Boston Red Sox TV team adjusting to new virtual reality with broadcasting – Berkshire Eagle

By Howard Herman, The Berkshire Eagle

Jerry Remy says the brave new world of Major League Baseball broadcasting has him missing interactions with players inside the Boston Red Sox locker room.

What he doesn't miss?

"As far as flights go and going to hotels, I don't miss that at all," Remy said. "I have no desire to go on an airplane to go to another town. I've been going since I was 21 years old.

"That's enough for me."

Remy, along with play-by-play broadcaster Dave O'Brien and analyst Dennis Eckersley will be broadcasting Red Sox games on the New England Sports Network, not from Fenway Park, but from the network's studios in Watertown.

Every Major League TV crew will broadcast their team's road games remotely. Those broadcasters will work home games live, and then go to their home parks to broadcast road games. Some, like the Red Sox, will do all games remotely.

The trio, with Eckersley being added to what had historically been a two-person booth, made its debut on Wednesday during the Red Sox-Toronto exhibition game.

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"[Tuesday] night, in all honesty, I missed being at the ballpark," O'Brien said during a Zoom conference with the broadcasters. "I missed being in a full ballpark. I think we're all going to have that same feeling as the rest of the summer moves on."

O'Brien, however, has done games remotely before, so this isn't a new world for him.

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"I did during the 2006 World Cup," O'Brien wrote in a text to The Eagle. O'Brien worked for ESPN from 2002-2017, and in 2006 was the network's voice of soccer.

"Called a match remotely and they had to stick us in a closet with one monitor in Munich. Occasionally I handed out brooms," O'Brien wrote. "Not ideal."

Unlike that game, O'Brien and his colleagues won't be dealing with one lone monitor when they broadcast games.

"We have everything we have in a typical game," O'Brien said. "We also have our giant monitor which gives us Fenway from center field into home plate. Short of being there and hearing the crack of the bat and flight of the ball ... I don't think we want for anything in terms of angles."

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The trio also has a very large monitor that looks out from behind home plate at the entire field, giving the broadcasters a similar view to what they would see from the broadcast booth high atop Fenway Park from behind home plate.

"I don't really feel like I'm missing much. I think, if anything, it's when you're at the ball park and I think from Dave's point of view, it probably effects him more than us is when there's a home run hit, you can almost tell on contact whether that ball's going to be gone or it's not going to be gone by the way it sounds," Remy said. "I think that's going to be a little more difficult on your home TV that we're basically watching."

O'Brien, Eckersley and Remy were also asked about the piped-in crowd noise that NESN is using during broadcasts.

"As soon as I put my headset on and had that little buzz of being at the ball park, the crowd noise, which is huge," Eckersley said. "When the game kind of peaks at certain times, and last night there was a bases-loaded situation that the Red Sox could have opened it up a little bit, that's when you don't get being at the ball park and hearing the crowd kind of knowing when the game is coming to a head. You've got to have that energy that comes with it.

"That's going to be the hard part."

Howard Herman can be reached at hherman@berkshireeagle.com, at @howardherman on Twitter, or 413-496-6253.

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