The Orioles ensured a core member of their broadcast team wasn’t going anywhere Thursday when they signed play-by-play announcer Kevin Brown to a multiyear extension to remain in the TV booth for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network.
Brown, who was in the final year of his contract with MASN, is now ensured to continue calling Orioles games alongside color commentators and former Baltimore stars Jim Palmer and Ben McDonald as the organization attempts to sustain its recent success.
Brown sat down with The Baltimore Sun in the Orioles’ dugout Friday to discuss his new deal and his expectations for the club moving forward. Here’s an excerpt from that conversation.
Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What has it meant to you to get this vote of confidence from the Orioles to remain in the MASN booth long term?
I grew up wanting to be the voice of a Major League Baseball team and I’ve sort of slowly worked my way up to this this coming year. In 2019, I did 50 games on radio the first year, then maybe 40% of the games during the Covid year and then half the games in ’21. It’s funny, I have been with ESPN for nine years now and I’m happy I get to keep doing that, but when I got the [Orioles] job at first, it was exciting, just thrilling to be part of a major league team. It was 50 games and it was sort of a one-year, ‘Let’s see how it goes,’ kind of trial and it just keeps getting better.
It’s a humbling feeling that anybody wants you enough to be around for multiple years in any walk of life, but especially one that’s this public-facing because no person in the history of this job is at 100% approval rating, right? Some people didn’t like Vin Scully. They were wrong, but some people didn’t like Vin Scully. Some people love Joe Buck, including me. Some people hate Joe Buck. Some people don’t like any broadcaster. So, it’s a very subjective medium and the fact that enough people like what I’m doing and have confidence in what I’m doing is very meaningful.
One thing Orioles fans have appreciated about what you bring to the broadcast is how quickly you developed a rapport with Jim Palmer and Ben McDonald. How do you describe the relationship that has grown between the three of you?
It’s a little bit like the uncles shaking their heads at the crazy whippersnapper or young nephew or something like that. What helps, I think, is being at ESPN for, it’s going on nine years now but I was there for four years before this, and before that I was in local TV for four years. So, I worked a lot of different sports with a lot of different analysts. I keep a running tally of all the analysts I work with, which I have to confirm is probably 150 or so now. So, I think to be good at this, you have to engage with different personalities and people, different genders, different ages, different races, different backgrounds, different speaking patterns. Just different everything.
So, I have always tried to make it a point to find common ground with an analyst and find what engages them. Again, it’s pretty easy to do with Ben and Jim because they are so engaged, but I try to do what I think I’m good at. I try to educate, I try to entertain, I try to inform and it just syncs up really well with them because they can tell stories and they can talk spin rates and they can talk about a specific day, in Jim’s case, in 1973, or Ben, what it was like playing here in the ’90s. So, I think I’ve been able to assimilate well with a lot of different broadcast parties because I’ve had a lot of different ones but, again, it’s a pretty easy assimilation.
You’ve incorporated a lot of sabermetrics and ball-tracking data in your calls and appeared on ESPN’s Statcast edition of Sunday Night Baseball. When did your interest in statistics first intersect with your passion for baseball?
I was always a good math student growing up, honestly. Maybe it just stemmed from there. I’ve always liked problem solving and that is how front offices and coaching staffs think about the game now. So, for me to not do that, for me to do a traditional broadcast and not get into chase rate and exit velocity and expected numbers, would be a little disingenuous to the way that people in charge of baseball teams think about baseball. I also don’t want to alienate the people that have been watching baseball since the 1940s and think all this stuff is stupid and run by computers.
So, I think that’s where Jim and Ben and I maybe have a good rapport because they are interested in that stuff, for sure, and, maybe they’ll poo-poo it, but they study and they know that this is the way the game is played. But they come from much different generations and have a different perspective. So, I try to find numbers that are interesting and enhance people’s enjoyment of what they see. I think if Gunnar Henderson hits a ball that has a different sound, right, and a different speed off the bat, it is going to look impressive. I think there are a lot of cases where, if you put a number to that and put it in context, it becomes even more impressive.
Why was it important to you as part of your agreement with the Orioles to continue working with ESPN including calling the Women’s College World Series and other college sports?
I just love doing that, and I love the people I work with at ESPN. It’s funny. I’ve seen people say, and I get a chuckle over this, that they worry that I’m going to be swept up by ESPN and go national. And I want to say I’ve been at ESPN for years longer than I’ve been here so I just love baseball dearly. I also love basketball dearly, and I have really fallen in love with softball.
So, it’s important to me because I love those sports and I love those people and this is something I’m as passionate about as anything. But I am really passionate about those sports, too, and I also feel, and this is a big part of why this place has been such a good home for me, I’m lucky that I’m at an organization that has encouraged that. Greg Bader, from the day he hired me in 2019 said, ‘Hey, we love that you’re with ESPN. We love that you have this national profile. We want you to do those kinds of things.’ And then ESPN could have said no when this offer came along, and they’ve encouraged it too. So, it’s nice to take advantage of two employers that have been really willing to let me explore different avenues.
You called Baltimore your “adopted home.” What was your impression of the city when you moved here and how has living here, and raising a family here, changed your perception of it?
I got here in 2019 and I was told, ‘You are going to see a lot of Ravens memorabilia and Ravens apparel around this town but just wait until the Orioles are good. This is an Orioles town.’ And no disrespect to the Ravens, but this is an Orioles town and it obviously took a couple of years, but the last three years I’ve seen it explode. Everywhere I’m going, people are wearing Orioles shirts and hats and there are flags outside. I just love the passion that the people here have for being from here.
I don’t think I’ve lived anywhere where people are as connected with where they grew up, where they’re from, than here. I’ve spent my whole life, up until two years ago, somewhere in the state of New York. I grew up on Long Island. I went to Syracuse [University]. I lived in Syracuse. I lived in Brooklyn. I lived in Queens. I loved it. I loved New York and I’m from New York and so I will always be a New Yorker as well. It’s where I’m from. But obviously New York is the melting pot of the country, maybe the melting pot of the world, and people are proud to be New Yorkers but a lot of them are transplants from somewhere else.
People from here, either they are from here, and they really want you to know they’re from here, or if they’re transplants from here, they just get sucked into the vibrancy and the joy of the city and I feel like I’m one of those. Now I’ve only been here full time for two and a half years. I’ve been coming here for parts of the last five, but the warmth of the people and the way the community has embraced me and my family, it’s made it feel like it is home. I am glad it’s going to be home for a while.
What has your relationship been like with new ownership under David Rubenstein and did you feel like they made extending you a priority given you were in the final year of your deal?
Well, I appreciate that they did. I’m sure they had more important goals taking over on opening day, but I’m genuinely appreciative that they did. I’ve gotten to talk to David a few times, Mike Smith a few times as well, obviously Cal Ripken Jr. We haven’t had a lot of long meetings. That’s fine, I don’t need to be involved in a lot of important decisions. I know my place in the organizational chart, but yeah, they’ve been nothing but kind to me so far.
Still in awe of David coming on the air with us opening day and just trading ’70s baseball trivia with Palmer. I could listen to the two of them for another nine innings of that. So, anybody that comes to a team rightfully has an idea of how to run it and a set of goals and if they want to do their own thing, it’s their team, it’s their priority to do that. So, the fact that they did make this a priority is very humbling.
Let’s talk some baseball for a minute. You’ve seen this team at its highs and lows this season, where do you feel like the Orioles are at in their quest to win the World Series and how confident are you in their ability to make a deep run in October?
Should I give you a Joe Namath guarantee? I think the league is in such a strange place right now. I think they have as good a shot as anybody because they are good and they have apparent flaws but everybody else has apparent flaws too, and hopefully the flaws can be a little bit nullified by Grayson Rodriguez and Jordan Westburg and Jacob Webb coming back and Coulombe. I think Danny Coulombe has been a massive, massive loss not having another consistent lefty.
It’s hard to say. I think they are as talented as anybody offensively, as deep as anybody offensively and obviously they’ve lost a lot of pitching depth. But are they better than Arizona was last year? Yeah, for sure. Texas last year had a terrible bullpen and then two relievers get hot in the postseason and won the whole thing. I think there’s absolutely a world where Corbin Burnes and Zach Eflin and hopefully a return from Grayson Rodriguez can be good in a short series. I think offense would be great in a short series. They can play matchups really well with all the lefties and righties and I think the two big wild cards right now are Craig Kimbrel and Gregory Soto. They got 40 games to get them going. If they can get them going, wow, all of a sudden it’s a bullpen with a ton of stuff guys. If not, Seranthony Domínguez is going to be really important. Yennier Cano is gonna be really important. The return of Coulombe is going to be really important.
So, you could make a legitimate case right now — I think probably you could tell me one of seven different teams wins the American League, and I wouldn’t look at you with my eyes wide open. I just think it’s a wide, wide open year.
Now that you’re going to have the chance to watch the Orioles deep into their competitive window, what are you most looking forward to as you follow along this young roster?
More food in the booth? I’m looking forward to Ben singing with the “Early Bird Saturday” band next weekend. He’s been invited to do that. On the field, man, I’ll tell you what I thought of in the ninth inning last night: ‘Wow, I can see a lot more Gunnar Henderson-Jackson Holliday double plays over the next decade.’ That’s as exciting a feeling as anything. I’m excited to see those two turn into maybe perennial MVP candidates and All-Stars. I’m excited to see the growth of all of the young players on this team. There’s not one over the other.
But the other big picture thing that interests me is how this organization responds with being the hunted, and this is their second year now as one of the big boys in the sport, record-wise. So, the drafting philosophy becomes different when you’re picking near the bottom. Teams are going to be more wary about trading with you because of some of the trades they made and some of the front office acumen they’ve shown. And people say you want to have a sustainable period. OK, they have a lot of pieces, but as we see this year, injuries happen, bad luck happens. What are the things they do around the edges? What are the things they do organizationally to sustain it?
I think that’s going to be a different challenge and a fun challenge and then I am excited to see what happens with the ballpark. I think we have the best vantage point in baseball in that booth, but going around to other parks in the league, seeing what some parks have done with the scoreboard and the sound system and the seating really, really excites me for what a fresh view of this place is going to be in a couple of years. I just think it’s going to be an awesome environment and I know they’re looking at other parks and going to places and researching what works at other places and I’m very excited to see what the next version of Camden Yards looks like.
Every day here is just ridiculously special and I still can’t believe I get to do this for a living. So, whatever happens, I will try to be the least-jaded person in the majors, which has been my goal for the last six years. So, I’m going to keep trying to make that my goal.