Jason Benetti Readies For Sox Postseason Without The Play-By-Play

CHICAGO ­— From the jump, Jason Benetti is apologetic for being late and, in his words, sounding like one of Marge Simpson’s cartoon sisters. Playoff baseball’s fevered pitch, after all, will do that to one’s voice.

It was just more than 12 hours after Benetti, the White Sox TV play-by-play man, finished calling Tuesday night’s Yankees-Red Sox American League Wild Card game from Boston’s Fenway Park. And the remnants of a nagging cough and having to talk over 50,000 crazed Northeasterners for nine innings in 50-degree temperatures remained.

But if one thing from his ESPN TV duties stuck with Benetti from the night before, it is this: Having fans back in the ballpark for this year’s postseason is going to be absolutely "nuts." And come Sunday, Chicago’s South Side will be no different, he said.

Guaranteed Rate Field will play host this weekend to playoff baseball for the first time since 2008. While the momentum toward that celebration has been building for the better part of two months as the Sox inched closer to a Central Division championship, Benetti realized the Sox fans' enthusiasm was nothing compared to what it will be when the Sox return home after two Division Series games in Houston.

Having fans back, period, has been different enough this year, the 38-year-old Homewood native admits. Following a pandemic-shortened 2020 season when cardboard cutouts occupied ballpark seats and artificial noise was piped in, the presence of Sox fans has toyed with Benetti’s emotions from Opening Day.

Last season, Benetti said, he and broadcast partner Steve Stone had to go about their jobs as if fans were in place, providing part of the soundtrack that makes up a baseball broadcast without much human presence around them or the smell of grilled sausages and onions wafting into the broadcast booth. Generating the same energy as he had experienced in the past wasn’t always easy, Benetti says. But that didn't take away from the fact he had a job to do.

“There was this whole goal to make sure that the people at home don’t feel like they are watching baseball does golf,” Benetti told Patch on Wednesday.

Now, the fact Sox fans will actually witness playoff baseball for the first time in 13 years has been an almost obsessive reminder from Benetti in Sox broadcasts for weeks. Even though the occasion’s inevitability has been set in stone since the Sox built a massive lead in the standings ahead of Cleveland, the thought of how crazy the environment around the Sox ballpark will be for Game 3 remains at the front of Benetti’s mind.

And with good reason.

The last time the South Side experienced in-person postseason baseball, Benetti was a student at Wake Forest’s law school and calling minor-league baseball in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. But the memories of the Sox’s postseason have faded a bit for Benetti given a 3-1 series loss in the American League Division Series at the hands of the Tampa Bay Rays.

Last year’s playoff appearance against the Oakland Athletics doesn’t resonate much either for Benetti, who has been the team’s full-time TV play-by-play voice since 2018. The expanded playoff scenario, and the fact the Sox never played at home, made last year's abbreviated postseason run seem strange.

That brings us back to the present, when Benetti said the return of Chicago's lone baseball postseason participant will take on a different vibe, especially if the Sox can manage to come home with the best-of-five series tied at one game apiece.

“I think it’s going to be a madhouse,” Benetti said Wednesday. “I think it’s going to be like the old Chicago Stadium transplanted into a baseball stadium. I just think it’s going to be nuts, and I think if the Sox can win one of the first two games in Houston, the temperature is going to really rise … and you’re really going to feel the vibe grow.”

He added: “One game in Houston going in the win column is really, really important for people to believe that this run is going to happen.”

The energy will grow, however, without Benetti in the booth. Because of Major League Baseball’s existing TV contracts, national outlets such as Fox and TBS take over the broadcasting duties from local markets. Benetti said he turned down an offer from Sox radio play-by-play man Len Kasper to call an inning per game this year — partly because of his schedule, but partly because he didn’t want to mess with the on-air chemistry between Kasper and analyst Darrin Jackson.

Kasper was able to have a small part in Cubs radio broadcasts in 2016 when the Cubs delivered the North Side's first World Series in 108 years and wanted Benetti to have the same option. Benetti instead delivered a simple message to the first-year radio man: "You go have fun. We’ll see you at the parade."

So come Monday, Benetti will be somewhere in a seat at Guaranteed Rate and will take in the game from there. On Sunday, Benetti will be in Cleveland working the Bulls’ preseason game against the Cavaliers. First pitch in Chicago is scheduled for sometime around halftime ends, if Benetti’s Sox math is correct

He has a job to do, Benetti said, but he admits there will be a very good chance there will be an iPad with an in-game app running to at least keep Benetti and partner Stacy King abreast of what’s happening back on the South Side. To not be there, Benetti said, will be strange, but when work calls — especially a job calling games that Benetti loves — work calls.

“It’s weird — I’m kind of coping with it,” Benetti told Patch. “It hasn’t hit me because the games haven’t started yet, but it’s going to be like, ‘Oh, interesting. We’re done.' Everyone in the broadcast realm always jokes as they’re running to the bathroom that the games won’t start without them.

“But it’s this stark reality that, of course, the game is going to happen … but this is hard.”

Jason Benetti the fan watches baseball in a different way than Jason Benetti the broadcaster. So on Monday, he will not arrive at the ballpark alone. He has to be surrounded by friends to distract him from becoming too analytical in his perspective of what’s happening in front of him. Benetti, by nature, is a people-watcher, and he is always creating inside jokes of what is happening around him whether it be in the stands or something he sees appear on the stadium video board.

His senses tend to wander while he’s taking in a game, which keeps him keeping score in a scorecard, knowing that no one in their right mind is going to have seven different colored pens like the ones Benetti uses to keep score in the broadcast booth. So left to his own devices, Benetti admittedly relies on others to keep him sane — which, in turn, allows him to settle back and enjoy the game as a fan, as strange as it may be.

Of course, the Sox need to manage one win against the Astros to make Game 4 necessary on Monday. Benetti watched as the Sox built some September momentum en route to clinching the division title, and now he hopes that the championship run that has been Priority No. 1 since the season began actually materializes, albeit from a different vantage point than the one to which Benetti is accustomed.

“It’s a reminder that we do (the job) for the fans,” said Benetti, his voice still raspy from Tuesday night's TV call. “It is truly in no way about me, and so I think it’s a really interesting feeling because rarely in my current affairs in life do I have something to do in a big moment in sports, and it’s like, ‘Oh, I have to work today so I can’t watch the Sox game.’ No — I’m working while watching the Sox game. And so it’s a really nice reminder that, sometimes, people can’t get to the game and sometimes, people are watching with the sound off or sometimes, people don’t catch everything. So there’s some perspective in it.”

It’s a perspective the South Side has anxiously awaited since 2008. And Jason Benetti plans to be along for the ride as long as it lasts.