Sports : Chip Off the McDonough Block

The network baseball play-by-play job has traditionally gone to an announcer with a big name and many years of experience, like Vin Scully, Curt Gowdy and Jack Buck.

CBS’ new play-by-play man, Sean McDonough, is no big name. He isn’t even the most famous broadcaster in his family. That honor goes to his father Will, a regular on NBC’s “NFL Live.”

The younger McDonough has been called the busiest announcer most people have never heard of. Of course, he will lose that anonymity as the baseball season kicks in and he’s teamed with color man Tim McCarver.

McDonough is also young, probably the youngest announcer to get such a major network position. He’ll turn 30 on May 13.

But McDonough isn’t worried about viewers and TV sports columnists who call his age and lack of national prominence into question. He’s used to such a situation, facing similar barbs in 1988 when he was hired as the TV voice of the Boston Red Sox.

“I think that was a much tougher experience,” McDonough said by telephone from his home in Quincy, Mass. “There was all kind of talk in the Boston papers that I was too young, too inexperienced and that I was given this job because I was Will McDonough’s son. Back then I felt I was qualified to do the job and I thought I’d do a good job, but I had nowhere near the credentials I do now.

“I was more or less unproven. I knew in a market like Boston with the interest in the Red Sox I’d be incredibly scrutinized, from the first spring training telecast to the end of season. Things went well, and by the end of the season I got a three-year contract extension and just about all the (reviews) in the New England papers were positive.”

McDonough originally had intended to follow in his father’s footsteps as a sportswriter. The elder McDonough remains with the Boston Globe in addition to his duties with NBC.

“My father sort of discouraged me from sportswriting and encouraged me to look into sports broadcasting,” McDonough said. “His feeling back in the late 1970s when I was coming out of high school was that newspapers around the country were struggling and a lot of cities were becoming one-newspaper cities, while at the same time with the advent of cable TV, all kinds of sport television enterprises were coming into being.

“I wasn’t sure that I had the ability to do it, but I guess the only way to find out was to go to college and let other people make that decision.”

So McDonough headed to Syracuse University, the alma mater of NBC’s Bob Costas and Marv Albert. As a sophomore, he was hired as a radio announcer for the Syracuse Chiefs, the Toronto Blue Jays’ triple-A affiliate, a position he held for three seasons.

“It was still the most important thing that ever happened to me,” McDonough said. “If I hadn’t had those three years of experience, I don’t think the Red Sox would have hired me when I was 25 and I don’t think CBS would have hired me at 29 had I not had the four years with the Red Sox. Getting that head start was the biggest reason I am doing what I am doing now.”

After graduating from college, McDonough was hired as a sideline reporter for PBS’ Ivy League football telecasts and by cable’s New England Sports Network as a college hockey play-by-play announcer. He later served as the host of the Red Sox pregame and postgame shows and a play-by-play announcer for college football and basketball on ESPN. In February, he announced bobsled and luge races at the Olympic Winter Games.

McDonough’s major network debut came last year at CBS, when he was hired to call NCAA basketball tournament games. It was then he got the first inkling that he could become the network’s baseball play-by-play announcer.

“When I was at the CBS NCAA tournament seminar, Mike Francesa (one of the network’s college basketball studio hosts) pulled me aside and said (that) the word in the hall, so to speak, was that CBS was considering making a change in their baseball announcing lineup and I was someone they thought highly of and I would be considered,” McDonough said.

He heard the same story from other people at the time, but months passed before McDonough heard the speculation again.

In early December, Ted Shaker, CBS Sports executive producer, told McDonough that the network was indeed considering making a change and asked McDonough to send him tapes of his baseball broadcasts. After subsequent talks with other CBS officials, McDonough was offered and accepted the job Dec. 26, replacing Buck, who held it for two seasons.

“It came at a very nice time for us,” McDonough said. “My father was in (Massachusetts General Hospital after undergoing a coronary angioplasty on Christmas Eve), and it had been a very difficult time for our family. It was nice to be able to go into the hospital and tell him about it and lift his spirits. I think he was happier about it than I was.”

As for his style, McDonough said he tries to “fall on the side of not talking too much,” and to convey reporting skills as his father does.

“I’m not the wordsmith Vin Scully is, but when I’m at a game I have a sense of what’s important and what isn’t,” McDonough said. “I don’t think people should have to read the newspaper the next day to find out things that are happening with that team. In this day and age, we’re reporters also and should provide that information ourselves.”

CBS presents its first of 16 regular season baseball telecasts, Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals, Saturday at 10 a.m.