Sportscaster Dan Shulman is preparing for his first division series in the Toronto Blue Jays booth.Mark Taylor/Getty Images
Dan Shulman isn’t pessimistic, exactly. It’s just that he’s been doing this for so long – sharing the Toronto Blue Jays Sportsnet TV broadcast booth on and off since 1995 with Buck Martinez and Joe Siddall – that he knows there’s really no way to predict what’s going to happen as the team heads into its first American League Division Series since 2016 on Saturday, against the New York Yankees.
That may be why, during a phone interview on Friday, Shulman’s primary tone was one of gratitude for the season that just ended. Sure, we all want more. But maybe we could also take a page from Shulman’s book and just realize how lucky we’ve been so far.
Let’s start with how you felt last Sunday, when the Jays clinched the division. Did you feel joy? Relief? Because there certainly isn’t supposed to be cheering in the press box.
Right, I mean, we are home broadcasters, and every home broadcaster calls things a little bit differently for the home team. I wouldn’t say relief, and I’m not sure I would say joy. I would just say, ‘Man, this is fun.’ As I’m sure you know, I’m from here. I grew up going to Exhibition Stadium. Everybody I knew loved the Blue Jays. Like, that’s in my DNA, too.
One of the things that is so fun, as you’ve noted, is that nobody expected this team to have this kind of success. It brings to mind that William Goldman saying about what makes a hit in Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.”
I think so. I’ve always felt that baseball has way more uncertainty and unpredictability and chaos in it than any other sport. To me, it’s just physics. Like, if you hit the ball a quarter of an inch too high or too low, you’re not going to hit it as well as if you square it up. Or if you miss a spot from 60 feet six inches away by four inches, that can be the difference between a pop-up and a home run.
I don’t want to read too much into this, but it sounds like there’s a tone of finality in your voice, almost as if you’re ready to draw a curtain on the year. Are you trepidatious about the Jays’ chances?
No, it’s just – 162 games is a much, much better measure of a team’s performance than a three-out-of-five series. It’s just math. So, I’m not trepidatious. I think the Yankees are playing very well right now, and I think the Blue Jays will have to play very well to win the series. But I would say the same about the Yankees. I think the Yankees have to play very well to win the series. I’ve just been doing this too long to know that the best team in the regular season isn’t always the winning team in the playoffs. In a small sample size, a lot can happen.
'To me, it’s just physics,' says broadcaster Dan Shulman of baseball, adding that it can be the most unpredictable and chaotic of sports.GAIL BURTON/The Canadian Press
Earlier this week, my colleague Cathal Kelly wrote a column in which he noted that regular-season baseball and playoff baseball are basically two different sports: A fan can spend the summer – with all due respect to you and your colleagues – half-paying attention to the game, but when the playoffs begin we’re dialled into every single moment. How does your job change because of that?
Baseball at times can be like you’re strolling through a park, but it has those moments where: Boom! Your heart rate’s 160 all of a sudden. So, in the regular season, whether it’s me and Buck or me and Joe, we can meander and have conversations, and that’s part of the beauty of baseball. And we will do that in the post-season, but I think it’s almost like every inning is the ninth inning, if that makes sense, because the stakes are so high.
You and Buck try to make your broadcasts sound like two guys sitting in a bar watching a ball game – you keep it conversational and you don’t plan things. But surely you’d plan for something as high profile as the ALDS?
We never plan, ‘Hey, I’ll say this and you say that.’ Like, not once, ever. I mean, we have pregame meetings with our producer, and we go over graphics and video elements and all that, like every show does. It’s not really planning, it’s just in the course of texting during the day or that quiet last 45 minutes when it’s just us in the booth. We’re done on the field. We’ve done everything we have to do. Now it’s just us and our scorecards and each other.
The funny thing is, if a guy comes up in a spot during the game, we can just look at each other – like, literally just look at each other, because we have no way of talking to each other, other than on the air while the game is going on. I can talk to the truck, but I don’t have a button to talk to Buck just on headset. I mean, he’s only, you know, five feet away from me or whatever, but we can just look at each other and he knows what I’m thinking and I know what he’s thinking.
I think we will both be very, very locked in from the moment the game begins. I’m usually quite chatty and a little bit playful on talkback with the truck. I’ll probably tone that down a little bit. You know, the stakes are higher for the team and therefore I think the stakes are higher for us.
Do you get butterflies heading into the playoffs?
Not, like, nervous, but I would say adrenalin would be more like it. When I was a young man, the answer would have been yes, probably, but I did a ton of playoffs for ESPN Radio over the years, a bunch of World Series – and I’m very lucky to do all that. For the Blue Jays, not as much, obviously. I don’t have as much playoff experience calling games here. I think it will feel different, just because I’m from here and I think of my dad sometimes, who passed a few years ago, and just family and friends who are all enormous Blue Jay fans. So if it’s butterflies, it’s in a good way. It’s just: ‘Man, this is really cool and I can’t wait to do this.’
Sportsnet’s parent company, Rogers, is using Joe Carter in a TV spot promoting the playoffs, which brings to mind Tom Cheek’s iconic call from ’93 when Carter hit his walk-off home run against the Phillies. Do you feel pressure to rise to the occasion like that?
Well, I would never be able to come up with something as perfect as “Touch ‘em all, Joe. You’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life.” I mean, that is in the pantheon of great World Series calls. And Tom didn’t plan it. He saw Joe jumping around at first base. If the moment comes, hopefully I’ll do it well, but I’ve never scripted anything in my life.
You don’t think about what you might say?
Honestly, not really. I’m used to live TV, and I’m a subscriber to the theory of: Say what you see. It depends, too. Is it a 13-4 game or a 5-4 game at the moment of truth in the ninth inning? That can alter your call. But I’m thinking mostly about Game 1 right now, and if they get to a point where they’re a win away from moving on, then I might give it a little bit of thought. But never in my life have I written anything down on paper and said, Look at this if the moment happens.
Well, it’s worked for you so far.
Thank you. I hope so. There will be a lot of people tuning in. Now I feel some pressure. Now you’ve made me nervous!