Steve Berthiaume will call D-backs games his way
The Arizona Diamondbacks will have plenty of new faces this season, though not all of them will be taking the field for the team.
The broadcast crew will feature two new faces for the 2013 season.
Along with former broadcaster and manager Bob Brenly, ESPN Baseball Tonight host Steve Berthiaume will be the new voice of D-backs baseball.
Berthiaume told Arizona Sports 620’s Burns and Gambo he’s thrilled to be in Arizona and that fans should expect something new in the booth.
“It’s never going to be the Steve show (and) it’s not going to be the Bert and Bob show,” Berthiaume said. “It’s going to be about the game.”
While Berthiaume said he will not be a “rah-rah” broadcaster, he admitted he will not exactly be an old-school broadcaster, either.
“I think the idea that we are there to be bastions of objectivity is stupid and silly and passé,” Berthiaume said, noting that era of doing play-by-play is done. “I am a Diamondback employee, I work for the ball club, (and) I am broadcasting to D-backs fans.”
While Berthiaume wants to be the best broadcaster possible, he says he isn’t here to be Edward R. Murrow in the booth. In other words he’s not exactly looking to hide bias or the fact that he’s a part of the organization.
“I take the point of view that we’re all in this together,” Berthiaume said.
And Berthiaume, who said he’s only done play-by-play for seven games in his life, noted he’ll make it a point to be informative about the D-backs’ opponents, too.
The Diamondbacks went through several different broadcasters last season, and Berthiaume is hoping he and Brenly will provide some consistency with their unique style of hooking fans into the game.
“You want to show the atmosphere of the ballpark, and ‘Hey this is a great place to be, we want you out here, come on out here, (and) this is what you’re going to experience,'” Berthiaume said. “But it’s going to be about the game.”
Nonetheless, the former ESPN broadcaster is a Diamondbacks fan now, and hopes everyone else will be too.
“I want the Diamondbacks to win (just like) the people I am broadcasting to largely want the Diamondbacks to win,” Berthiaume said.
