Dan and Ben Shulman delivered father-son announcer jinxes of the same play on separate broadcasts

We’ve seen a lot of announcer jinxes involving on-air discussion of an athlete’s recent struggles before the player does something spectacular. But it’s more unusual to see a father and son both involved in that. That took place on the Toronto Blue Jays’ TV and radio broadcasts of their clash with the Baltimore Orioles Sunday. There, both Dan Shulman (their TV primary play-by-play voice since 2020) and Ben Shulman (Dan’s son, and their primary radio voice since 2024) got into discussions (with analysts Buck Martinez and Chris Leroux, respectively) of Orioles’ first baseman Ryan Mountcastle’s success against the Jays over the years but struggles this season, right before Mountcastle hit a home run:

Toronto Blue Jays’ broadcasters Dan and Ben Shulman (TV and radio, respectively) were both involved in announcer jinxes of the Orioles’ Ryan Mountcastle today. Here’s Dan and analyst Buck Martinez on the TV call talking Mountcastle’s struggles this year, followed by his home run. pic.twitter.com/bUQ8BNGwAM

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 13, 2025

Here’s the similar conversation about Mountcastle’s struggles, followed by the home run, from Ben Shulman and Chris Leroux on the radio broadcast. pic.twitter.com/EoAXfgdGZ3

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 13, 2025

Some key comments on the TV broadcast included “Odd to see Mountcastle hitting eighth, but his power numbers were down last year, still doesn’t have one [home run] this year” from Dan Shulman and “Considering how well he hits against the Blue Jays, it is surprising to see him way down in the order, but he’s not swinging very well right now” from Martinez. On the radio call, Leroux says “Ben, if I told you last year that Ryan Mountcastle was batting eighth against the Blue Jays, you’d probably think I was nuts,” and Shulman adds “I would have thought they brought in [Juan] Soto, brought back [Anthony] Santander…He’s off to a tough start this year, though…a .250 average isn’t brutal, but no power, and he doesn’t walk very much, so his OPS just at .578.”

Both of those conversations are completely reasonable. As each of the announcing pairs noted, Mountcastle has been incredible against the Blue Jays over the years, hitting .299/.360/.564 with 18 home runs in 292 appearances against the Orioles’ AL East rivals entering Sunday. But he had also been struggling this year, hitting just .250/.283/.295 entering Sunday. So those are definitely fair conversations to have about the surprise to see Mountcastle’s performance this season given his past performance (against Toronto in particular).

But the left-inside pitch here and the moved-in left-field fence this season at Oriole Park at Camden Yards (a longstanding enemy of Mountcastle at its old distance) led to a home run here. And it also led to these conversations turning into announcer jinxes. While the Shulmans were only half of that, with both Martinez and Leroux also contributing, that did lead to an unusual and interesting father-son announcing jinx here.