Brown gets the call to the majors to fulfill lifelong dream

Every baseball play-by-play announcer has dreams of announcing a Major League Baseball game. Just like baseball players, many of them toil in the minors for most of their careers and sometimes never get that chance.

But the opportunity has presented itself for Triple-A Syracuse Chiefs play-by-play announcer Kevin Brown. The Syracuse graduate got the call in February that the Nationals needed his services to substitute for Charlie Slowes on 106.7 The Fan. Turns out one of Slowes' sons is graduating from high school this week, so Slowes would be unavailable to call the first two games of the Nationals series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

That got Nationals play-by-play announcer Dave Jageler thinking. He remembered this similar scenario playing out five seasons ago.

"Well, with Charlie's son, Alex, graduating high school, Charlie's missing two games in the Pittsburgh series," Jageler said. "Back in 2012, Charlie's older son graduated high school and I did the games by myself. One of the games ended up going 12 innings. It turned out be a five-hour broadcast, pre and postgame, with one voice. That's not good for me, that's not good for the listeners to hear just one voice.

"So knowing Charlie was going to miss these couple of games, trying to think of someone who could do a good job and Kevin is a professional play-by-play guy and he knows the organization very well from doing the Triple-A team. He's seen a lot of Nationals players come up through the farm system on rehab, so it was a no-brainer for Kevin to get the opportunity."

Jageler got the OK from the Nationals and called up Brown on a wintry February day with the big request. Brown is in his seventh season with the Chiefs and third season as the full-time play-by-play announcer.

"I was actually in D.C. when he called me, oddly enough," Brown recalled. "I was there for a Howard University basketball game for ESPNU and I was walking into (an office supply store) to print out my charts for that day's game. And I just kind of wandered around the store in a daze for about 15 minutes and never actually printed out the charts. So I was a little bit late to the arena. So my apologies to the good people of Howard.

"It was a little surreal, even a few months later. This is the aspiration of all of us in the minors - even if it is for just a couple of days. It was one of those calls that took a while to process. It didn't quite register right away."

I spoke to Brown right before he set out to drive to Pittsburgh to get ready to call the first two games of the series between the Nationals and the Pirates - a dream he has had since he was seven and he was calling his dad-coached little league basketball team playing in an All-Star event. Now it is Major League Baseball and he is thrilled for a chance to call in the show.