If a Major League Baseball season is played, there could be a surprisingly normal number of games put on at Oracle Park.
Half of those games, though, would be on the scoreboard and big screen.
The plan for road games is not “100 percent decided,” Dave Flemming said, but he believes the Giants broadcasters will be in the same booth they use to call a home game, just going off screens, while also lighting up the scoreboard.
“I think our idea is that when the team is on the road, assuming nothing changes and we’re not going to travel with the team — which I think is a good assumption at this point — we’re still going to go to the ballpark here and do the games,” Flemming said on “Tolbert, Krueger & Brooks” on Tuesday. “… I don’t know how much of a difference that’ll make because we’re still going to be watching on a TV monitor, but I think we’re hopefully going to light up the big scoreboard at Oracle Park and put the count, the balls and strikes and replays on the big scoreboard. I think we’re going to try to at least trick ourselves a little bit if we’re sitting in those chairs in those booths, enhance the audio for us somehow.”
They want to make the broadcast “as normal as possible,” which will be exceedingly difficult when the game isn’t actually in front of them, when regular communication with Giants players is stunted because of the pandemic, when really nothing is normal.
It’s a challenge that probably will take some tinkering, but assuming MLB and the Players Association strike a pact at some point, the Giants broadcast team has a starting point.
“I am a little nervous about — yeah, the first game will be fine — but gosh, over the long haul, it’s going to be hard,” Flemming said. “There are going to be moments — and we’re just going to have to be candid with the audience — there are going to be moments where we don’t exactly know what’s going on, and there’s probably going to be stuff that we miss, and maybe that’ll end up being part of the fun of it.”
Flemming said his biggest challenge will be reaching the game-day mindset without any of the fixings of a ballgame around.
“That’s going to be hard,” he said. So that’s why I think we’re going to use the ballpark as our permanent home. Instead of trying to create another studio, just keep the booth set up for the whole season and do it from there.
“So if you have a kayak or a boat, and you want to come into McCovey Cove on the nights when the Giants even are on the road and watch on the big videoboard, I think we’re going to put the game up there, I’m hoping.”
