Having been on the road roughly half the year already in his role as one of professional sports’ best TV play-by-play men, Brian Anderson now gets the rare opportunity to sleep in his own bed for the next few nights at least as he calls the Milwaukee Brewers‘ National League Championship Series matchup against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
And for that, he is grateful.
“It’s great,” said Anderson prior to Game 1 at American Family Field on Monday night, Oct. 13. He is partnered with Ron Darling and Jeff Francoeur and broadcasting for TNT Sports, with Pedro Martinez, Jimmy Rollins, ex-Brewer Curtis Granderson and host Adam Lefkoe also on site doing the studio show.
“I get to see my family and take my dog for a walk, and all those normal things,” Anderson continued. “Then I purposely try to make it a little abnormal when I get to the park. So, I don’t park in the same spot. I reverse the booth so I’m not sitting in the same spot because I do need it to be different, and I don’t need it to be FanDuel Sports Network.
“It’s different people and different partners, and I work with them all the time, but I usually do that elsewhere. So, that’s the best part of all of this.”
Anderson, of course, has also been the voice of the Brewers locally since 2007, with his stock steadily rising nationally ever since.
His voice has become ubiquitous on NBA, MLB and NCAA Tournament games with his work also branching out to tennis and golf – a body of work so impressive that last month Anderson was one of 10 broadcasters to be named a finalist for the prestigious Ford C. Frick Award, the same honor that earned the legendary Bob Uecker a spot in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002.
In the midst of all that the 54-year-old still also manages to call 50 games on FanDuel Sports Wisconsin, with the majority of that work coming in August and September.
With Milwaukee having finished with the best record in the major leagues and now having advanced past the Chicago Cubs in the NLDS, it appeared to only be a matter of time that Anderson landed the call for Brewers-Dodgers after having just completed the Phillies and Dodgers on the other side of the bracket.
It marks only the third time he’ll be doing so, having first called the Brewers and Phillies in the 2008 NLDS and then the Brewers and Cardinals in the 2011 NLCS.
“It’s been a while,” he said. “I have no say in it. We’re on a crew in the division series and they split Ronnie and Jeff, very similar to what we do in the NBA with Reggie Miller and Stan Van Gundy. Then, we come together in the LCS, and Ronnie brings all his knowledge from the series he was on and Francoeur brings the knowledge of the series we were on.
“TNT Sports has never hesitated to put me on a Brewers game or a Bucks game, and they don’t think that way. They expect you to deliver a professional broadcast, a proper broadcast, and it’s never come up and I wouldn’t ask.”
Anderson acknowledged there are tweaks he makes with regard to how he calls Brewers games nationally versus locally.
“It does change quite a bit,” he said. “Instead of everything on a local broadcast from the Brewers lens, you’re doing it from both sides. For example, if the Brewers are having a tough night at the plate and you’re on the local broadcast, you might talk about how they’re struggling, things they’re doing or the hitting coach. Now, if it’s a national broadcast, it becomes more the pitcher on the other side.
“The play-by-play itself is no different. You’re going to amp up for any moment on a national broadcast, any success for either team, and you’re going to celebrate it in a significant way. And then that scale goes up depending on the stakes of the game and the series, whereas on a Brewer broadcast you may take that down two clicks if Freddie Freeman hits a two-run home run in the regular season.”
Anderson also proves to be an invaluable resource to not only his partners in the booth but also to a crew that numbers more than 100 that has descended on Brew City to put together the broadcast each night.
“The reward is being able to know my roster up and down because the Brewers, I’ve seen them all year and I’m able to share that with our analysts,” he said. “They become better baseball people. And to be able to share the city scenes with our crew out shooting all these things and shine a spotlight on the city, be able to say, ‘Make sure you go to the Hoan Bridge and the Public Market.’ These are the things that make Milwaukee great.
“It is a beer and cheese town, but it’s more than that.
“That’s really the beauty in all this – we’ve all got to be somewhere, and Milwaukee fans throughout the years, in different sports, haven’t had their announcer outside of Bob Uecker call the big national games. I love that Joe Davis is going to call the World Series. He called the Dodgers last year, and Vin Scully called the Dodgers in the World Series for years.
“Jon Miller called playoff games with the Giants. Those of us who get to do this are very lucky, and I love the fact that the announcer for the smallest market in the major leagues can go do these games. Now, Jeff Levering is doing a lot of Fox national games in football. Matt Vasgersian did that.
“We have a great lineage of broadcasters here, mostly because we all support each other and then the organization knows it’s cool we go out and do that, and I’m very grateful for that. There’s not a lot of organizations that are like that.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brian Anderson savors the opportunity to call the Brewers in the NLCS
