Dodger press box can be a lonely place — just ask Don Hartack

August 1st, 2015

Many boys dream of making it to the major leagues, hitting balls over the fence and into a crowd of wildly cheering fans. They picture toeing the pitching rubber with the crowd hushed in anticipation of the pitch. The big league dream is strong for many, but elusive for all but the special few. Don Hartack, a former high school shortstop, realized early his ability to cleanly field grounders and stay back on a curve ball would not carry him to baseball’s zenith. It’s Hartack’s other skills that would take him all the way to The Show. You’re watching a baseball game and a hard hit one hopper glances off of the infielder’s glove. Quick — is it a hit or an error? The pitch that made its way to the backstop. What do you think, is it a wild pitch or a passed ball? There’s only one person whose opinion matters. With his precise knowledge of the rule book and keen decision-making skills, Hartack got to the majors as Major League Baseball’s official scorer at Dodger Stadium. The uniformed men play and umpire the game, but it’s Hartack who interprets the plays and decides how they will be statistically recorded. When he’s […]

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Eric Smith PA Announcer: The man with the voice from above

July 15th, 2015

When Eric Smith talks, people listen. As public address announcer for theDodgers, Smith’s commanding voice is a sound as familiar to fans attending Dodger games as the organ music of Take Me Out to the Ball Game. For the last ten years, Smith has been the voice from above, announcing the players to the fans who come through the turnstiles each season – all three million of them. “That’s an intimidating number when you think about it,” Smith says. “There’s certainly responsibility that comes with that.” Perhaps Smith’s biggest responsibility is announcing players into the game. When a player is on deck as a pinch hitter, he becomes a part of the game when Smith announces him. Before that happens, the manager tells the umpire he’s making the change. The umpire then gestures to the press box in Eric’s direction to alert him to announce the player. In a preseason game in Smith’s first year, he learned this procedure in dramatic fashion. Jim Tracy, the Dodger manager at the time, instructed a player swing a bat in the on-deck circle. Tracy had no intention of actually having the player pinch-hit. “He was hoping the other manager would see the on-deck hitter and change […]

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Orel Hershiser’s Cy Young Season had its own Soundtrack

June 26th, 2015
Orel Hershiser

Music has a way of making memories come to life. All it takes for a return to childhood is to hear the lullabies mom sang, or the songs of our youth on the radio. Baseball has its own soundtrack. Take Me Out to the Ball Game brings smiles to the faces of baseball fans no matter where it’s heard. For Dodger faithful, there’s a song that evokes images of Cy Young Award winner Orel Hershiser and the team’s last championship in 1988. Master of the House, a song from the musical Les Miserables, was played each time Hershiser warmed up before home games. Fans at the stadium soon associated the song with Hershiser’s goosebumps-producing performances that featured a Major League record 59 consecutive scoreless innings, and a World Series championship. So how did the tune become Hershiser’s own private song? Turning back the clock to ‘88, we find Nancy Bea Hefley, then in her first year as organist at Dodger Stadium. A poised, classy figure, Hefley fondly recalls watching Les Mis at the Shubert Theater, hearing Master of the House for the first time early in the 1988 season. “Even though it was a rowdy number, I thought it was catchy,” Hefley said. But it wasn’t Hershiser she had in mind when she decided […]

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"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball…"

~Jacques Barzun, 1954