews, 29, will continue to work ESPN’s major league telecasts, including the Home Run Derby contest at next month’s All-Star game in San Francisco.

Short waves

NASCAR driver Kyle Petty, who is working as a commentator at five Nextel Cup races on TNT this season, will offer his analysis from inside his No. 45 Dodge on Sunday as he drives in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Speedway in Sonoma, Calif. The race will begin on TNT at 2 p.m.

“We have all the technology from a broadcast perspective,” Petty said. “I don’t think we are out there reinventing the wheel, but hopefully we can break some new ground. I think it’s going to be pretty cool.”

ESPN2 and ESPN360.com will present daylong coverage of Wimbledon’s first week of play beginning with Monday’s first-round matches at 5 a.m. Dick Enberg returns to the All-England Club for the 24th time to call the action, with help from Cliff Drysdale. Among several analysts for the Grand Slam event are Pam Shriver and Patrick McEnroe.

Saturday night’s junior-welterweight bout between Ricky Hatton and Jose Luis Castillo will be shown on HBO at 7 from Las Vegas. Hatton is unbeaten in 42 fights, with 30 knockouts, and Castillo is a respected slugger with 47 knockouts in 63 fights.

Celebrities and amateurs compete in the World Series of Golf on NBC Saturday and Sunday in a format that allows players to wager on their shots as if they were playing poker. After teeing off, the golfer can raise, call, check or fold on subsequent shots with the winner of the hole collecting the pot. The event was taped last month at Primm Valley Golf Club near Las Vegas.

Larry Stewart is on vacation.

john.scheibe@latimes.com