Dave Jageler, our Nationals play-by-play man extraordinaire on 106.7 The Fan, joined Grant Paulsen on Tuesday to look back on the 2019 World Series, as tonight marks the first time the Nats are back in Houston since that series.
At the end of the conversation, Grant, who was flying solo with Danny Rouhier out due to strep throat), wanted to look back at Jageler’s call of Howie Kendrick’s homer in Game 7 of the 2019 World Series, and played the call in its entirety.
It’s a call Grant will always love and remember.
“I love play-by-play calls where there’s so much silence in the crowd, you can hear the team screaming in the dugout,” Grant said. “The ballpark is so quiet; that road silence is my favorite sound in sports.”
The same goes for Jageler.
“Every time I think back on that call, I thank the baseball Gods for our position in the booth,” Jageler said. “I’ve heard Joe Buck and Dan Shulman’s national calls, but they had a different vantage point, further up the first base line. I had the perfect view so I could track the ball off the bat, the right field line, George Springer going back, and I had the read.”
That’s why, Jageler said, he was able to make the call of what wasn’t a sure home run sound so smooth and confident.
“In my mind, I was going, ‘I don’t think he’s going to catch this, and it looks like it’s going to stay fair and have the distance,’” Jageler said. “There was never any kind of hesitation; sometimes when you have a ball like that, you have to hesitate to see what happens, but I had the perfect line the whole way. The fact it hit the foul pole made it an easier call than if it had curled around the pole and you had to wait for the umpire’s call. It just worked out so perfectly to be able to follow it and deliver the call the way it happened.”
Listen to Jageler and Grant discuss that call above, and the entirety of their reminiscence below!
Follow Grant & Danny on Twitter: @granthpaulsen & @funnydanny
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