ESPN college baseball analyst Chris Burke on playing-to-broadcasting shift: ‘I didn’t even have a scorebook!’

Playing a sport at a high level and broadcasting its games are often very different things. While knowledge of the sport is certainly helpful, and a good initial basis, there are a lot of things for many athletes to learn when making the move to calling games. For Chris Burke, the NCAA baseball and MLB star who’s now a long-established college baseball analyst for ESPN, one of those was the value of carrying a scorebook.

That revelation came out of a feature The Athletic’s Mitch Light did on Burke this week as part of the NCAA baseball tournament. Burke’s currently covering games there for ESPN, and he does season-long work for both their main networks and SEC Network, and he’s been a key part of their recent MLB Draft shows. He’ll also be in Omaha in two weeks (alongside Karl Ravech and Kyle Peterson) to call his fourth-straight College World Series for the network.

Light’s piece explores how Burke’s grown into a widely-popular broadcaster for ESPN (important considering how they’re emphasizing college baseball lately, and seeing strong results from that), how he and Peterson (also interviewed) work well together, how he focuses on teaching concepts (on and off the air), and some of the highlights from his career. But the opening anecdote on Burke’s broadcasting start perhaps stands out:

Chris Burke arrived at Tallahassee’s Dick Howser Stadium in April 2012 eager for his first broadcast as a college baseball color analyst. Florida State, the No. 1 team in the nation, was hosting rival Miami in a key ACC showdown. What a way to start a new career.

But he forgot something.

“I was so clueless,” Burke said, “I didn’t even have a scorebook, and my play-by-play guy, a guy named Tom Block, said, ‘Well, how are you going to know the players?’ I said, ‘Well, I memorized their names.’ And he’s like, ‘What if they sub?’ So he handed me a roster and a scorebook, and I was like, ‘Yeah, this is way easier.’”

Despite that early misstep, Burke quickly became a key part of ESPN’s college baseball coverage. He even worked his first NCAA tournament later that year. And Light’s full piece is worth a read for its discussion of Burke’s rise and evolution as a broadcaster. But Block (and his extra scorebook) deserve some credit for helping Burke get off to a better start than he might have on his own. And credit to Burke for sharing that anecdote; it illustrates how jumping from a playing career into a booth is often far from simple.