Courtesy New Britain Herald

(August 16, 2010) WTIC’s Joe D’Ambrosio has established himself as the pre-eminent play-by-play broadcaster in Connecticut.

His name has become synonymous with UConn sports with the Huskies fandom hanging on his every word as both basketball programs rose to national prominence and the football program sustained its remarkable climb from obscurity to the upper echelon of Division I.

Beginning last season, D’Ambrosio, six-time Connecticut Sportscaster of the Year, joined veteran baseball announcers Jeff Dooley behind the New Britain Rock Cats microphones for most every home game and selected road games.

Their preparation is impeccable. D’Ambrosio shuffles through internet pages of statistics, biographical data and historical minutiae to round out a broadcast that Dooley has developed into one of Minor League Baseball’s finest since arriving in New Britain with a backpack full of ambition in 1998.

His name has become synonymous with UConn sports with the Huskies fandom hanging on his every word as both basketball programs rose to national prominence and the football program sustained its remarkable climb from obscurity to the upper echelon of Division I.

Beginning last season, D’Ambrosio, six-time Connecticut Sportscaster of the Year, joined veteran baseball announcers Jeff Dooley behind the New Britain Rock Cats microphones for most every home game and selected road games.

Their preparation is impeccable. D’Ambrosio shuffles through internet pages of statistics, biographical data and historical minutiae to round out a broadcast that Dooley has developed into one of Minor League Baseball’s finest since arriving in New Britain with a backpack full of ambition in 1998.
A quick trip around baseball’s electronic media undoubtedly would prompt many to say that the D’Ambrosio-Dooley collaboration has it all over many major league presentations. Also, a good many of those can’t say that a substantial portion of their broadcasts go out over a 50,000-watt giant like 1080 AM, which at night can easily be picked up throughout New England and well beyond.

With contemporary broadcasting legend Jon Miller going into the National Baseball Hall of Fame recently as the 2010 Ford C. Frick Award recipient, the Rock Cats press box has been the scene of that common debate: which broadcasters rank among the greatest of the greats who have recreated and described the game since KDKA-Pittsburgh had the foresight on Aug. 5, 1921, to air the Pirates vs. Phillies.

Who better to wax poetic on the subject than the voices that make Rock Cats baseball come alive.

“Gary Cohen who does the Mets games is terrific but as a kid growing up, I would listen to [Yankees announcers] Mel Allen, Red Barber and Phil Rizzuto. They were great because they all had different styles,” said D’Ambrosio, who recently turned 57.

“When the Mets first came about (in 1962) they might have had the best booth ever – Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner. I would listen to the Red Sox games and I liked Ned Martin. I thought Curt Gowdy was great on football and was okay on baseball.”

While the regional voices dominated young D’Ambrosio’s airwaves, nighttime brought many more possibilities with games on 50,000-watt stations east of the Mississippi coming within listening range.

“You could listen to Bob Prince in Pittsburgh and Byrum Saam in Philly, Chuck Thompson in Baltimore,” he said. “People are spoiled now. You maybe got a Red Sox and Yankee game [on television] on a Saturday or Sunday but you got nothing during the week.”

Growing up in Hartford as D’Ambrosio did made it difficult if not impossible to get the Yanks on WPIX Channel 11 like we lucky New Haven natives got.

“It was really a radio craft,” he said. “I think baseball is still a radio game. I think good guys create a better word picture.”

The internet, he said, now enables a fan to listen to any team’s home broadcast by logging onto MLB.com. In fact, most every minor league team can also be heard by clicking around on MiLB.com. Dooley had a listener from Iraq during the height of the conflict there. He often receives notes from the families of Rock Cats players yearning for the latest on their loved ones.

D’Ambrosio, like many of his generation, view venerable Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully as the finest of his era. Scully, 82, can still be heard broadcasting Dodgers games, something that’s been part of his life since 1950.

“There was a whole generation of people who never heard Vin Scully who wonder why people think he’s the best baseball announcer ever,” D’Ambrosio said.

“Scully has one of the toughest jobs because he [often] does both radio and TV for the first three innings and it’s seamless. … On TV he conveys things with a minimum of words yet describes everything that’s going on.”

D’Ambrosio said Miller “received the Frick Award for his radio stuff as much as his TV stuff. He’s a phenomenal baseball radio announcer.”

He also mentioned 2008 Frick Award recipient Dave Niehaus, the Seattle Mariners’ lead play-by-play man since the team’s 1977 inception, and Ted Leitner.

“When WTIC changed ownership [Leitner] was for two years the weekday sports anchor and now he’s been doing Padres games for something like 25 years,” D’Ambrosio recalled.

D’Ambrosio also praised the Red Sox’ Don Orsillo, “and not just because he’s (Dooley’s) brother-in-law.”

“Orsillo’s come a long way on TV,” D’Ambrosio said. “Donny gets picked to do the playoffs by TBS. That tells you how good he is.”

Dooley, 20 years younger than D’Ambrosio, cited Miller as his favorite but has appreciation for Scully.

“[Miller’s] about as good as it gets on radio. And Vin Scully, where a lot of older guys lose it, hasn’t lost anything off his fastball,” said Dooley, who does University of Hartford men’s basketball in the winter. “I learned a lot from Donny because he started on radio and he taught me to be descriptive. TV’s a lot different now.”

For example, Dooley always describes the uniforms in the first few innings of his games. On television it obviously isn’t necessary.

D’Ambrosio doesn’t consider most broadcasters to be journalists.

“The journalism phrase is one that I have always quibbled with,” he said. “There are very few electronic media members who are journalists. [Bob] Costas, [Roy] Firestone, people like that. … I don’t think there’s anybody doing baseball play-by-play right now that I would refer to as a journalist.”

D’Ambrosio said Marv Alpert was the announcer who shaped his basketball style. He had the chance to work with Bronx-born legend Marty Glickman, a Jewish track-and-field athlete who would have been on a relay team with Jesse Owens but was held out of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, ostensibly due to anti-Semitism.

“I got a chance to get a little bit of tutoring from Marty Glickman so I took stuff from him,” D’Ambrosio acknowledged. “He created a lot of the core geography [on the basketball court]. He also did that in football as well. He did the Giants games on the radio into the early 70s.

“He did UConn for three or four years near the end of his career and I was able to pick his brain. The one thing he would always say was to be more descriptive. His greatest thing was, and this applies to baseball, too. You’re doing it on the radio. Nobody can see what you’re talking about.”

D’Ambrosio, while accomplished in basketball and football, did his usual exhaustive baseball preparation before he hooked up with Dooley last season.

“In baseball, you’re always looking to improve,” D’Ambrosio said. “There’s stuff that Miller does and Scully does that I’ve tried to incorporate on the radio. Unless you’re those guys, you’re always looking to improve.”

The duo agreed that the most vital thing to remember in baseball and football is to give the score. D’Ambrosio keeps an egg-timer next to him in the booth and when three minutes of sand has passed through, the listener gets the score.

“It’s an old Red Barber thing that I read about and learned,” D’Ambrosio said. “You don’t need it in basketball. You give it after every basket if you’re doing the game right but in football and baseball, this egg-timer is as much a part of what I do as the pen and the notes.”

That’s why when you’re listening to the JDs painting another Rock Cats audio masterpiece, you always get your baseball sunny side up, even when your team is 50 games under .500.

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