Kyle Schwarber started the NLCS against the Diamondbacks with a bang by hitting Zac Gallen’s first-pitch fastball 420 feet for a leadoff home run. The Philadelphia Phillies slugger has made a habit of hitting leadoff homers and the TBS broadcast was ready for it.
Play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson revealed how the TBS broadcast prepared for a potential leadoff home run on the Audacy original podcast “Baseball Isn’t Boring” this week.
“In baseball broadcasting, we have a hunch that Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper are gonna ambush just because Zac Gallen throws a lot of first-pitch fastballs,” Anderson said (21:15 in player above). “You get a couple of alpha dogs matching up against each other, they’re trying to establish who’s who. So going in we know that. So we’re kind of ready.”
The broadcast was ready and so was Schwarber. He turned on a first-pitch fastball to give the Phillies a 1-0 lead that they would not relinquish.
The TBS broadcast broke away from the norm with Schwarber facing off against Gallen.
“If you go back and watch the bottom of the first in Game 1 of the NLCS, you’ll notice we didn’t do the traditional come back from break, here’s the lineup, here’s the pitcher, here’s the leadoff hitter. We didn’t do that,” Anderson explained. “We only did the pitcher quickly then we did Schwarber stepping into the box because we knew he may swing at the first pitch. So then we were on time. We did the lineups four batters in.”
Baseball is a game of habits for players and broadcasters alike, but sometimes situations can call for a change.
“We all in our meetings said ‘No, we’re not going to do the lineups’ because that takes 30 seconds,” Anderson recalled. “We did it with Acuna all year – any first-pitch ambushers in the pitch clock era especially. So we’re able to change on the fly and change the way we do our habits and do things differently. It’s OK if we don’t get the lineups in before the first batter because after the fourth batter I can say ‘Well you’ve seen the first four, let’s meet the rest.’”
The broadcast better be ready for the Phillies to ambush the Diamondbacks in Arizona with Game 3 on Thursday night and Game 4 on Friday night.