The Toronto Blue Jays are in Detroit to face the Tigers for a four-game set, with Kevin Gausman slated to take the mound against fellow veteran right-hander Jack Flaherty for the 6:40 pm EST start.
As fans tuned into the game, they were immediately treated to an extra-innings broadcast between the Colorado Rockies and the Oakland A’s, who were both battling in the 11th inning. The Rockies had a 9-6 lead heading into the bottom of the inning but the Athletics battled back to take the win via a bases-loaded walk by a score of 10-9, a real bounce-back victory.
While the Jays game was technically underway, a power outage was impacting the broadcasting trucks and neither the Blue Jays nor the Tigers had their broadcast crew reporting on the game. Considering the Jays don’t send their radio crew on the road anymore, a sore spot amongst many fans, the first inning was a wash as the crews scrambled to get any sort of feed.
In the second inning, Sportsnet was able to broadcast the cameras that were being fed through Comerica Park, the same cameras fans would be seeing off the jumbo tron if they were at the actual game. Sportsnet analysts Jamie Campbell and Caleb Joseph would take on the interim play-by-play and colour analyst roles for the inning, doing a fantastic job considering both were watching the same broadcast as everybody else and having no sound or additional cameras to work with.
Heading into the third inning, the team got a bit creative and the broadcast crew of Dan Shulman and Joe Siddall used one of their cell phones to do the play-by-play from Comerica. The feed was a bit fuzzy and Shulman apologized for a sneeze that he was unable to mute, but overall, both he and Siddall did a fantastic job given the situation and being able to still broadcast while potentially incurring some roaming charges for their phone call, which lasted until the sixth inning before the regular cameras and feed got power back.
Considering the game feed was ahead of their call on the phone, with folks hearing about Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s home run before seeing it, the pair was able to adjust and delay their feedback by a few seconds to match more closely to the feed fans were seeing, another testament to their professionalism and hard work behind the scenes.
Hat tip to Shulman, Siddall, Campbell and Joseph for turning what could have been a frustrating situation into one fans will remember for quite some time.
