Growing up as a baseball-obsessed kid in mid-Michigan, Len Kasper learned the nuances of his favorite sport — and his future career — listening to broadcasting legend Ernie Harwell call Tigers baseball games. That’s one heck of a starting point, eh?
These days, of course, Kasper is the television play-by-play guy for the Chicago Cubs, alongside analyst Jim Deshaies. He’s been with the club since 2005, which means he’s been there for the World Series and the near-misses and the 95-plus loss seasons. In other words, he’s lived the Cubs experience.
MORE: Watch 'ChangeUp,' a new MLB live whiparound show on DAZN
That makes Kasper the perfect choice for the next edition of Baseball Voices, the in-depth Q/A with the goal of learning a bit more about the men and women who are our eyes and ears when we're watching — or just listening — to baseball games all summer. I talked with Kasper last week, when the Cubs were on a West Coast road trip.
(Editor's note: The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)
SPORTING NEWS: How Seattle treating you?
KASPER: Great. Love it. Fun city. We don't come here enough.
SN: That's not exactly on the Cubs’ regular rotation.
KASPER: Right? We haven't been here in six years, so it'd be nice to come back more often.
SN: No kidding. What have you done while you're there? Anything fun?
KASPER: Just got outside for a little bit. Went for a nice run yesterday, had a good dinner and, yeah, just kind of chilled.
SN: Excellent. Let’s start this chat with your childhood. Did you always know you wanted to be a broadcaster? How did that interest start?
KASPER: I was always a huge sports fan, and baseball was always my favorite sport. I grew up in mid-Michigan and I listened to Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey on Tigers radio. I just was mesmerized, especially by Ernie. I knew I wasn't going to play baseball beyond high school, and I just thought that would be a really cool job. I used to play tabletop baseball when I was probably 13 or 14 years old, and in my head I would kind of announce the games. I did some PA in high school for the football and basketball games, and I got a job at a small radio station in my hometown when I was a junior. I just kind of always knew that I wanted to be a broadcaster, specifically baseball. That was a pretty big thing for me because it definitely steered me toward getting a lot of experience at a very young age. I think that was incredibly helpful, as opposed to figuring it out once I was in college or beyond, which, you know, happens in a lot of cases.
SN: When you say you would practice calling tabletop games, would you actually vocalize it or would you just in your head call the action?
KASPER: I think more in my head. Yeah. I didn't like record it or anything. I always had games on, and I always thought it would be cool to commentate and talk about baseball. I would play those games, do a whole season. One year I played the Giants’ season through. I was just really mesmerized by the game. I mean, the other part is I just love the game. The broadcasting stuff was certainly a part of it, but I was just very drawn to baseball from an early age. The idea of being at the ballpark every day was incredibly attractive to me as a 12 or 13 year old kid.
SN: I get that. I grew up in St. Louis listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon on the radio. So yeah, I know all about dreaming about being in the ballpark every day. Did you get a chance to meet Ernie?
KASPER: I did. I got to know him fairly well. I met him when I was in Milwaukee at Marquette University, interviewed him at County Stadium, actually, in 1991, which was the year he was going to be let go at the end of the season, but then obviously he came back later and worked. When I got the Marlins job, he sent me a handwritten note.
SN: Oh, that’s cool.
KASPER: And when I got the Cubs job, he called me personally to congratulate me. I have a picture somewhere of him with my dad, my son and me, three generations of Kaspers with Ernie. I had lunch with him in 2009, I believe, when we were in Detroit. That actually ended up, sadly, being just a few months before he passed away. So yeah, I talked to him quite a bit and was very honored to get to know him and pick his brain a little bit. He was just a wonderful person, and I considered him definitely a mentor. A lot of things about my career lead back to the way he did things. I think about him all the time.
SN: That's very cool. What sticks out to you about that first broadcasting job in Beloit, with the Snappers? What do you remember most about that time?
KASPER: It's funny because I really didn't have a job with Beloit. I had a job in Milwaukee with WTMJ radio. I was anchoring and doing pre- and postgame for the Packers, and I didn't have any baseball experience. I tried to get a minor league job out of college and couldn't get one. I applied to just about every Single-A and Double-A team in the country. I ended up going to WTMJ, which was great because it was the Brewers’ flagship station, and I got out to the ballpark a lot. And as time went on, I just realized that if I wanted a chance to get on the Brewers’ radar, I needed to have to have some tape. So I called Brett Dolan, who was the voice of the Beloit Snappers at the time. He would later do games with the Astros.
I just said, “Hey, I don't know if this is something that you would be cool with, but if I took a few free weekends and headed down and sat in the booth and did a few innings with you, would you be cool with that?” And to his credit — and not every broadcaster in his position would do it — he was like, “Absolutely.” He did the games by himself, and he liked the companionship. We became good friends. I didn't do a lot of games with him. I just would take a few free weekends and go down and do a few innings, but that was huge just because I was able to put some game-calling on tape and give it to the Brewers and show them that I knew what I was doing, even though I didn't have a lot of experience. And that really led to them hiring me to fill in on their TV broadcasts in 1999 when Matt Vasgersian started to do, I think, the FX game of the week. So I ended up doing like 15 to 20 games that year. That’s kinda how I got my foot in the door. The other part of it is, I really had no TV experience before I started doing those games, so I was very raw in terms of the baseball calling. And I didn't know television at all, but I just got thrown into the fire and that was huge for me because I just kind of learned as I went.
MORE VOICES: Jim Powell, Braves' radio announcer, on his start and learning from Bob Uecker
SN: What do your cheat sheets look like, and how did you develop them? Are you a laptop guy? A note-card guy? What works best for you?
KASPER: Basically everything I have is on my MacBook Pro. I don't keep an actual scorecard anymore. I have my scorecard in a numbers program on my computer. I try to be as lean as I can in terms of what I carry. I don't carry a big scorebook. I don't carry media guides. I try to have as much information as I can in my notes on the computer, and then if I need to look something up during the game, it's very simple for me to do that. I like the idea of keeping my mind open, my eyes on the game, my ears on my partner, and if something comes up that I need to find, I'm able to find it quickly, as opposed to over-preparing and having so much information that all you're worried about is getting that information on the air. I think early on in my career, and that's a very natural thing for a young broadcaster to do, you prepare as much as you can and then you only actually use about 15 percent of the information you researched. But as time has gone on, I've been able to streamline that.
Don't get me wrong: I'm on my laptop an hour-and-a-half, two hours a day to get ready, before I even go to the ballpark. But it's the idea of when I'm at the park, making sure I'm not overwhelmed with having to fill out information on a scorecard that I really don't need, you know? And a lot of that just comes through experience. The more games you do, the more information just kind of settles in your brain. Having as much of a clean slate as you can once the game starts, I think, is critical because there's just so much going on that you want to make sure you don't miss something on the field, which is paramount. That's all of it. You know, if you miss something big that happens on the field, something fans see, and you don't explain, then you're really not doing your job.
SN: What’s your favorite thing about working with Jim Deshaies? You guys seem like you're having a lot of fun.
KASPER: I wish I could come up with just one. I guess the biggest thing is his intellectual curiosity. As a former player, he comes in with not only a certain knowledge and experience on the field, but his skill set is unique in that he prepares like a play-by-play announcer would, brings a lot of information to the table. He reads a ton. Some analysts mostly react to what happens and the play-by-play announcer has to bring all the research and information to the broadcast. Ours, if it's not 50-50, it's pretty darn close in that regard. I do a lot of research on the starting pitchers, but if I came to the ballpark with zero information on the pitchers, the broadcast would be fine because he's got all of that stuff. He knows exactly what each guy throws. He'll ask questions out of left field all game. That's another reason why I like to be prepared to look stuff up if I need to.
SN: Keeps you on your toes, eh?
KASPER: Yeah. We don't really discuss a lot of topics before the game and off the air that we're going to discuss during the game, because the first reaction is always the best. You want to have as genuine a conversation on the air as you can and make it sound like it's real. And the reason it does sound real with us is because it is. If I ever have a note that I think will make him laugh or something he will find interesting, I will never give it to him before the game. He does the same thing with me. We save it for the moment when it seems to make the most sense. And those are the best moments of the year. They almost sound scripted, but they're completely unscripted and I cherish that.
SN: The Cubs, obviously, have a long history and the fans have a love-hate relationship with the World Series. What was it like to be the TV guy for the year that the franchise and its fan base finally got to win that World Series?
KASPER: It was amazing. It was my 12th year with the team, so I'd kind of established myself a little bit. Just chronicling that whole season, you knew from Day 1 that it was special. My comparison would be the 1984 Tigers. That was a team I grew up watching and they started that season 35-5. I got to know Alan Trammell and I asked him a lot about that season. And as the Cubs started 2016, it had that feeling. It was like, at every position, they had the best player in the league. They had a great starting staff. Everything kind of fell into place and you knew that something special was going to happen. You didn't know they were going to win it. But as it developed throughout the year, it just felt like, OK, if the Cubs are going to win it, this feels like their best opportunity.
And they didn't have a lot of adversity until they got to the postseason. In all their series, there were moments when you weren't quite sure they were going to win, and that's what made it so great. If they had just kind of cruised all the way through the playoffs, of course it would have been amazing, but I think the fact that there were a few moments when you weren't quite sure, including late in Game 7 of the World Series, I think that was kind of the perfect way for the Cubs to actually do it. Looking back now, the fact that we all added a few gray hairs or lost a few hairs along the way was about as poetic as it gets.
SN: Sure. As a broadcaster who's calling every game or most every game, what are the kind of personal sacrifices that you've had to make? Do you feel like you have to make up for that in the offseason with the family?
KASPER: People ask me all the time, “What's bad about it?” It's not bad, but the travel and being away from home, it is very challenging. Fortunately, I have the best wife in the world who takes care of so many things when I'm not around and makes my life very easy. We have a son who is graduating from high school. His whole life, he has known the routine that I have, in terms of being gone a lot during the summer. And it's also why I don't do any other work in the offseason. I've had a couple of opportunities maybe to do other sports, but I do so many games from late February through early to late October that I want to be home as much as I can once the season ends. So it’s all-or-nothing in a lot of ways, where I'm working every day or I'm off for four months. But, you know, I like it. I'm used to it. It's not for everybody. I do enjoy the travel and going to a lot of great cities, but just literally being away from home is the toughest part of his job.
SN: That actually leads to my first quick-hitter type question. What is your favorite city to be in on the road, and what are you doing on an off day in that city?
KASPER: I have a lot of great options, but I would go with San Francisco. I'll hit my favorite diner, Cafe Mason, in the morning and then get out for a run or a walk in a million different neighborhoods.
SN: Nice. What stadium has the best press box dining?
KASPER: Ooh. Wow, that's a good question. Let me think. Best box dining … Philadelphia.
SN: That’s what Jim Powell said, too. They must really have something there.
KASPER: Yep.
SN: OK, so you’ve got a day game at Wrigley. What’s your routine before you head to the ballpark?
KASPER: I try to be up between 7:30 and 8. I'm on my laptop between 8 and 9. Get ready to head to the ballpark about 9:30 and get there about 10 or 10:15. I do a radio interview every day, so usually between 10:15 and 11, I'll do that. It's only a couple of minutes. I’ll talk to Joe in the clubhouse. I’ll talk to the media-relations people and any players I need to talk to. Then I head up to the booth around 11, and between 11 and 12:30 is my prep time and then we hit the air at 1 o'clock with our pregame show.
SN: Where do you interact with the coaches and players the most to get a feel for what's going on with the team? The batting cages? On the airplane? Somewhere else?
KASPER: It’s usually right when I get to the ballpark. I walk into the clubhouse, and that time is when I find out the most information. I don't like to linger. I like to be seen. I like to make sure I'm there to find out if there's anything I need, or any news of the day. I'll occasionally head down to the batting cage, but not a ton. That's kind of their workspace. So if I have questions for people, it's usually a quick, “Hey, what about that play last night?” And it's one-and-done. I really try not to waste their time. Right when they get to the ballpark is when I get my best information from the clubhouse.
SN: Awesome. And the last one, who are some of the most unheralded members of your broadcast crew?
KASPER: Well, our producer and director and our associate producer travel with us and they're in the truck and when I'm getting to the ballpark three-and-a-half hours before the game, they're getting there six, seven or eight hours before the game to prepare, all the packages and graphics and topics we're going to do in the open. They’re there, gosh, 11 or 12 hours a day. In a lot of ways the director, it's his show and the only things we see as TV viewers is what the director shows us. The producer is in charge of the content. That person has to make sure we get in all the live drop-ins and things like that, and there are a ton of them on every broadcast in baseball. So it's an interesting routine, trying to get all that stuff in and do a baseball game, and if you have a quick game that becomes more challenging.
SN: Luckily every game is more than three hours now, so you have time.
KASPER: Exactly. The longer the game, I guess, the easier it is. But they do great work and don't get enough credit, for sure. People don't see and hear them, so they might not be aware of just how much they do.
