Kids And Adults Look To Take Center Stage At Baseball Games

Occasionally when Jason Silverstein watches sports on TV, he turns off the sound.

It’s not that he doesn’t like to hear the play-by-play, though. He’s just practicing.

“I turn the TV off and announce the games myself,” said the 10-year-old from Suffern, adding he frequently announces Nets basketball games.

On Saturday, Silverstein was one of 25-plus people who went to an open tryout to be an announcer for the Rockland Boulders, the Can-Am League baseball team currently in the midst of its inaugural season. The tryouts were for an announcer at the Boulders home games, which kick off at their new stadium, Provident Bank Park in Pomona, starting with their home opener Thursday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m. against Brockton.

Along with the announcer position, tryouts were also held for people to sing the National Anthem before games and to be the mascot during games. Tryouts were held at the Town of Ramapo's Joseph St. Lawrence Center in Hillburn, with singers performing on the 50-yard line of the football field, announcers trying out in the football field’s press box and mascots performing off to the side in a corner of the football field near a soccer goal.

Later in the week, a few people who tried out for each spot will get a callback, said Dana Fjermestad, director of first impressions for the Boulders. She, along with a few other Boulder workers, were taking notes on each person who tried out, and giving them scores in a variety of categories.

Silverstein said he was nervous before the audition, but calmed down fairly early into his performance. Any nerves couldn’t be heard over the speakers, however, as Silverstein read the script confidently.

The announcer tryout consisted of reading a script welcoming fans to the ballpark and telling them they can’t smoke in the stadium, announcing the first four batters in the starting lineup with their positions and numbers, announcing the starting pitcher, reading an ad from a sponsor and then announcing an imagined Dizzy Bat Race between three fans: Jerry, of Haverstraw, from section 115; Max, of Suffern, from section 112 and; Joanne, of Tarrytown, from section 109. After that the script called for some improv, asking the person trying out to call the race and give the final score of the game, as well as thank the fans for coming.

While some skipped the improv section, some people called the entire race, others just mentioned a winner, some people gave a final score and others gave a final score and some made up statistics from the game. An unofficial count of the tryouts had Joanna from Tarrytown winning the most races.

One way Ken Reedy, of Valley Cottage, thought he’d separate himself from the others auditioning for the announcer job was to get detailed in the Dizzy Bat Race. More specifically, in Reedy’s Race Max from Suffern jumped out to an early lead but then took a tumble, allowing Joanne to swoop in for the late win.

“You’ve got to have someone fall in the Dizzy Bat Race,” he said. “That’s a staple of those kinds of races.”

Reedy, who is a DJ and in a band, said he’s seen many dizzy bat races, and almost in every one someone falls down. He also attended the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, and has had internships with SNY and Sirius Satellite Radio.
But because it was an open tryout, people with various levels of experience were allowed to audition. Jeannine Rippa, of New City, also went out for the announcer position despite having no other announcing experience.

“There were definitely people with more experience announcing than me trying out,” she said. “But you can’t worry about that. You’ve got to focus on your own deal.”

Rippa has worked as an official scorer for a minor league baseball team in the past, and also plans on trying out to be their official scorekeeper, which the Boulders are going to look for later this week along with holding tryouts for batboys. Rippa said she’s been a huge baseball fan her whole life and wanted to work with the Boulders somehow, and thought her best chances were as an announcer or scorekeeper.

“I can’t sing,” she said. “So no anthem for me.”

While Rippa plans on trying out for multiple positions with the Boulders, some people went out for multiple spots on Saturday alone. Ryan Buchana, 21, of New City, tried out as both an announcer and a mascot.

“I want to work in sports,” said Buchanan, a communications major at Ramapo College. “This seemed like a great step into the sports world locally.”

While Buchanan only intended to tryout for the announcer opening, he doesn’t have much experience with announcing. However, he does have some experience as a mascot, dressing up as SpongeBob SquarePants as kids’ birthday parties.

The mascot audition was a three-part tryout while dressed up as the Suffern High School Mountie, which is a mountain lion: expressions, dancing and props. The Boulders borrowed Suffer’s mascot costume because theirs wasn’t ready for Saturday, but it’s going to be a Boulder Bird, which is a large blue bird that looks vaguely like the Philly Phanatic, according to Joshua Blackwell, the Boulders’ ticket operations manager.

Blackwell was in charge of the mascot auditions, as he as five years of mascot experience himself back near his hometown in South Carolina. He was a mascot in high school, college and for a minor league hockey team and minor league baseball team, as well as a few other places, like restaurants and parades.

“You want to think of the mascot as a live cartoon character,” he said. “You have to be excited and over-the-top. You need to be exaggerated about everything, exaggerated walk, exaggerated wave, everything. You have to be as zany as possible.”

The expressions portion of the tryout consisted of Blackwell yelling out emotions the person auditioning then had to act out.

“As a mascot, you have feelings and emotions, but you can’t show that through facial expressions,” Blackwell said.

The expressions he asked Buchanan to act out included happiness, sadness and anger. Buchanan leapt and frantically waved his arms to show happiness, but his head down and shuffled his feet around slowly for sadness. He crossed his arms in disgust for anger. Blackwell also asked him to be mischievous, so Buchanan put his finger in front of his mouth to shush the crowd and then tip-toed around.

For the next portion, the person auditioning had to dance around to “Kernkraft 400” by Zombie Nation for about a minute or so. Blackwell said a mascot’s dancing is important to their personality, and said it’s ideal for a mascot has a few unique dances of their own. Buchanan hopped around a bit, waved his arms and shook his torso during his dance portion.

The final part of the mascot audition is prop work, using a chair, soccer ball, orange cone and the soccer goal, if you wanted. Buchanan stepped on the chair and motioned for the crowd to get loud, used the cone as a megaphone (although he didn’t yell, as one of the biggest mascot no-no’s is actually speaking, Blackwell said) and kicked the soccer ball into the goal, the last two uses of the props Blackwell said were most-commonly used by everyone auditioning.

He said the most creative use of a prop he saw Saturday was someone using the ball as a grenade and tossing it over their shoulder, and covering their ears while it exploded. One move Blackwell was hoping someone would whip out during the prop section, but nobody did, was to set the ball up to kick it in the goal and then pull a Charlie Brown, by running up and attempting a kick but missing completely and falling on the ground, although that might’ve been easier if there was a second mascot trying out at the same time to play Lucy. Anyway, Blackwell said that a mascot can fall on the ground unintentionally, but make it work because their goal is to entertain people and be funny.

Buchanan said the hardest part of the tryout was getting used to the suit.

“It’s terrifyingly hot in there,” he said. “I’m still just getting my breath back [10 minutes after the tryout].”

He wasn’t the only person to go out for multiple spots on Saturday. Gail Joy Newman, of Stony Point, auditioned for the announcer opening, as well as to sing the National Anthem. Newman said she performs locally, and has sang the national anthem on Memorial Day at Levy Park for seven years.

“I think I did OK,” she said. “It was a little early to be singing, and I could’ve warmed up more, but I think it went well.”

Many of the people trying out for the anthem also weren’t morning singers, as the tryouts started at 8 a.m. Luckily, all home Boulders games, with the exception of one, start after noon. Katie Britney, however, had bigger issues to worry about than the time. Part way through her anthem, the microphone cut off, so the Boulder workers taking notes couldn’t hear her out on the football field. After a minute or so, though, the problem was fixed and she started over as if nothing had even happened.

“You just have to keep your cool,” she said. “That actually happened to me once before when I was signing the national anthem at a pep rally in high school in front of the whole school. It was embarrassing, but there’s nothing I could’ve done.”

Britney, of Congers, has sang at a Hudson Valley Renegades game at Dutchess Stadium in East Fishkill and college graduations. Similarly, Kristen Huttunen, 16, of Brewster, is hoping to sing the anthem at Boulder games this year, as well as a Renegades game, too. She’s sang the national anthem before various sports events at her school, Brewster High School, and some Little League events.

Other singers going out for the anthem might not have had the chance to sing at college graduations or high school sporting events, however, as they have not attended college or even high school yet. The national anthem tryouts easily had the youngest average age for those auditioning.

Heather Hamann, 9, of Thiells, was one of the younger performers to tryout on Saturday. She said she’s sang the anthem at a talent show at her school, Thiells Elementary School, and has performed in front of crowds with her school’s chorus and her church’s choir.

Fjermestad said she isn’t sure how many singers they are looking for, but probably more than one because “we don’t want to have just person who is supposed to come to every home game.”