In a first for Major League Baseball, a regular season game will be played at an active military base on Sunday night when the Marlins and Braves go head to head at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
ESPN will broadcast the game as their weekly Sunday Night Baseball telecast, and lead producer Andy Reichwald spoke with Awful Announcing about the preparations necessary to put this special broadcast on the air and the special features they have in store on this July 4th weekend.
Major League Baseball and the Players Association came up with the idea for this unique and interesting game last winter, and the construction of the 12,500 seat Fort Bragg Field— built on an abandoned golf course— began on March 9, according to Reichwald. The two sides co-funded the building of the stadium without taxpayer money, which ESPN PR confirmed to Awful Announcing through a spokesperson and MLB.
“We’re excited about the opportunity to cover a baseball game in a unique way and at the same time honor our servicemen and women who allow us to do what we do,” Reichwald told Awful Announcing in a phone interview. “We like challenges. This is a unique one. We are honored to be a part of it and be there to cover what is the first professional sporting event played on a U.S. military instillation.”
The field will remain for use by the armed forces for baseball or softball games, but all the seats are temporary and will be removed after the game. The lighting for the game, which will meet all the MLB specifications and standards, is temporary as well. And since the stadium was built from scratch, ESPN was able to consult with the architects about where the press box and camera locations and positions should be.
“We had an opportunity to have a voice in that at the beginning,” Reichwald said. “That was kind of different.”
There will be roughly 20 cameras positioned throughout Fort Bragg Field, Reichwald said, roughly the same amount of cameras used in a regular Sunday Night Baseball broadcast. The biggest challenge Reichwald alluded to is all the cable that has to be strung out for ESPN to operate as it normally would.
In all major league stadiums, there’s an established network of cables pre-set and wired in so that the various cameras and sets used by television and radio broadcasters can be connected to the TV trucks situated within the 30 MLB ballparks. As you can imagine, there is no established cable network at Fort Bragg. That required some extra prep work from ESPN, whose traveling roadshow of trucks and equipment usually arrive on Saturday for a Sunday night game.
This week, ESPN arrived on Thursday with various camera crews and technical staff to get the lay of the land. Friday is what Reichwald called a cable day, where all the cables are laid out to connect the trucks with the press box and all the camera positions.
“We are approaching this game from a technical standpoint— in terms of the cameras and the replay devices and the audio— in the same that we would a normal Sunday night game,” Reichwald said.
ESPN is planning a lot of special features during the broadcast, outlined below:
- ESPN has invited Lieutenant General Stephen J. Townsend, Commanding General, XVIII Airborne Corps. of Fort Bragg to be a guest in the broadcast booth during the bottom of the second inning with Dan Shulman, Aaron Boone, and Jessica Mendoza.
- Alex Robinett, a prospect in the Yankees system and a West Point grad currently stationed in Fort Bragg, will do a live interview with Buster Olney during the telecast.
- Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLBPA president Tony Clark will both do half-innings in the booth to discuss the significance of this game.
- ESPN will attempt to conduct a live interview with Braves catcher A.J. Pierzynski, whose friend from high school, Army Maj. Ron Colombo, is stationed at Fort Bragg. They played baseball together in high school and have stayed in touch over the years.
- Marlins outfielder Christian Yelich has a brother who’s in the Marines, and ESPN will try to talk to him during the open of the show and ask him what it means to play in this game.
- Camera crews were sent ahead to Fort Bragg to do shoots with the military members there, to film a tease tying in baseball and the military in a patriotic way. There will also be post-commercial segments that highlight the training and daily life at Fort Bragg.
If there is rain or inclement weather in Fort Bragg— there’s currently a 60 percent chance of rain— on Sunday night, there’s no makeup date planned. But if things go according to plan, Reichwald, there’s a chance there could be more games like this in the future.
“This is an exciting opportunity to highlight the men and women who serve our country and cover a baseball game at the same time,” Reichwald said. “What better way to do that on the eve of the 240th birthday of our country?”
Comments are closed.