My voice is more than a little froggy this morning after calling a wild 3-2 win for D.C. United over Orlando City in a Major League Soccer game Saturday night.
We don't have time or space to go through all my emotions leading up to the show, my first on the primary English TV feed of an MLS game since an ESPN game I called in 2021. Suffice it to say, I've been looking forward to it! The event itself certainly delivered more than I could have asked for.
Five goals, multiple lead changes, and a 90th-minute game-winner from the home team in front of their supporters? Yeah, that's how you draw it up. What's more, the decisive goalscorer, Kye Rowles, was the D.C. United representative we talked to on Friday to prepare for the match. I did not expect that he would be the hero less than 36 hours later!
Here are the highlights of a game I thoroughly enjoyed calling with my partner, 12-year MLS veteran Jalil Anibaba, who I only met on Thursday but already consider a friend. We had a blast!
For my first broadcast on Apple TV and my first full broadcast in almost six months, I felt very good about our show. Getting fooled by the 80th-minute chance and calling goal on a shot that didn't go in will not make my personal highlight reel, but it happens to the best of us.
It was also a treat before the game to say hello to a broadcasting legend, Dave Johnson, for whom the broadcast booth at Audi Field is named. He is battling multiple sclerosis and doing so with remarkably good humor, maintaining a busy schedule of Wizards and United broadcasts, working with Bruce Murry on the latter.
Dave is a true class act for whom I have so much respect. He showed that American broadcasters can put their own stamp on soccer. Ever the insider, he had confirmed both lineups and bench rosters way before us TV folks, helpfully sharing that information to help us prepare.
I have a few weeks for my voice to recover before I call three more MLS games in May, and then everyone's focus will flip to the World Cup.
But for now, I'm very happy to have gotten my feet wet. As I texted a friend this morning, "God was it fun!"
Obviously, I've been derelict in posting, to say the least. But I want to celebrate the culmination of my college soccer season today.
My spouse often asks how my broadcast went, and after one of many "OK" responses, or perhaps it was an "it could have been better" night, she said, "You never say 'Good' or 'great' when I ask."
I had to admit it was true. I'm hard on myself and tend to focus more on the things I think I should have done better than the things that went right.
But today, my last game of the season, the Ivy League men's championship game, called in person on the Princeton campus, felt right. It was an exciting game, with an early goal, a dramatic penalty kick save, and a late goal. It looked great, on a crisp, sunny afternoon with just enough fall foliage still lingering. And in addition to my knowledge of the teams, player identification, storyline development, interviews, chemistry with my partner, and on-camera hit, all of which felt good today, I also felt like I nailed the big moments.
I haven't listened back to any of it, to be honest, but all of the big spots felt good as they happened. My partner liked the goal calls, and I spoke long enough to punctuate it but quickly enough to lay out and let the pictures and sounds of player and fan reactions carry the mail.
A colleague texted me later, "You were on today!" and it took me a second to figure out what he meant. But I'll gladly take it. What a fun morning and afternoon, a great way to close my portion of the college soccer schedule!
Calling Little League's Intermediate 50/70 World Series (for 13-year-olds) is one of the annual highlights of my broadcast schedule. It's so much fun and I look forward to it (and prepare for it) for months in advance.
But I can admit the lights shine brightest on ESPN's coverage of the 12-year-old Little League World Series, with regional games featured on linear television. Williamsport is the event so many of us grew up watching (I can still vividly remember some of the broadcast opening from when I was 9), and, of course, it's the one I aspired (in vain, as I knew it would be) to play in.
So when I had the chance to call two games in 12-year-old regionals, filling in for a fellow announcer experiencing technical difficulties connecting with our Whitestown, Indiana site (pictured), it was a no-brainer! I was already in Little League mode, paying attention to the regionals anyway, and still had pages left in my custom scorebook built to support Continuous Batting Order, in which every player (up to 14) is in the batting order the entire game.
So on August 6, I called the Great Lakes Region elimination game between Jasper, Indiana and Bowling Green East, Kentucky:
The following day, I called the Midwest Region winners' bracket final between Webb City, Missouri and Sioux Falls, South Dakota:
They were both tight, well-played games that seemed to fly by (less than 1 hour, 45 minutes for each) compared to the games in Livermore, which are an inning longer and inevitably slow down due to the addition of leads, pickoffs, and true stolen bases.
As I do at the 13-year-old level, I took pride in calling the teams by their league names, not just by the states involved. There's state pride involved, absolutely, and some teams even choose to order new uniforms that feature their state name. But most wear their original uniforms bearing their league name, and when you've beaten teams from all over your state to win the prize of representing that state, the town and the league deserve some specific love. Some towns have more than one league, too, as my hometown did when I played. After all, California didn't win back-to-back Little League world championships in 1992 and 1993; Long Beach, California did!
The games were close and interesting and fun to call, and both were such an adrenaline rush, too: I was trying my best to get up to speed on these teams in short order, working with a new partner in Chris Burke and new production crews, and scrambling to get everything done. For the second game, I even had enough time to set up and appear on camera for our open!
It was incredible fun, an important contribution to our team's coverage, and a taste of something I can hope to work on again in the future!
My non-stop week calling games from the Little League Intermediate 50/70 Baseball World Series came to a thrilling conclusion late Sunday night, as the Eastbank Little League from Kenner, Louisiana (right next to Louis Armstrong Airport) edged defending champion West Seoul, Korea with a run in the top of the seventh inning to take the world championship.
Champions of the Little League World Series (12-year-olds) back in 2019, Eastbank becomes the first individual league ever to win both the 12- and 13-year-old world championships (although Seoul in 2014 and West Seoul in 2015 presumably had some significant overlap).
Both teams were so sound and had such good pitching that we never expected a wild, 8-7 game, but that's exactly what we got. This video doesn't include our opening tease, which I was quite proud of, but here's about 25 minutes of 13-year-old Little League fun:
I'm not going to lie: I was as excited to do this game as any I've called in the last year and a half. I emailed maybe 100 people who have been instrumental in my baseball broadcasting career to let them know that I was *finally* going to call a college baseball game on linear TV.
That it wound up being a game with no implications in the standings or for either team's postseason chances didn't change that at all. That it wound up being ended early due to the 10-run rule didn't phase me at all. This was high-level college baseball, and my partner and I told the stories and put a good call on it! And I even got to use the home run call suggested by my children while we were riding the New York City subway.
Mission accomplished, as far as I was concerned, and cross your fingers with me that there is more to come. In the mean time, check out the highlights from Clemson vs Boston College:
#Clemson completed the sweep with another 10-run performance. It was the first three-game weekend series in which the Tigers scored double-digit runs in all three games since 2001 & the first time in an ACC series since 1995.
I'm thrilled to have college baseball back on my schedule 2024. I started my broadcasting career as a college freshman back in 2002, with college baseball the central focus for all four years at Rice University. It is one of the sports I follow closely purely out of passion and interest, even if I'm not working in it ... but I much prefer to be working!
I was fortunate this year to schedule my first televised college baseball game for the ESPN family of networks at the end of this regular season, and I picked up a Big East game in early May as part of my preparation. Conference leader UConn, looking for a fourth straight regular season title, and host Seton Hall, trying to move up the standings, both needed to win this series in a big way, and after UConn rallied to win Friday's opener, I called a tense pitchers' duel with a dramatic finish on Saturday afternoon in Jersey.
Here are the big plays in the game, courtesy of the teams' respective Twitter accounts!
— Seton Hall University Baseball (@SHUBaseball) May 4, 2024
That's Andrew Bianco, a defensive replacement, with the game-winning hit in the bottom of the 9th to give Seton Hall a MUCH-needed 2-1 win. UConn, however, rebounded in the nightcap of a doubleheader to take the series and hold a 1-game lead atop the conference with two weekends remaining in the regular season. Seton Hall is 4 games out of the final Big East tournament spot with only 6 games left.
My next action is on Saturday, May 18, calling top-5 club Clemson against Boston College in their regular season finale on ACC Network.
Besides working the Women's Euros, a real positive of this year for me, professionally, has been the opportunity to call games on linear TV (aka you can just flip on the TV and find the channel, not deal with a streaming app) in sports other than soccer.
I'll always be a soccer person and proud of it. But I'm a baseball person and a football person and a hockey person and a basketball person, too! I have ties to each of these that go beyond broadcasting ambition, and each one challenges me and captivates me and piques my interest in a different way. I'm very proud to cover all of those sports, and softball and volleyball as well, when given the opportunity, but it often feels like some other sports write me off for bigger games because I am "a soccer guy."
So the chance to call the 13-year-old Little League World Series this summer, including the world championship game on ESPN2, was a thrill and an important professional step.
Similarly, the chance to call the Georgia-Bucknell men's basketball game for the SEC Network on November 18, in person no less, was a real highlight of the year. I have done lots of college basketball for ESPN and the Big East, and I have done lots of NBA work in virtual reality, but I'd only called one previous basketball game on linear TV, and that was a pandemic-enforced home broadcast. Not quite the same energy!
So I tried to soak up the atmosphere at venerable Stegeman Coliseum in Athens, Georgia, and enjoy every minute of the game, one that wound up finishing a close call. Partner Mark Wise and I had a fun post-game interview as well, with Georgia's Jabri Abdur-Rahim, who at some point said he "wants to be a TV personality," and he confirmed that he's coming for our jobs as soon as his playing days are finished.
Here's a look at some of the highlights:
The best news is there's at least one more linear basketball game still to come (December 17, LSU-Winthrop men's), even if that one will be called from home. So stay tuned.
My scheduled slate of games at the Women's Euros concluded Friday with one of the first actual upsets in the tournament, as Austria took out Norway 1-0 to advance to the quarterfinals. With two of the top 10 attacking players in the world, according to many (Ada Hegerberg and Caroline Graham Hansen), Norway were the popular pick to finish second in the group. ESPN's Soccer Power Index gave them more than a 60-percent chance of winning the game outright, which was what they needed to advance.
But after losing 8-0 to England on Monday in just a jaw-dropping display of attacking firepower against a porous defense, Norway was under incredible pressure. They never got anything going and were being outshot 13-2 at one point before getting a couple of late chances.
Having closely watched Austria's Cinderella run to the semifinals in 2017, I was not surprised by the outcome: I told Danielle Slaton, my partner, I expected a tie that would have been enough for Austria to advance. So it was nice to be right, for once, and to call another big moment in the progression of Austria women's football! Check out the highlights:
Thursday's ESPN2 game had Iceland and Italy playing what was essentially a must-win in Group D. There were a lot of things to focus on, starting with Italy's response to its 5-1 loss to France in the tournament opener: five lineup changes, including star forwards Cristiana Girelli and Barbara Bonansea starting the game on the bench. The changes didn't really work, as Iceland - always a challenge for broadcasters with its succession of -dóttir last names - scored first and created enough chances to get a second goal.
They never got it, however, and the second-half insertion of Bonansea ultimately proved enough for Italy to come away with a tie. Given the final matchups in Group D, Italy (playing Belgium) probably comes away with the best odds of advancing behind group winner France, but this certainly has proven to be an unpredictable group!
I felt good about our call. Danielle and I, and Christina when the occasion warranted, knew the teams and the stories and the implications of this game. Our Italian and Icelandic were pretty well honed. So even though both teams walked away disappointed with the result, I think we had a right to walk off satisfied. Time for our biggest game yet in the Group A decider on Friday!
We were fortunate to call a five-goal thriller Wednesday, as the Netherlands - missing four starters, including one of the best players in the world in Vivianne Miedema, jumped out to a 2-0 lead on Portugal. Having rallied from a 2-0 deficit to tie their opener, Portugal fought back to tie the game early in the second half, only to see the game decided by a fantastic 20-yard strike from Dutch midfielder Daniëlle van de Donk (who suffered a gruesome ankle injury in late November and raced through rehab to play in the tournament).
This game had some serious pronunciation challenges that I felt we did well with, even if we weren't perfect. There are some Dutch noises I just can't make.
At any rate, these highlights cut off some of my goal calls and omitted a few exciting plays to keep things short and efficient, but I think everybody could tell I was pumped! Here's to more games like that one.
Austria took care of business against Northern Ireland on Monday, pulling out a 2-0 win that, coupled with Norway's collapse against England, means Austria can reach the quarterfinals with a win or a tie in Friday's decisive game against Norway.
Here are the highlights from my ESPN2 call with Danielle Slaton, our first game of the tournament. A good start!
I was thrilled to be assigned commentary on Sunday's Women's FA Cup Final, the culminating event on the women's club football calendar in England before this summer's Women's Euros. I was even more psyched to call a game that was interesting from start to finish and had some simply fabulous goals.
The game was in London, I was in Connecticut, and partner Julie Foudy was in California - just another day in soccer broadcasting - and we had a blast calling it. I didn't nail every call 100%: I couldn't tell if the first goal was touched on its way in, and I talked into Erin Cuthbert's screamer a bit. But overall, I felt good about our call. I think our excitement for the occasion, the players and teams involved, and ultimately the plays on the field, certainly came through
I call a men's cup final (the DFB-Pokal in Germany) next weekend, which should be really dramatic as well. Then I'm looking forward to finding a rhythm with a regular run of games this
summer, although I don't yet know what I'll be scheduled to work. No guarantees I'll get goals as good as these, though!
Calling a Red Bulls game in person for the first time since March 2020 was a blast on Saturday, made all the better by a thrilling finish in the thick of the MLS playoff race:
I was hoping to do some flashbacks this year to look back 10 years to
2010, when I was in my second year as the radio play-by-play
broadcaster for the Houston Dynamo. Now with sports shut down and so
much of life seemingly on hold, it seems like the right time to aim for a
series of retrospectives, looking back at some memorable or quirky
moments from my career in sports. July 31, 2010
But that call was actually a sequel. In 2010, in a game the rest of the world knew as Thierry Henry's first MLS game (that was interrupted by a pitch invader who spectacularly evaded security and then crashed into a wall), the Dynamo played the whole second half with 10 players and came from behind to score in the 90th minute and earn a 2-2 tie.
Excited, exhausted, relieved at the end of a crazy two weeks, I went off, punctuating my call with an ecstatic, "Wooo!"
Slightly more than a year later, I got to call a similar moment with Dixon's goal, but since that one was a win and I was even more excited, my punctuation went even longer and organically turned into my (in)famous, "Woohoo!"
Thierry Henry coming to MLS was a huge deal. Getting to call his
debut should have been a hugely
anticipated event. But as it happened, it was way down my priority list
that week. If you're interested in what exactly led up to that game and that call, read on ...
I was hoping to do some flashbacks this year to look back 10 years to
2010, when I was in my second year as the radio play-by-play
broadcaster for the Houston Dynamo. Now with sports shut down and so
much of life seemingly on hold, it seems like the right time to aim for a
series of retrospectives, looking back at some memorable or quirky
moments from my career in sports. July 29, 2008
Your big break. Sometimes you know it when it comes, sometimes it takes you by surprise. My first one was no surprise: I knew the stakes going in, and I knew I had to come through.
A 24-year-old in my first year as "Web coordinator" for the Houston Dynamo, I made no secret of my ambition to become a soccer broadcaster. With only low-tech college games for campus TV on my resume, I called Reserve League games into a stick mic connected to our one-camera shoot for the technical staff.
The record books show I had only called two such games when my break arrived: Our radio announcer would miss the SuperLiga semifinal to take his daughter to college.
I knew this was my opportunity to show I could do the job. Several of my bosses went to bat for me and convinced our radio partner to give me a chance, and after a few sleepless nights and a whole lot of butterflies, I was on the air!
The open was not exactly next-level. I don't think it takes an expert to tell that I was reading a written-out script as I said, "From Robertson Stadium, it's the rematch Houston fans have been waiting for, an international grudge match, as the Houston Dynamo host Mexican power, five-time Mexican champion Pachuca, in the semifinals of SuperLiga 2008. Good evening everybody, I'm Jonathan Yardley filling in" … Not the worst script in the world, but definitely sub-par delivery. But hey, it was the biggest game I had done as a professional!
Pre-game nerves, interview malfunction It was actually good that I wrote it out. I was really nervous, and to make matters worse, I'm pretty sure this was the game where I recorded a pre-game interview with Dominic Kinnear on my tape recorder, only to get back up to the press box and realize I had cut the interview off after about 5 seconds. Mortified, there was no way I was going to ask Dom for a re-do, so I anxiously waited for the players to arrive and squeezed in a few minutes with the always accommodating and insightful Craig Waibel.
So I was definitely nervous. The good thing was, I had plenty of tape on Pachuca and was really familiar with their personnel, so even if my Mexican pronunciations needed work (Marioni should be mar-ee-OH-nee, not MARE-ee-oh-nee), I had gained a lot of confidence by the time the second half and most of the game's key moments came along.
It really was a rivalry with Pachuca, because the 2007 Champions' Cup semifinal series (Pachuca won the second leg 5-2 in extra time to win 5-4 on aggregate) was incredibly intense, and that year's SuperLiga semifinal was a classic as well. There's a lot of schtick now about SuperLiga, but the tournament was a big deal for us at the time.
How'd I do?
Listening back to this, I'm proud of some of the little details I worked in, such as, "Dynamo going right to left, if you're familiar with Robertson Stadium, attacking toward El Batallon." This is a little thing, a radio detail, but it's something I still enjoy on TV - finding a unique way to indicate one end of the stadium.
I don't put much stock in prepared goal calls, so I didn't know what I would say, but you'd better believe I did not want the game to end 0-0. If you're going to earn a job or at least put together a good demo from one game, you need goals! So I was sweating a little extra (Houston in July? Yeah, it was muggy.) when it was still 0-0 at the 75-minute mark.
As Kei Kamara wins the corner, take a second to appreciate that the 2008 Dynamo had Brian Ching, Chris Wondolowski, and Kei Kamara on the same roster. Ching (82 career MLS goals) was clearly the centerpiece at the time, but Wondo (161) and Kei (128) have gone on to incredibly prolific scoring runs. Wondo, Ricardo Clark, Stuart Holden, Geoff Cameron, and Brad Davis all went to the World Cup for the US, and Pat Onstad and Dwayne De Rosario are two all-time MLS greats -- this team was stacked!
On the corner kick, note the clarity in saying how many corners the Dynamo had taken (hat tip to JP Dellacamera for instilling that in me early) and me getting the sponsor read in. Not an easy thing to remember in your first game!
Now remember how I said I don't really prepare goal calls? Yeah, I think it showed on both of these goal calls. "De Rosario .. bends it in near post, Waibel deflected, Boswell buries it!" That's all good stuff. But it needed one or two more lines to punctuate the moment before laying out.
Similarly, on the second goal, my call of the build-up was all good and technically correct, and it comes through OK: "Brian Mullan on the right, cutting toward the end line. Mullan gets there, chips it .. Corey Ashe buries it! Corey Ashe has put it away, 87th minute!" Probably could have used a little something more there, but we live and learn, right?
At least I got to make a crack about Corey's height after my partner, then Dynamo academy director and now Dash head coach James Clarkson, weighed in. I also got to give James credit for saying the last 20 minutes in the Houston heat could favor the Dynamo.
Good enough to get the job
At the end, don't mind me starting three consecutive sentences with "the Dynamo" at full time. Force of habit for a local radio broadcast, especially when you work in the team's front office. But I had gotten the job done (the team winning a big game sure didn't hurt!), and that was plenty to celebrate for one night.
That one game proved to be enough of a proving ground. By Christmas, I knew I would start 2009 as the radio voice of the Dynamo, and that was a true dream job for me. There have been more "big breaks" since, and hopefully there are still some to come, but that SuperLiga semifinal was a big deal in my career.
I was hoping to do some flashbacks this year to look back 10 years to
2010, when I was in my second year as the radio play-by-play
broadcaster for the Houston Dynamo. Now with sports shut down and so
much of life seemingly on hold, it seems like the right time to aim for a
series of retrospectives, looking back at some memorable or quirky
moments from my career in sports. June 26
I've had the fortune to have a string of memorable soccer moments on this date over the years. June alone has brought my first in-person pro soccer game (2001, Columbus), Rice winning the NCAA baseball championship (2003, Omaha), my pro debut in minor league baseball (2005, Yakima), my first game as a sideline reporter (2012, Philadelphia), and my first US women's national team broadcast (2014, East Hartford), and an England-Germany shootout (2017, from studio).
But June 26 has had more than its share of drama, and here are three with indelible memories.
2002
As a college-credit-earning intern for the MetroStars, my first game sees me spotting for broadcast legend JP Dellacamera and sees Sports Illustrated cover boy Clint Mathis returning to MLS after the US run to the World Cup quarterfinals.
In the second half, Mathis went to the halfway line and tried to check into the game, only to be sent back to the bench by the officials. I was one of the first in the building to know why: His name had not been included on the original lineup sheet!
2013
Maybe the best goal I've ever called, and it wasn't even the wildest part of the game.
First, watch Darlington Nagbe's run through the FC Dallas defense in the US Open Cup:
I didn't get every aspect of the call right, but "dancing in the box ... just blew up one entire side of the Dallas defense ... that was something special!" felt right on the money.
Now what was I doing calling that game? It's a long story. Due to my wife's job, we spent one year living in Shreveport, Louisiana, which was no picnic in terms of free-lance work. But with budgets being what they are and the Open Cup important but not a huge priority, the Portland Timbers took the chance to bring on a "local" fill-in rather than travel their regular broadcast team.
So I drove the three hours to Frisco, Texas, and set up shop in a very familiar stadium (I have called FC Dallas television broadcasts off and on since 2012). I knew Portland fans would want to hear their call rather than the audio of the Dallas webstream, so I had fun doing a radio call but also explaining to those watching that there WERE fans there, they were just on the near side of the stadium under the roof.
At any rate, the game was wild, as you can tell if you watch the whole highlights, but the Nagbe goal was just a sudden burst of brilliance that took your breath away. And surely the offensive assertiveness and aggression fans have always wanted to see more of from Nagbe, despite his high level in the midfield.
Not only was the goal, the game, and the finish great, but we had one of the great post-game quotes of all-time. The communications staff brought a microphone down to relay Caleb Porter's thoughts after the game, and he dropped the line that his players "continue to show me they have big hearts and brass balls, because they know how to get it done when the game is on the line."
I mean, really, that's a hard night to top!
2016
Three years later, I called more Timbers drama, but this time I was a seriously neutral party.
Any ESPN assignment is special for me, even to this day after 8 years working for the company at various levels. To call an MLS Game of the Week at Providence Park, one of the best atmospheres anywhere, featuring my former club, the Houston Dynamo, was just over the top.
And the game delivered! Goals, energy, back-and-forth ... and a little bit of controversy at the end, when Joe Willis was whistled for a foul that allowed Diego Valeri to convert his second penalty kick of the game for a 3-2 Portland win.
I didn't think it was a penalty kick, but partner Brian Dunseth and I ran into an ebullient Portland owner Merritt Paulson afterward, and he (of course) had no doubt!
Nothing too fancy this June 26, but we can hope for more drama in future years.
I was hoping to do some flashbacks this year to look back 10 years to
2010, when I was in my second year as the radio play-by-play
broadcaster for the Houston Dynamo. Now with sports shut down and so
much of life seemingly on hold, it seems like the right time to aim for a
series of retrospectives, looking back at some memorable or quirky
moments from my career in sports. June 2, 2010
First, the play. I posted the full game highlights to YouTube, but start with the big moment: Juan Pablo Ángel hitting a 35-yard free kick in off the post and the goalkeeper's back! to give the New York Red Bulls a dramatic win in their new soccer-specific stadium.
Incredible moment. As someone who grew up rooting for the MetroStars and now covers the Red Bulls semi-regularly, it's a special moment to have witnessed.
Except it was heartbreaking for my team, the guys I worked with and worked for, and part of a particularly maddening stretch of games.
A long time coming
Most soccer fans in New Jersey and New York know the long-running saga that predated the Red Bull era of the area's Major League Soccer club. The MetroStars (the New York/New Jersey was dropped after only 2 seasons) played in enormous, way-too-big-for-that-era-of-American-soccer Giants Stadium (I always enjoyed hearing, "Estadio de los Gigantes" on some broadcasts en español). 15,000 fans was a decent crowd for that era of MLS, but stick it in 70,000-seat Giants Stadium, and the atmosphere was pointless.
The atmosphere was so bad that I refused to attend my first professional soccer game in that stadium (more on my first pro game later this month), and it was clear very few MetroStars games would feel like an event until they had their own stadium. Over the years, the team unveiled plan after plan for a future stadium, often promising details in "60 to 90 days," only to have something fall through.
I interned for the club in 2002, right in the middle of all of this, and we literally had multiple staff meetings in which we heard, "Butts in seats. Butts in seats. Butts in seats - equals - stadium!"
Red Bull swoops
The MetroStars were my team at that point, having grown up there and worked there. But then Red Bull came in with an initial plan to ignore the history of the club. At the same time, my adopted hometown of Houston was welcoming a new team, one I could see in person and try to support into a success.
It was an easy transition to make, made easier still when the Dynamo won MLS Cup in their first two seasons in Houston and when I went to work for the club. So every Dynamo-Red Bulls game was a huge one for me, especially the 2008 and 2009 games when I got to go back to Giants Stadium with my new team, finally calling a game there in 2009.
Fancy new digs
But 2010 meant flying home to New Jersey to call a game in a soccer-specific stadium, of all things! No more 60-90 days, no more dead atmosphere. No more high-bouncing artificial turf. Major League Soccer in a vibrant atmosphere, on grass, 30 minutes away from my parents' house: This was something special.
Red Bull Arena had opened less than three months prior when we (the Dynamo) arrived in 2010 for a mid-week game. I was excited to see the place, even with its surprisingly bland gray exterior and some of the quirks of the broadcast level. I distinctly remember setting up my equipment on a folding table at the front of my designated booth, only to realize that when I stood behind it, I couldn't see large portions of the field's corners. Because the booth was on the suite level, it had the same dimensions as the suites, with none of the seats that fronted them. So I had blank rows of concrete in front of me, and I took advantage by hopping over the windowsill and calling the game while leaning back against the booth. With the table behind me, I don't think I looked at my notes much that evening!
Emotions running high
It was also an emotional time from the team's perspective. Our leader in so many ways, the talisman of soccer in Houston since the club's opening game in April 2006, was Brian Ching. Just a week earlier, he had been left off the United States roster for the upcoming World Cup, a decision which was just utterly shocking in our world. I had been brainstorming content we could do around Chingy and former Dynamo player Stu Holden going to the World Cup, and the thought of Ching not making the team never entered my mind.
Chingy faced the music - and the media - upon returning to Houston in one of the more painful media scrums I've ever witnessed. He answered the questions head-on and did his best to move forward despite one of the biggest disappointments of his career. And in his first game back, the Saturday before this trip to New Jersey, he came off the bench and scored "in HIS house, Robertson Stadium!" as I screamed on the radio call, as we took the lead on the expansion Philadelphia Union, only to give it up and lose, stunningly, in stoppage time.
The game
So emotions were running high, for the organization, the team, the players, and even this radio broadcaster.
Then, during the first half of the game against New York, Red Bulls fans chanted, "U.S. reject" at Brian Ching. As somebody who had spent the last four-plus years rooting for, meeting, working with, admiring, and supporting Chingy, it stung me, and I'm sure it angered every teammate in orange that night.
It was Chingy who tied that game in the 65th minute, breaking the offside trap to finish a pass from Bobby Boswell. And it felt just as emotional, at least for those of us in the building, as his goal at home against Philadelphia had. "He's not a Dynamo reject, he's their main man," was my reference on the broadcast.
Just like the Philadelphia game, however, there was one more twist of fate. The Red Bulls got this free kick DEEP into stoppage time, from WAY out, with no time left. You don't often shoot from that range. But Juan Pablo Ángel was the OG Designated Player, a big-name player who came over from Europe at age 31 and more than justified the pricetag. He scored double-digit goals in all four seasons with the Red Bulls and was, quite simply, a cut above.
I still didn't think he would shoot from there, or that he could beat the great Pat Onstad from that far out. But with the help of the goalpost and a friendly bounce, he did, and it's one of the great regular-season moments I've ever witnessed in MLS.
But it was heartbreaking, too. Every coin has two sides, right? Now you know my side from June 2, 2010.
I was hoping to do some flashbacks this year to look back 10 years to
2010, when I was in my second year as the radio play-by-play
broadcaster for the Houston Dynamo. Now with sports shut down and so
much of life seemingly on hold, it seems like the right time to aim for a
series of retrospectives, looking back at some memorable or quirky
moments from my career in sports. May 22, 2010
Danny Cruz always stands out for one thing: energy.
I'm just going to leave this here and let you enjoy Danny's first foray into the starting lineup.
A former hockey player who always brought that mentality to the soccer field, Danny is one of my favorite people to cover and work with, from his draft day in 2009 as a 19-year-old to his appearance on MTV's Made in 2011 (more on that here) to his years with the Philadelphia Union to the present day as an assistant coach with Louisville City. A relentlessly positive guy with an amazing attitude.
Having come to the sport a little later than most, Danny was never the most technical player at the professional level. But his speed, athleticism, and work ethic earned him a Generation adidas contract out of UNLV and led to him starting a good run of matches in both 2010 and 2011, including the Dynamo's run to the 2011 MLS Cup final.
We in the Dynamo communications office got some laughs over the years from times the wrong Danny Cruz would be listed on our team page on various sites. There was the time Soccerway listed him as Daniel Cruzeiro, a Brazilian goalkeeper, and, of course, the time the Dynamo invited a Colombian named Daniel Cruz for a trial.
I was hoping to do some flashbacks this year to look back 10 years to
2010, when I was in my second year as the radio play-by-play
broadcaster for the Houston Dynamo. Now with sports shut down and so
much of life seemingly on hold, it seems like the right time to aim for a
series of retrospectives, looking back at some memorable or quirky
moments from my career in sports. May 11, 2014
I had to laugh when I saw the MLS Extratime "Greatest Team of All Time" bracket including each MLS team's best squad of all time and noted that the Seattle Sounders representatives are the 2014 squad. It was a fantastic team, of course, Supporters' Shield and Open Cup champions and only eliminated in the MLS postseason via an away-goals rule that I despise. Obafemi Martins, Clint Dempsey, Chad Marshall, Ozzie Alonso, Stefan Frei, DeAndre Yedlin, Brad Evans. Great team.
But when I got a chance to call a Sounders game that year, they laid an egg. An unprecedented, unmitigated disaster of a game.
This package, while long, is a pretty good look back at a day Revs fans will want to remember a lot more than Sounders supporters. Head to the 10-minute mark for me trying to keep things light despite an unprecedented 4-0 halftime deficit for my home-team-for-a-day.
Everybody's backup
For me, this was a one-off, a fill-in, one of the ways I managed to stay involved in MLS broadcasting while living in four cities in less than three years. A local announcer has a family commitment, gets sick, gets bumped up to a national game. Who are you going to call who can jump right in and know both teams? I was proud to be that guy.
This was a special opportunity, with Sounders announcer Ross Fletcher's wife preparing to give birth, to step onto one of the most-watched broadcasts in the league. I loved working with the Sounders' ultra-professional broadcast team, including Jackie Montgomery, Taylor Graham, and Kasey Keller. My first and only show with them had some shaky new-guy moments, things that would be ironed out if you worked two games in a row together. I even gritted my teeth and said "FC" after "Sounders" where called for. Here are some of my thoughts from the time on how things went.
Don't Shoot the Messenger
Clint Dempsey was coming back to his former home in New England, the game had teams who finished the year as two of the top
five teams in MLS, not that we knew that at the time. It was supposed to be a good one. Instead, New England hit Seattle early and often, via the counter-attack, and rolled to the win.
No matter, how good or bad I was on the air, nobody in Seattle was going to get past the scoreline. At halftime, with the score already 4-0, I said, "Don't shoot the messenger, this isn't my fault!" which at least got a laugh out of Kasey! While I felt good about the broadcast and our call, I did leave the stadium that day figuring I probably wouldn't get asked back.
Yedlin's Day "Off"
One of the most notable features in the game, which saw New England exploit Seattle on the counter-attack, was Revolution winger Diego Fagundez just owning Sounders right back DeAndre Yedlin. I had watched Yedlin and met his grandparents, who raised him, during his first professional preseason with Seattle, so I felt well aware of his potential. I felt he was an outsider for the 2014 World Cup squad before this game, and I certainly felt so after his tepid performance.
But he wasn't himself in this game, and hindsight confirmed our suspicions that he was basically out there trying to avoid injury and keep his focus on the World Cup camp. Which is understandable, given how significant the World Cup is in any player's career and proved to be for Yedlin. Three months later he signed for Tottenham, and he has since played almost 100 games in the English Premier League. So he probably got the math right in taking this one easy, but it was still a strange sight to see.
Remaining Revs
From this game, it's kind of amazing to think the Revs still have Fagundez and Scott Caldwell (both Homegrown Players), Andrew Farrell, and Teal Bunbury. They later got a year and a half of the Jermaine Jones experience, they relied on Lee Nguyen for years, but they are now a completely different group under Bruce Arena. Now with a new training facility and more resources being invested, they're one of the teams I was really curious to see in 2020, so hopefully we get that chance as the year unfolds, albeit under unique circumstances.
