Locals tuning into the Edmonton Prospects baseball webcasts may recognize the voice announcing the play-by-play – not from sports, but from politics.
This season local MP Brent Rathgeber is calling the home games, which are carried on the websites of both the Prospects and the Western Major Baseball League.
"Short answer, I'm friends with the owner, Pat Cassidy, and I love baseball," he says to explain how he landed the play-by-play gig.
The Prospects play in the Western Major Baseball League, a summer collegiate league featuring teams based in Alberta and Saskatchewan and populated by many college players from the United States. It's the highest calibre baseball left in Edmonton.
The minor pro Edmonton Capitals that used to call Telus Field home haven't had a team since 2011. The AAA Trappers left in 2004.
Rathgeber knows Prospects owners Pat Cassidy and his wife Tracy Neumann through social and political circles. He started out filling in for the public address announcer two seasons ago and then moved into the play-by-play chair when the position became vacant this season.
"He had expressed an interest in doing the play-by-play, but we had a steady play-by-play guy and then he left – he didn't come back this season," says Neumann. "I immediately thought of Brent and I called him up."
"I love baseball," Rathgeber says. "Last year when I wasn't part of the team, I came to well over half the games and just sat in the stands, so I'd be here anyways probably. So it's good to be involved in it."
Rathgeber is the member of Parliament for Edmonton-St. Albert. A Tory MP since 2008, Rathgeber left the Conservative caucus last month and now sits as an independent.
Rathgeber's summer job may not pay as much as his other careers – he is a volunteer paid in root beer and hotdogs – but it's also not nearly as stressful.
"I do find it relaxing," he says. "There's really no pressure. I know I make mistakes, but there's no pressure like there is in my other job. But the skill sets are largely the same. I mean I'm a lawyer and I'm a politician so I speak for a living."
A former ballplayer himself, Rathgeber enjoys watching the game, something he did a lot as a player.
"I spent at least half the time on the bench, which served me well later on," he says. "I played very competitive baseball as a teenager and as a young adult. I played on some championship teams out of Saskatchewan, but I was not a superstar. So I spent my share of the time on the bench, and as a result I developed sort of an analytical outlook towards the game."
The analytical side of the competition is what Rathgeber loves most about baseball.
"Obviously there's a big athletic aspect of it, but as opposed to other sports, I think there's also a big mental element and a big strategy … and that's what I love most about baseball is the strategy."
In the booth
From his perch just under the roof of Telus Field, Rathgeber may just have the best seat in the house. His booth at the top of the stands behind home plate has a small camera capturing the entire field and a laptop lets him look at the same stationary shot of the park that his viewers are seeing.
Every announcer has a personal style and Rathgeber says the way he calls baseball is "Vin Scully style."
Scully is the longtime voice of Major League Baseball's Dodgers, both in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.
"He started before television, on radio," Rathgeber says. "And he always does it with no colour man."
Like Scully, even though he has a camera, Rathgeber says he still likes to call the game radio style where there is more speaking.
"The advantage of television is you can do more analysis as opposed to describing everything that's going on because the viewer can see," Rathgeber says. "But here with only the one still camera, I think it's more important to describe the game just like it was on the radio."
With no one adding colour to his play-by-play, Rathgeber is a one-man show, but he does experiment with bringing other voices into the booth.
"I've had guests up here," he says. "I've interviewed players that weren't in the lineup and Pat, the owner, comes up sometimes and we chat about the business end of things while the game is going on, but normally I like to call the game by myself.
Neumann says fans enjoy Rathgeber's play-by-play voice.
"I've had a few parents say to me that they really like him, they think he does an amazing job and they think it's really cool that an MP is doing it. It's unique, that's for sure, and we're just tickled to have him," Neumann says.
She estimates about 50 to 60 people tune into each broadcast.
"It's a lot of family and friends and then fans also – people that can't make it to the game."
It may not be a huge audience, but Rathgeber knows that fans are tuning in.
"We sometimes get e-mails when I mispronounce somebody's last name," he says, "so I do know there are some people listening."
