Baseball fans gather 'round. Thirteen-forty WDCR provides some new entertainment for fans with a month-old show, "A Call to the Bullpen" every Monday afternoon at 2:00.
Hosted by Matt Herman '98, Marc McDonald '96 and Eric Paley '98, the hour-long show premiered four weeks ago with a preview of the major league season. Since that first week, the show has covered topics including the small market versus the big market, the best rookies and the most impressive lineup and pitching staff.
With two Mets fans and a Yankee fan, McDonald, as hosts, you never know what you will happen.
"A Call to the Bullpen" is the brainchild of Paley. "Since Winter term I wanted to do a baseball show," Paley said. The title, however, came from McDonald.
Early this term, Paley talked to WDCR Sports Director Brian Clark '95 who sent out an electronic mail message to other members of WDCR to see if there was any interest. Herman and McDonald responded, and the show was born.
"It was all sort of random," Herman said. The three did not know each other previously, but shared an intense love and knowledge of baseball.
All three have prior radio experience, working as announcers during the Dartmouth baseball games. McDonald announced basketball and hockey as well, while Herman announced one game of basketball.
The show is "probably easier than announcing," McDonald said. In announcing, "you have to do play-by-play so you have to memorize the players' numbers."
"There's also so much dead time in baseball," announcing, Herman added.
"This is so natural for us," Paley said. "We've been listening to baseball for a long time."
While only Herman played high school baseball, all three have been baseball fans for many years.
Before the show could hit the airwaves, though, the hosts needed a time slot.
Clark "was excited about it but he didn't know if we could get a slot," Paley said.
The three hosts wanted a slot either in the evening or right before the baseball games, also covered on 1340. With none of these slots available, the hosts settled on Monday afternoon.
With a time established and Clark serving as the show's engineer, Herman, McDonald and Paley jumped right into the show, calling it "your two-way baseball talk radio." All three emphasize that they love to have people call in to the show.
So far, they have had "the regulars," Paley said, known as "J.J." and "Jim," call in, as well as others. A surprise call two weeks ago from NBC sports broadcaster Len Berman, a friend of Paley's family,stimulated some very interesting conversation about the Yankees among other topics. According to the hosts, Clark has been known to call in under assumed names.
The hosts hope that with the coming weeks, more celebrities will call in.
According to Paley, they are in the midst of negotiations to have guests from seven major league baseball teams and have had positive feedback from both the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves.
However, they cannot depend on callers, as was experienced during the second show when only three people called in. And that is when the knowledge comes in. Never knowing how many people will call or what the callers will ask, Herman, McDonald and Paley must be prepared to talk for a full hour and to talk about any topic. That means staying on top of all aspects of baseball.
"We plan out a topic each week. Then we go in with the idea and a newspaper and that's it," Herman said. For the following hour, it's all baseball, all the time.
The topics so far have centered around the major leagues, but the hosts feel they do know enough about the minors to break into those grounds at some point.
As for discussing Dartmouth baseball, "the season is really short," McDonald said. The hosts did not have an opportunity to go into the details of the season before it came to an end.
The show will take a break this summer but will resume next fall when the hosts hope to have two slots instead of one each week. The reason? "We have way too much to talk about," Paley said.
Indeed this appears to be true. After planning out four topics for one show, the three only managed to get through one.
"We'll digress because the callers are part of the show," Paley said.
The hosts are considering opening up the show to more topics come next winter when the baseball season is dead.
