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The Boston Red Sox Saturday, June 27, 2020 * The Boston Globe MLB’s pandemic rules mean big changes for Red Sox TV and radio coverage Chad Finn In Major League Baseball’s packet of rules and regulations for restarting the season even as the COVID-19 virus refuses to yield the field, the effects the pandemic will have on the way media members do their jobs may as well be footnotes. That’s understandable given the wholesale changes required to the schedule and the implementation of complex protocols just to get a 60-game season started. Still, the changes with the media are significant, and will have a noticeable effect on what viewers and listeners receive for a game broadcast. A few notable rules: Only 35 media members per game will be allowed in the ballpark, including photographers but not including broadcasters; interviews with players and other personnel will be done via video conferencing; reporters must leave the ballpark within an hour of the end of postgame interviews. The rules for the television and radio teams are unlike anything that has been done before. Home teams will provide a “neutral” feed for each game, with instructions to show players on both teams equally; television commentators will not be in the ballpark for road games, instead calling them off a feed, but radio announcers will be permitted in road booths. The Red Sox broadcast teams for WEEI radio and NESN are in the process of figuring out their approaches, but some groundwork has already been laid for the targeted July 23 or 24 restart. In somewhat of a surprise, NESN currently intends to broadcast all games, including those at Fenway Park, from its studios in Watertown. “I believe that we are going to do all games from NESN at this point, subject to change,” said Dave O’Brien, the Red Sox play-by-play voice on the network since 2016. “What we’re being told is that NESN will give us everything that we need, tons of monitors, different looks. There might actually be more access if players are going to be miked. “The feeds should be excellent. But it sure will be different.” O’Brien said the expectation is that analysts Jerry Remy and Dennis Eckersley will both join him — at a safe social distance, of course — in a three-man “booth” for all 60 games. “It’s a great thing that we can have our favorite booth for 60 games,‘' said O’Brien. “If it were 162, probably not. But 60 games, we can make that work.” It’s uncertain right now whether NESN will broadcast any “spring training” games. On the radio side, Joe Castiglione, a radio voice of the Red Sox since 1983, said there have not been any meetings yet about the final plan. But he has been told that the plan right now is that the radio crew won’t travel for road games. “As far as I know, the first plan was to do all games at Fenway, with us doing the away games off the monitor at Fenway,‘' said Castiglione. “But nothing is cut in stone.” One area in which O’Brien and Castiglione disagree is the effect a ballpark without any fans might have on a broadcast. “It’s hard to quantify how huge a deal not having fans will be,‘' said O’Brien, who worked on the radio side with Castiglione from 2007-15 before moving to NESN. “The sound of the crowd is the bed we lie on. It’s the soundtrack. “As a broadcaster, you rely on the crowd. Xander [Bogaerts] rips a three-run homer in the eighth inning to take the lead, nothing can touch that sound from 37,000 fans’ reaction. We can let Fenway fill the moment. For these games, we’ll have to let something else compensate for that.” Castiglione, who said he has talked to some production people who believe ambient crowd noise “would not sound phony,‘' said the absence of a crowd would not change how he calls the game. “The crowd right after an exciting play is important,‘' he said. “But as far as calling the actual play, I don’t think it will affect that. You’re concentrating on the action and describing where the ball is. So I don’t think no fans in the park will be a big factor.” While Castiglione is used to the crowds of 35,000-plus at Fenway, and team president Sam Kennedy has said there’s a possibility of having fans in the ballpark later in the season, the broadcaster does have some experience calling games in front of rows of empty seats. “I did games at my first job [for the Indians] at Cleveland Stadium where there were 3,000 people at an 80,000-seat stadium,‘' said Castiglione. “My first year, ’79, the Oakland A’s, in those days when [A’s owner] Charlie Finley wouldn’t pay his bills, they had about 800-1,000 people in the stands. “Cleveland Indians against the last-place Oakland A’s. Nobody there. We’ve been there before.” O’Brien and Castiglione are on the same page with this: They’re glad the game is coming back, even in its unfamiliar and abbreviated form. “Getting back to the game, despite all of the rancor of the negotiations, I hope that’s a good thing for everybody,‘' said O’Brien. “I believe it will be.” Said Castiglione: “I hope the virus cooperates and we go as now scheduled. But 60 games is better than none.” Baseball had a chance to make a statement and to do things right — but didn’t Bob Ryan Like any good parent, I hate it when the kids fight. I hate it even more when these particular kids — Major League Baseball and the Players Association — demonstrate a shocking disrespect for their product, and its future. I feel very proprietary toward Baseball; hence my claim to be a “parent” of those who have been entrusted with its welfare. I love all kinds of sports, but Baseball was my foundation sport. Baseball is how it all began for me. If you had your picture in the local morning paper wearing a Brooklyn Dodger uniform when you were 2; if you had spent your 5-year-old summer in Columbus, Ga., because your father was working for the Sally League Columbus Cardinals; if on many a summer Sunday morning in the 1950s you were awakened and informed you were heading to the Polo Grounds or Connie Mack Stadium (or even Shibe Park before the rename); if New York Giants and Philadelphia Phillies players were personal friends of your father; if you were given a book titled “Modern Baseball Strategy” for Christmas when you were 9; if your passion had taken you to 53 major league and 60 minor league parks in 41 states, plus the provinces of Quebec and Ontario; if you have in your possession nine scorebooks chronicling 43 seasons of baseball (plus scorecards with games charted between 1967 and 1976); and if you believe that if you had to filibuster for your life, the topic you would choose would be Baseball … Then perhaps you would know how I feel about the way these adversaries have been trashing their product and embarrassing themselves these past few months. In a better world, Rob Manfred and Tony Clark would have sat down three months ago, face to face. It would have been nice had one of them said, “OK, we have a global pandemic on our hands and the prospect of a completely altered society whenever this awful thing ends. It’s pretty obvious that what our goal should be is to do whatever will be in the best long-range interests of the game. “Common sense tells us we will never get a deal we both love. What we need is a deal we both hate but which will be in the best interests of the game.” Yes, I know, that reflects colossal naivete. History has taught us that neither side is capable of legitimate compromise. Do they not realize they have a game that was in jeopardy, COVID-19 or no COVID-19? Attendance has declined seven years in succession. The games are too long. Baseball has an aging demographic. My first thought upon leaving the house on a summer morning in the ’50 was: What type of baseball would we be playing today? One-on-one against a backstop? Maybe four-on-four with a rubber ball or tennis ball? Or, if everything broke right, actual hardball with at least seven-on-seven at Extension Field, two blocks away? Who grows up that way now? Sadly, we all know the answer. These kids of mine acted as if it were 1955 and baseball was reigning supreme. The NFL had 12 teams then. The NBA had eight. The NHL had six. America came to a standstill at World Series time, even with weekday starts of 1 p.m. Eastern. That world no longer exists. Baseball had a chance to grab the spotlight once again. Instead, it was the same old same old, and they weren’t even negotiating. They were firing out e-mails. How mature. Someone needed to step forward and do some metaphorical head-knocking. And I’ll tell you who was in a perfect position. John Henry. Where was the John Henry who listened to Harry Caray do those Cardinals games from that Arkansas farm? Where was the John Henry whose legitimate romanticism has led him to usher Fenway into the 21st century when the prior regime in its final days was scheming day and night to get rid of it? And John Henry (who also owns the Globe) represents Boston.

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