Radio Row: KOA’s Jack and Jerry are an inside-the-park home run of a duo
“I can tune in the broadcast, tune out my troubles and grill up a couple burgers while Jack and Jerry describe the action at the park, be it home or away.”
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I will readily admit that I didn’t grow up listening to baseball on the radio. I don’t remember Jack Buck or Harry Caray and I didn’t sit on the beach with a transistor radio whilst Vin Scully took me away to Dodgers Stadium in my mind. I’m a Colorado kid and the Rockies are my one and only team. I can’t draw educated comparisons between the legendary baseball announcers and the duo of Jack Corrigan and Jerry Schemmel. All I know is that I enjoy them immensely.
On beautiful Colorado evenings what I love to do is relax on my back porch and tune the Rockies game in on 850 KOA. It’s escapism at its finest. I’m not restrained by a television or stressed out sitting at a computer. I can tune in the broadcast, tune out my troubles and grill up a couple burgers while Jack and Jerry describe the action at the park, be it home or away.
Baseball is the only game that is custom built for radio. That’s why the legendary broadcasters hold the places that they do in people’s hearts. The game has a pace that lends its self perfectly to radio play by play and color commentary.
When it’s done well, the radio broadcast of a baseball game can be more entertaining than a television broadcast. It’s a more poetic way of absorbing the game and, because baseball moves as slowly as it does at times, in can be sort of aggravating to watch. Listening on the radio you don’t see the pitcher fake a throw to first, adjust his cup, stare menacingly at the batter and then fake another throw to first. All of that “pageantry” is described rather than witnessed and is supplemented by interesting statistics, facts and stories.
Corrigan and Schemmel do baseball well.
Corrigan has been announcing baseball games for over 25 years. He’s a native of Cleveland and he covered the Indians for seventeen years both on the radio and on TV. He has been a part of the Rockies broadcast team for almost nine years.
Schemmel is best remembered as the radio voice of the Denver Nuggets, a role he played right up until the time the Rockies came calling. This season is his third as the play-by-play guy on KOA. Baseball is his first love. In fact, in 2009, he was the head baseball coach at Metro State.
The two men together have developed a smooth and compatible broadcasting style. Their voices are welcoming and sweet making the KOA broadcasts part of the sound of summertime at my house.
I can’t say whether Jack and Jerry hold a candle to Bob Uecker and Jon Miller but I can say that I think they’re pretty great.
