Dreams Are Made Here

The Windup 

It’s a typical March afternoon in Towson Maryland. Normally, the weather can’t decide if it wants to be winter or spring, but today it settled for the latter. Over 200 people have made their way to the Tiger softball complex. The crowd is full of family, friends, and curious students, excited to see the game between the Towson Tigers and the Stony Brook Seawolves. This is a very important game. It isn’t a playoff game, nor one between fierce rivals, but the start of someone’s future. I made my way into the stands, and looked up into the broadcast booth. Here, surrounded by computers, papers, pens, and several crew members, is my friend John Daily. 

John, a second semester Freshman at Towson University, is working on his major in Mass Communications to get into sports broadcasting. Coming from around the Philly area, John has been obsessed with sports since the day he gained consciousness. 

“In our home, when John was a little guy, we watched football, hockey, and he loved NASCAR.” Michael Daily, John's father, recalled. “His first game was a Flyers game around two years old.”

He showed me an old mouse pad of his, covered in coffee stains, with a photo of John at his third Flyers game. The picture was taken during the time when the Flyers were doing something called the “Orange Crush”. All of the fans would show up wearing orange, similar to Penn State’s “Whiteout” games. There was baby John, dressed in Flyers orange. He wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but was enjoying his time there.  

“Football, during the season, was on in the house from Saturday morning until the Sunday night game was concluded,” he added. “We have been to countless games, including the Phillies, the Orioles, the Union, Flyers games and NASCAR in Dover.” 

Hockey was John’s first sport. He loves the unpredictability of it, watching the strategy of the game, and the 150 or so verbs you can use to describe the movement of the puck. The game is always on the move and doesn’t give you much time to think. 

“I was born into hockey,” John told me, “(I) grew up wearing old flyers shirts as work shirts, and I wouldn’t let go of it for years.” 

I had the honor to read a speech he wrote for one of his classes last semester. I got to experience the emotion that John had for his home teams. The line that shows his love and passion for the sport, and the one that stood out to me the most, was this one:“I have bled blue and gold, I will bleed orange and black. I don't care what you think in this aspect, this is my soul; this is my heart, and I will wear that on my sleeve everyday… I love it when people hate me because I know that my soul, my passion, and my heart has yet to waver away from these teams.” 

First Words

I’m sadly not allowed to go into the booth, but a good Scout is always prepared. I bought a subscription to FloSports as soon as I heard that my friends would be broadcasting on there. I put in my earbuds, opened the FloSports app, and tuned into the game.

“Here’s the pitch…”

Those would be the first words we’d get to hear in John’s broadcasting career. The pitch was from Towson’s #24 of Olivia Trombley, to Stony Brook’s #6 of Naiah Ackerman, which she didn’t swing to.  

“It is…”

He trailed off. Silence. A deep breath in, and out.

“Ackerman, a junior currently batting .179. Trombley, a freshman currently at a 9.70 ERA.”

The Night Before

The night before, John was extremely anxious leading up to the game. 

“ ‘Oh s***, this is insane, I've wanted to do this job since I was 12,’ I was insanely scared.”

 He called both his sister and his dad to help calm his nerves and talk him through it. His family reminded him that the best thing he could do was: breathe and break it down the way he always does, using his knowledge of statistics.  

"John knew everything.” his sister Erin recounted. “It wasn't only learning about players but each sport he watched. I remember him narrating Flyers games at the games."

When John was little, he had unrestricted access to the internet. Instead of wondering into the wrong places, the young sports fan would look up every sports statistic that was put on the web. 

He would pick up so much information as a kid, that his family stopped asking if things were true, because every time they’d Google it, John would be right. Apparently, John's pursuit of knowledge went further than just sports. His love of knowing everything you can about a subject also found a home with everyone’s favorite sea creature. 

“John's favorite show is Shark Week,” his dad, Mr. Daily recalled.  “He would walk around behind me as a little guy, maybe five, and provide details of the sharks and then interview me to make sure I was listening.” 

John said that he hasn’t looked back on the replay.

 “I know I messed up a lot since it was my first time covering softball, but I learned a lot since.” 

One thing he did remember, however, was a callback he made to his hometown hero in the second inning. 

Hometown Hero

CRACK! 

The crowd stands on their feet as the number 21 of Madyson Peters smacks a flyball into right field. 

“...Back to the wall, THAT. BALL. IS. OUTTA HERE!” 

Maddison makes her way around the bases with a big smile on her face, coming back to home where all of her teammates waited to congratulate the senior.   

John spent much of his childhood listening to Philly broadcasting legends, it was something that seemed so interesting to him. 

 “As I grew older and realized I suck at sports… I started taking a deeper interest in the broadcasters for Philadelphia teams.”

He looked up to many announcers, such as Keith Jones, Tom McCarthy, Mike “Doc” Emrick, and Harry Kalas. Kalas was a legend in the Phillie’s broadcasting booth, Kalas was infamous for many calls during the early 70’s up to his tragic passing in 2009. One of the most infamous was, of course, was “THAT. BALL. IS. OUTTA HERE!”  

“My Dad called me on Sunday, the night after, and messed with me about using the quote.” John chuckled, “He told me I did good, and to keep doing the statistics because that’s what I know.”

Settled Into Position 

As the game went on, he started to understand how the booth worked, and began to learn more of the game as he was calling it. As he continued to get more comfortable, he’d let more of him and his character share his character with the viewers.  He even called out an interesting call made by one of the umpires.

“We got the ball back to the plate, Peters got there at the plate. (Bob) Senner said no, and I called him out.”  He noted that his voice changed depending on if the home team was doing well or not, and in this scenario, he had a very stern and disappointed voice. 

“And an odd call, Senner. That odd call put them within 1.” 

The game continued on, Towson made some runs in the fourth inning, gaining a 7-4 lead by the bottom of the fourth. The lead would be short lived as Stony Brook’s Emily Reinstein sent the ball to the right field wall, allowing Malorie Hill to go home. This would tie the game. Another strong hit, this time to the left field wall, would send Emilly home, bringing the game up to 7-8. The score would stay the same for the last two innings.

“Stony Brook will win that one, Mayday comes in and closes it out. Thank you for joining us here for this matchup between Stony Brook and Towson. Final score 8-7, Stony Brook wins. My name is John Daily, thank you for joining me today on a beautiful day for Softball.”

The stream cut out. Stony Brook’s team is cheering, Towson fans are disappointed, but proud of their team for their hard effort. I wanted to go up and talk to John and see how it all went, but he looked busy putting away wires for equipment.      

Post-Game Interview

I went to dinner with him later that evening and asked him

 “So, how do you feel? Did you enjoy it?"

“I enjoyed it, I feel excited to do it again but I was terrified.”

“Are you excited to do it again?” I followed up,

“I’ll give you a quote from Mike Emrick,” he replied “ ‘I just like going to games, and it’s a fun way to make a living.’ ” 

“It sounds like you're in the right place. You’re doing exactly everything that you’d ever dream of.” 

“I love it,” John said, “There is no replacement for watching a sport.”