Talking a Good Game : Scully Sound-Alike Saeger Paying His Dues as Voice of Spirit

SAN BERNARDINO —  Phone the front office of the San Bernardino Spirit, the Dodgers’ Class-A affiliate, and chances are you’ll be put on hold. A recording helps you pass the time by taking you back in time.

The crowd is buzzing in the background and a young Vin Scully is on the air spinning an unforgettable Dodger moment.

Bill Singer is three outs away from a no-hitter. . . .

Click. Another recording interrupts. This sounds like Scully too. Could it be?

Thank you for calling Spirit baseball, the California League home of the Dodgers. Individual game tickets are now on sale with prices as low as $3. And remember, Sunday is family day. Hot dogs are just 50 cents, thanks to the folks at Farmer John.

Click. Back to the 1970 recording. You’d swear it’s the same voice.

Two out, 2 and 2 to Byron Browne. Fastball popped in the air foul. It’s Torborg who has a play, it’s Torborg who has . . . got it!

The segue is seamless, two voices connected by word of mouth, voices uncannily similar in cadence and timbre.

Legions of Angelenos have been soothed on a summer night by Scully’s play-by-play, Mike Saeger among them. And he didn’t set out to sound like Scully. He just does.

Saeger, 28, is the play-by-play announcer of the Spirit, a Class-A team broadcasting its games for the first time. He grew up in Mission Hills, attended Kennedy High and studied his craft at Cal State Northridge, calling Matador baseball and basketball games in the late ‘80s to a nearly nonexistent audience on KCSN.

“Ever since I can remember I was re-creating football and baseball games in my room,” he said. “I’d watch Dodger games and talk out loud.

“My parents probably thought I should be committed but I was planning my future.”

It is a future with few guarantees. Like the players he describes, Saeger toils in the bush leagues, working for low pay in an obscure town. For every Vin Scully, there are several dozen Saegers and a hundred trained broadcasters muted by unemployment.

Saeger appears to have big league potential--his preparation is meticulous and, heck, he sounds like Vin Scully--but he knows that openings at the top are few.

“The odds are always against you,” Saeger said. “Everybody in the game is facing the same odds. But I’ve never thought about not making it. I figure if I plug ahead, I’ll get there.”

Saeger stands alone wearing headphones in a stuffy booth at the end of a ramshackle press box, peering through a scratched window partially taped over with rosters and stat sheets. He has no color commentator.

A pitch is thrown and Saeger loudly describes the action. He could be a madman ranting to himself on a street corner.

Is anybody out there listening?

Bud Kalama and Chuck Galusha are. The pair of San Bernardino County marshals are Spirit season-ticket holders who hold radios in one hand and hot dogs in the other. They love Saeger.

“He’s amazing. He does a great job and is adding a new dimension to these games,” said Galusha, craning his neck to peek at Saeger in the press box at a recent game. “I keep looking at him. I’d swear I was listening to Vin Scully.”

The station that broadcasts the games, KMEN-AM 1290, has not yet calculated the number of folks who tune in. But Saeger gives those who do the feeling that their local affiliate is just that--affiliated with the Dodgers. Call it a Vin-Vin situation.

Although not a Dodger employee, Saeger is in his third season as the announcer for a Dodger affiliate. He was the announcer for the Vero Beach Dodgers of the Class-A Florida State League the past two years.

Whether this will help when the inevitable day comes that Scully retires is entirely another matter.

“The Dodgers believe in promoting from within, they’ve always been good that way, but there would be so many people applying,” Saeger said.

Five hundred or more, said Brent Shyer, the Dodgers’ director of broadcasting and publications. Shyer met with Saeger over the winter and was impressed by his tapes.

But he offers no guarantees.

“I could tell from his tape that he is a talented young announcer who is thoroughly prepared,” Shyer said. “But there is a tremendous supply of announcers looking for an opportunity and only a limited number of major league teams.”

Saeger hasn’t met Scully, and figures he probably won’t. Not this season anyway.

“I know a few people in the organization,” he said, noting he and Dodger assistant publicity director Derrick Hall worked together in Vero Beach. “But meeting Vin Scully, that would be tough to happen.”

Meanwhile, Saeger calls ‘em as he sees ‘em, one day at a time. Maintaining consistent quality is essential to a broadcaster, and Saeger has found that daily preparation is the key.

At his side during games is a bulging red notebook that contains a treasure trove of quotes, anecdotes and trivia on every aspect of baseball.

Paul Konerko had hit a home run for the Spirit in his first at-bat of a recent game, and when he came to the plate again Saeger mulled over how the opposing pitcher might throw to him this time. Then he said, Frank Sullivan was once asked how to pitch to Mickey Mantle. He said, “With tears in my eyes.”

Saeger adds to the notebook nearly every day, clipping notes from newspapers and Baseball America magazine.

“Mike is the best-prepared broadcaster I have ever seen,” said Jim Wehmeier, general manager of the Spirit. “He knows more about the visiting team than their broadcasters do.”

Saeger relates incidentals about obscure minor leaguers in a homey, conversational style that invites the listener to actually care about the players, if for a brief moment.

Broadcasts, of course, are not without glitches. That’s what the minor leagues are all about, on the field and in the press box. The key to moving up the ladder is to make the mistakes fewer and farther between.

Saeger opened a recent broadcast saying: A good Wednesday to you, a good Thursday actually, smoothing over the error.

Moments later, Spirit public relations director Rick Liebling walked into Saeger’s booth while he was on the air. Liebling’s walkie-talkie crackled noisily and he quickly retreated through the door.

Saeger kept right on talking.

His work--and his tenacity--have some folks talking about him.

“I fully expect him to be a major league announcer at some point,” said Keith Goldstein, news director at KCSN, the campus station where Saeger worked while attending Cal State Northridge. “He has the willingness to go to small towns for bad pay. He’s putting his time in, building upon his skills.

“He should still be relatively young when he gets the jump to bigger and better things.”

Small town No. 1 was Augusta, Ga. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Class-A affiliate hired Saeger in 1991 based on his tapes from the Northridge’s Division II College World Series appearance in 1990. His salary: $500 a month.

“It was obscenely low pay but it was an opportunity to get my foot in the door,” Saeger said.

He makes more with San Bernardino but still not enough to start the family he and his fiancee, Nicoline, have planned. Nicoline, also a Northridge graduate, is a pharmacist.

It might take several more years, but Saeger is convinced he will talk his way to the top.

“I believe in my heart it will happen,” he said.