Waltz gets ticket to the big dance

Pitchers and catchers report for spring training this week. Position players and broadcasters to follow.

The odds of making a Major League Baseball roster are long – maybe 1 in 200 according to those who have done the math. They come down a little bit if you catch on in the low minors; every year, one or two alums of teams like the Spokane Indians start their ascent to The Show.

There are no stats on play-by-play guys, but Rich Waltz knows the grade is even steeper.

“Twenty five players on a roster, but only two or three guys doing play-by-play for each team,” he said. “A job opens up and there are 100 or more applying.”

Waltz started up his personal Everest 19 years ago, from the stadium roof at the Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds. Now he’s one of the long-shot successes, having been hired as the television play-by-play announcer for Florida Marlins games this season.

He’ll do 141 regular-season games on Fox Sports Net Florida and WPXM this summer, sharing the booth with another Spokane Indians alum – Tommy Hutton, the first baseman off the 1970 squad that earned acclaim as the best minor-league team. Waltz is the second former Indians voice to make it to the majors behind Paul Olden, who handles radio for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Of course, Waltz has been a regular at the big-league ballparks for a while now. Since 1995 he’s been the host of FSN Northwest’s pre-game and Sunday magazine shows for Seattle Mariners broadcasts and been a pinch-hitter whenever Dave Niehaus took his infrequent in-season breaks.

But that isn’t like seeing his name on the lineup card every day.

“I would prepare like I was going to call the games and do the pre-game show, and then the game would start without me,” said Waltz, now 42. “They’re singing the Anthem and your job is done, but you’re just getting warmed up.”

At that, he cut something of a lonely figure in the Safeco pressbox, a musician of sorts with an instrument but no place to play.

Which is not to say Waltz hasn’t kept busy.

For five years, you saw him on ESPN calling college football games, including a slew of bowls. He’s done NFL Europe and the Arena league games, the Seahawks in preseason and college basketball all over the west for Fox Sports Net. Even before he joins the Marlins in spring training, he must complete his hoops schedule – starting with Arizona vs. Washington State next week.

In that respect, Waltz has been a big-leaguer for some time. But his heart has been in baseball, and he’s finished second three different times for full-time play-by-play gigs – once with the Marlins in 2002.

“There’s something about being the voice of a team,” he said, “and the chance to get to work with the same partner for 145 games a year, to follow the same team. Each season is its own story and you get a chance to see it unfold.”

His first taste of that was in Spokane, when he was hired – fresh out of UC Davis, where he’d played shortstop on the baseball team – not just to call Indians games, but also do hockey play-by-play for the Spokane Chiefs.

Which was problematic.

“I was hired by Bob Hamacher, who was the president of Impact Sports, and he asked if I could do hockey,” Waltz recalled. “I, of course, said yes. But I’d never seen a hockey game live.”

So he immersed himself in tapes and hockey how-tos and three weeks later climbed the stairs in the old Coliseum to call the 1986-87 season opener against Portland, which a few months before had won a bitter best-of-9 playoff series from Spokane.

“They drop the puck and it just stays there,” Waltz said. “Every glove and every stick flies in the air and it’s a line brawl – the goalies are skating out after each other.

“I never worked on how to do this. It was a 20-25 minute delay while they cleared the ice and doled out all the penalties. After about the 15th minute of filling time I thought, ‘I didn’t think it would be this challenging – maybe I made the wrong choice here.’ “

About three weeks later, he was afraid someone else might come to that conclusion.

Waltz was doing a game in Seattle against the Thunderbirds, who used to play Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2” after every home-team goal.

“Well, there’s a scramble in front of the goal and the puck winds up in the back of the net,” he remembered. “The referee was clearly signaling no goal, but the lamp goes on and the song comes on and the place goes nuts. So I quickly said, ‘Thunderbird fans think they’ve scored, but it’s a case of premature goal elation.’

“Now, after I said it I thought, “Oh, my God, what have I done?’ On the five-hour bus ride home I’m thinking I’m fired and my career’s over at 24. But when I woke up the next morning and went in, nobody said anything.

“Then I realized maybe nobody was listening.”

But by the time Waltz called the steal of home which won the Indians the Northwest League title in 1988, people were listening. That was his sendoff from Spokane, but he’s always taken time to look back.

“When you get a job like (with the Marlins), you’d think the first reaction would be to run out in the middle the street and holler, ‘I got it!’ ” he said. “But you find out you can’t wait to call the people like Bobby Brett and Tom Leip, the GM when I was there, and Bob Hamacher and Paul Sorensen who encouraged you and rooted for you and pushed you.

“It’s been fun to call those people and tell them, ‘Thanks for your help’ in reaching this place.”

Sharing the joy after 19 years, one thing’s for certain: it’s not a case of premature goal elation.