Last month a piece titled “Player’s View: Tales From the Minor Leagues” ran here at FanGraphs. Comprising a collection of current and former major leaguers relating stories from their time on the farm, it was equal parts entertaining and informative of life below the big league level. What you’re reading now is a followup, albeit with a notable twist. The storytellers here are all broadcasters: two who picked up a microphone after their playing days were over, and three more who never played professionally. As was the case with the earlier piece, many of the stories will leave you laughing, if not shaking your head.

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Jeff Levering, Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster:

“There are a lot of great stories. One I’ll always remember is from when I was [broadcasting] with Springfield, in Double-A. We played a night game in Little Rock and needed to get to Tulsa for a game the next day. There was a torrential downpour — the worst rain I’ve seen in my life — and I was in charge of getting the movies for the bus. Our manager at the time was Pop Warner, who is now the third base coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, and he was staunch about no comedies. It was all horror movies, all the time, and the gorier the better — for him. Anyway, most of the guys were asleep in the back, but some of us were watching and it’s getting to be one of the scariest parts of the movie. This was in the middle of a torrential downpour in rural Arkansas.

“Up ahead we see a pair of headlights, but the headlights are sideways in the middle of the road. Our driver doesn’t see it until the last moment and we missed this car, which had spun out in the middle of the road, by a foot — no less than a foot. We ended up going into the left lane and down into the embankment, and right back up. That woke everybody up. From that point on everyone was awake. It was a really bad accident that could have happened but didn’t happen, and it was the middle of the night. Again, we were in the middle of Arkansas. No one would have found us until the next day.

“Another one I’ll always remember is the first minor league game I ever broadcast. It was 2007, Rancho Cucamonga against Lake Elsinore. The starting pitcher was Bartolo Colon on a rehab assignment. To this day it’s the fastest game I’ve ever broadcast, an hour and 52 minutes. Bartolo Colon against Manny Ayala in a 1-0 thriller.

“I had a couple of games in Bakersfield. Not a great place to call games. The temperature inside the booth was 126 degrees. Single-pane windows. The sun sets behind center field. Everybody could hear you, because there was nobody there. One game there were seven people in the stands, and four of them were scouts. Peter Bourjos came up to me afterwards and said, ‘You called a good game.’ He could hear every word I was saying from center field.”

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Jim Rosenhaus, Cleveland Guardians broadcaster:

“My first job was with the Kingston Indians in 1992. My first year there, the equipment — the mixer board, and how I sent it back to the radio station — literally blew up during a game. I’d smelled something, then it literally caught on fire. It started smoking. Fire was coming out. I couldn’t do the rest of the game.

“Another time — this was also with Kingston — the tower of our radio station was hit by lightning. That knocked us off the air for three days. We were on a road trip, and there was no radio station, so we couldn’t do the games. They actually had me suit up and sit in the dugout one night. They probably weren’t supposed to do that, but it was basically, ‘There’s no radio station, so what are you going to do?’ I said, ‘I guess I’ll just watch the game.’ They said, ‘Why don’t you watch it from the dugout?’ So, I put on a generic uniform, sat there, and kind of just stayed out of the way. It was fun, if not maybe a bit ridiculous.”

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Andy Freed, Tampa Bay Rays broadcaster:

“I’ve told this story many times to friends, because it paints a picture of the minor leagues, how guys tend to have fun. You’re all bunched together on a crowded bus, traveling at odd hours, or you’re all together in a hotel room. It tends to galvanize a group, so if anybody can ever come up with something to make the group laugh, that makes someone a valued member of the group.

“One time we were on some long bus trip, who knows from where to where. The temperature on the bus never seems to be consistent; somebody is hot and somebody is cold. Maybe it’s hot in front of the bus and cold in the back, or the other way around. Well, in the back of the bus one day it was a little bit warm. I remember looking back and there was this one player — he was a prospect at the time — completely naked. He’d taken everything off, head to toe, and I could hear the guys giggling as he walked up to the driver. He deadpanned, ‘Bussy, the guys say it’s a little bit warm in back right now. Can you lower the AC?’

“In 2001, my first year in Triple-A Pawtucket, I was broadcasting a game that became famous, or maybe the word is infamous. There was a beanball battle seemingly about to ensue, and the batter was Izzy Alcantara, who was one of those mercurial players who was a tremendous minor league hitter but never seemed to get his act together to be a regular major league player. I don’t remember who was pitching for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, but the catcher was Jeremy Salazar. The pitch came in close — it didn’t actually hit [Alcantara] — and instead of charging the mound, Alcantara turned and mule kicked the catcher, knocking him backwards. A brawl ensued.

“The Red Sox [organization] had another player who was a very large man. He was a tremendous power hitter, but he would get overweight as the season went along; he had a hard time staying in shape. The trainer for the team, who was a really small guy, had the job of trying to keep his eating habits under control. We didn’t have a nutritionist back them. One day, the player had had enough of the trainer staying on him about his diet, so he picked him up and stuffed him into a garbage can. I think he might have gotten suspended for that.”

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Doug Glanville, ESPN broadcaster and former player:

“One of my favorite teammates in the minor leagues was Ben Burlingame, a pitcher from University of Maine. He was kind of our team comedian with Winston-Salem. This was in the Carolina League. Winston-Salem had a marathon that went through the town, with the runners doing the final leg inside the ballpark along the warning track and then ending at home plate, where there was a ribbon to run through. Burlingame, being the clown that he is, decided that it would be fun to wait for them to come into the outfield wall for that final curve, then pounce into the running, wearing a fake number that he’d taped to his back. He hid so [the leaders] couldn’t see him, then when they went by he jumped in. Of course, he had a full tank of energy, so he blows by them all and runs through the tape. Then he falls down and does this James Brown ‘pick him up with the cape.’ Everyone was like, ‘Where did this guy come from?’

“The following year, 1993, our minor league team in A-ball moved from the Carolina League to the Florida State League, in Daytona Beach. We had a kind of rough-and-tumble group there and were getting into brawls. We got into a lot of fights, and at one point it was so obvious that we were going to get into a fight that one of the players started charging the mound as soon as the pitcher started lifting his leg. The pitcher threw at him as he was running toward him. I was at first base, and ran in and dove into the pile. I was pretty sore the next day.

“When I was in Double-A, I saw the temperature changing to where the guy was probably going to throw at me. I’d hit a three-run homer. So, he throws at me and I just let it go. He does it another time, and this time I charge the mound — it’s the the only time I ever charged the mound — and the benches cleared. I got a fine, as well as a letter from the [league] president. But yeah, the two teams — the Orlando Cubs and the Greenville Braves — had bad blood.

“Then, when they came to our field, my parents were there visiting me in Orlando. We were playing a doubleheader, and their pitcher hit me with the first pitch of the first game. Dave Swartzbaugh, my teammate, said not to worry about it, he was going to get them back. So, he threw at their pitcher. They went back and forth. Their pitcher threw at him when he went to hit so he throws the bat at the pitcher. The pitcher jumps out away and the benches clear.

“The managers go out to argue about who should get ejected, and our manager jumps on top of the neck of their manager, Bruce Kimm. Everybody bench-clears again. After that, things die down a little bit. But then, when they go to exchange lineup cards for the second game, they start fighting at home plate. They both got ejected, and ended up being told that they couldn’t manage against each other for the rest of the year. They banned them from managing against each other.

“The next day, I go to pick up my parents at the hotel, to go to lunch. When the elevator doors open, Bruce Kimm, the Braves manager is there. He had knots, shiners, black eyes. I said, ‘Man, I didn’t know we got you that good.’ He looked like he’d been hit by Mohammed Ali 25 times. I felt bad. But yeah, that team got in a lot of fights. The next year, the minors instituted a fine system for fights, mandating an automatic suspension without pay. One of my teammates, Brooks Kieschnick, forgot about that and started charging the mound after getting hit. Then it was ‘wait a minute.’ He stopped halfway, because he realized it would have cost him.”

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Tim Dillard, Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster and former player:

“In Colorado Springs one season we had a tornado delay. We had rain delays. We had both a hail delay and a snow delay. We had a fog delay in Round Rock, Texas. We had a bug delay. One time in Colorado Springs we had a snake delay. Brett Phillips was in left field and he was trying to get the umpire’s attention. Finally, the umpire goes out there and looks, and there is a snake in the outfield. A groundskeeper runs out with a bucket — he’s a man’s man — and starts to put it in the bucket. It turns out that one snake was eating another snake, and when he picked it up the snake fell out of the other snake into the bucket. This whole thing took about 15 minutes. So, strange delays and that’s a fun one.

“In 2000-something we went 16 innings. This was in the PCL. I pitched the last four innings. The person who pitched before me was Brent Suter, who is with the Cincinnati Reds now. He went on to have a good major league career. I did not. We ended up winning the game, and the guy who ended up pitching for the other team was a position player, Quintin Berry, who is now a coach with the Brewers. We were playing the Salt Lake Bees, and we walked Quintin Berry off. I got the win. You always love a good win.

“I was a guy who always wanted the ball, and one time in Albuquerque our pitching coach told me that there was no way I was getting into the game. I’d been pitching a lot. I told him I could go, and he said ‘Don’t even take your glove to the bullpen.’ I was going to do that, but a guy we had named Erasmo Ramirez — not the current one that’s in the big leagues, but the little lefty that was there before. We called him ‘The Godfather,’ because he’s been around forever. We were playing cards in the clubhouse; I think we were playing Pluck. I was a Plucktologist for awhile; I was pretty good at Pluck. Anyway, he pulls me aside and says, ‘Dude, you prepare like you’re going to pitch, no matter what.’ I said the pitching coach told me I wouldn’t be pitching. He said no, I should prepare. I was like, ‘Whatever.’ Anyway, I go out to the bullpen and have all the snacks in the world — I’m like, ‘This is the best day ever’ — but our starter didn’t get out of the first inning. They called down to the bullpen and said, ‘Dillard is in the game.’

“Another time — this was in Montana — the bus had to stop because buffalo were crossing the road. That was interesting. You don’t get too many buffalo crossings in baseball.

“And in the minor leagues, you’ll do crazy stuff. You’ll do just about anything for money. One time, a shortstop we had brought in this really hot pepper and the clubhouse gave me $80 to eat it. The next day, they brought in an even hotter pepper, but I could only work the crowd up to $40. Then, in Memphis one year, I ate a stink bug, a green stink bug, for $220. It tasted bad, but whatever toxins were in it numbed the side of my mouth for a little while. That got better, though. Easiest money I ever made.”

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