Elliott: MLB Network celebrates 10th year, Hazel Mae 1st on-air hire
Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae (Etobicoke, Ont.) covering the Chicago Cubs during MLB Network’s 30 clubs in 30 days series. Mae was the first on-air talent hired by MLB Network in 2008. The network is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
By Bob Elliott
Canadian Baseball Network
There is an expression in the game usually reserved for scouts: “He has those special eyes.”
You know the kind of retinas that are able to look at a high schooler and project what kind of an athlete he will be in four years.
Tony Petitti, now Major League Baseball’s deputy commissioner, for business and media, had those eyes 11 years ago. In short he was a visionary.
Six months from the Jan. 1, 2009 lift off, he was the president and CEO of MLB Network. He was also its only employee. And the first on-air talent he hired was Hazel Mae, star of the Blue Jays Sportsnet telecasts.
This is the 10th anniversary season of MLB Network, which is thought-provoking, funny, critical of the game itself, and informative with Ken Rosenthal, who leads the league information.
It is also addictive (Guilty) since Rogers Communications finally made the station available to Canadians in 2013.
What is my record for watching Quick Pitch? Maybe five times.
But 10 1/2 years ago ... it was a vision, Petitti’s vision. He could see four years down the road.
With six months until air time Petitti had three projects on the go at once:
_ Building a facility. MLB rented a vacant MSNBC studio in Secaucus, NJ, which had to be converted to a baseball studio.
_ Create the inner workings of a company starting with human resources. Every week the employees parking lot would expand by three or four more cars.
_ Build a broadcasting network, find the content and hire the on air personalities.
“All three were going on the same time,” he said from Manhattan recently. A typical day could consist of interviewing an engineer, an analyst and production people as the shell of a building grew into what it is now.
Harold Reynolds, Hazel Mae and Tony Petitti, who created MLB Network. Both broadcasters were Day 1 hires.
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One such interviewee making the early tour was Hazel Mae (Etobicoke, Ont.), who had worked Toronto Blue Jays games and then was hired by the Boston Red Sox.
“I was always worried about first impressions when people came and saw the building in the early days,” said Petitti. “It was like an empty box when we talked to Hazel,”
Mae flew from Boston to New York and travelled to Jersey with her then agent, Susan Lipton of IMG. Mae recalled thinking how she was in a pretty good spot broadcasting to the passionate Red Sox nation. Also she had seen NFL Network but was unsure what a MLB Network would look like.
“It was a weird address, plus I’d never heard of Secaucus,” said Mae. “There wasn’t any signage yet. There wasn’t even a receptionist. A woman unlocked the door and Tony was there to meet us.”
Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner was on the MLB Network board and hired Mae to come to Fenway.
“I’m unsure whether Tom talked to Tony, or Tony talked to Tom,” Mae said. “Tony walked us through an office with old computer desktops, describing what he had planned. How one studio will look like a ball field with bleachers, another will have an anchor desk. A control room would be called the Bullpen.
“Everything he told me happened. He had a vision and it came true.”
Eventually, she made her decision, asking the Red Sox not to renew her contract after the Tampa Bay Rays ousted the Red Sox in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. Petitti asked Mae not to tell anyone her next destination.
MLB Network made a splash at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas with a press conference telling the world its first three on-air talent would be Harold Reynolds, Matt Vasgersian and Mae had been hired at the 2008 winter meetings.
Blue Jays fans will remember the meetings for zero talent being added and none leaving from the team that won 86 games. The biggest news of the week involving Toronto was Mae’s hiring.
“I would have been more nervous if I had known Tony’s resume -- he was the No. 2 man under Sean McManus at CBS,” Mae said.
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Although MLB had helped Petitti get a leg up landing the studio, it needed a complete upgrade to HD capabilities.
Furnishings were needed, the control rooms had to be re-fitted. Now there are three stages, editing rooms, offices and three control rooms (which includes the NHL Network).
“We could not have made it on time if we had not had an old studio, given the amount of hours we had to build a robust studio,” he said.
Petitti was asked how on earth do you plan to fill all those hours in a day. With his CBS background he had the answer: make it like March Madness where the desk will throw to key at-bats, ninth-inning jams, a dominant starter facing one of the game’s best hitter and bases loaded situations in close games -- like the early weekend of the NCAA tourney with heart-stopping buzzer beaters and upsets.
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A few days before the Jan. 1 debut featuring a replay of Don Larsen’s perfect game in Game Five of the 1956 World Series and an interview with Yogi Berra and Larsen, my dear friend Marty Noble from MLB.com phoned.
He was so excited I thought he was going to a Motown revival concert or a doo-wop event, before he told me the news about this wonderful station about to air.
“Wish I could see it, were you a Larsen fan?” I asked.
“No, not really, I want to see Mickey Mantle one more time,” said Noble.
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The MLB Network staff was able to quickly turn stories around. Petitti’s blue print was urgency and speed, and they learned how to refine the process.
He said it was like any start up: there are things you plan for, there is the unexpected good and unexpected difficult.
“Unlike most businesses we were on the air ... live,” Petitti said.
When MLB Network began it did not have a daily wrap up show. Like a hitter continually swinging at breaking balls outside the zone, the Network made an adjustment. Now, MLB Tonight is as Keith Jackson would say, “The bell cow ...”
The biggest complaint we ever heard -- once the signal was available here -- were TV and radio broadcasters complaining that they were not paid when their voices were used on Quick Pitch. That must be the reason a few we know have accelerated the excitement level: to have their voice over on the over night show.
The league leader in information Ken Rosenthal interviewed by Hazel Mae.
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After being hired in 2008, work was slow for Mae, Reynolds, Vasgersian and the rest of the staff. In November they would show up for work, basically go for lunch and “get to know one another.”
In December, the training began.
“When Tony spoke to me, he explained that everyone who will work in this building has to love baseball,” Mae said. “They could be the greatest producer, the greatest editor but they still had to love baseball.”
At the time of its birth MLB Network could only go to a game for a certain time because of rightsholders or only after the seventh inning. Today the MLB Network simulcasts select games in their entirety each season and produces 26 game telecasts per season via the MLB Network Showcase package. The network also does live look-ins at games around the league each night.
Mae’s duties were to host Quick Pitch a half hour highlight show each night which still exists. And Mae co-hosted the afternoon Rundown and Matt Yallof. And for a time Mae was on the popular Intentional Talk with Kevin Millar from Austin, Tex. and Chris Rose from Los Angeles.
“We had a section called Hazel’s Headlines, which could be the biggest stories or the whackiest videos. Then all three would talk about it.”
At the end of the 2011 season Sportsnet came calling, asking her to come home. It all began for Mae in 2001 working for Sportsnet with a weekly magazine show around the Jays called JZone.
“I would never have left if there wasn’t the chance to move home,” said Mae who asked respectfully if her contract would not be renewed.
“They suggested, ‘How bout we fly to New York for four days a week and then fly you home,” Mae said of the Network’s impressive offer. The lure of returning home was too strong.
At the 2009 draft -- which was televised by MLB Network -- the top draft choices were asked to attend. Now, some were still playing at the College World Series. But rather than go and not be drafted players chose not to attend.
Rogers Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae
The only player who showed that year was an outfielder from Millville Senior HS in Millville, NJ. He sat there for the first 10 picks, the first 20 picks ... meanwhile the panel implored a team to select him.
Finally, Los Angeles Angels’ scouting director Eddie Bane selected current Blue Jays OF Randal Grichuk with the 24th pick overall. And with the 25th pick he chose the New Jersey high schoooler.
Now, the game’s greatest player, Mike Trout, had his first interview as an Angel from Hazel Mae.
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MLB Network has won 32 Emmy Awards from 105 nominations since its launch, including multiple honours to studio hosts Bob Costas and Harold Reynolds, and writers Ken Rosenthal and Tom Verducci. Bill Ripken won once as an analyst.
Players gravitated to the station ... players got involved (Jimmy Rollins was the first active player interviewed) ... I can recall standing inside the clubhouse at Tropicana Field clubhouse in 2009 transfixed watching MLB Network’s graphics for the first time. A clubhouse guy said it was time to leave ... think I finally heard him the third time.
Petitti started with programming during the prime time hours and worked backwards in the beginning. The roster has grown from its original two shows -- Hot Stove and MLB Tonight – to eight in its current lineup, with more than 40 on-air personalities, including Hall of Famer John Smoltz, Pedro Martinez and Jim Thome.
Our faves would include Mark DeRosa, Ryan Dempster (Gibsons, BC), John Smoltz, Al Leiter, Dan Plesac, Harold Reynolds, Kevin Millar, Bill Ripken, Ron Darling, Jim Kaat, Cliff Floyd, Carlos Pena, Joe Girardi and Sean Casey.
(So what if Reynolds said a few postseasons ago, “Canadians don’t practice catching foul balls.” Who does? We were a tad sensitive there).
And amongst the scribes, who don’t report on the industry like MLB.com, it would be Ken Rosenthal, Tom Verducci and Joel Sherman, in addition to Hall of Famers Peter Gammons and Jayson Stark.
That first year MLB Tonight brought viewers for a live look-in of Chicago White Sox LHP Mark Buehrle’s perfect game on July 23 and a month later the Ballpark Cam was introduced.
We wish we had been able to see “Wild Card Wednesday,” four teams – the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays in the AL and the Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals in the NL – fought for two wild card spots on the final night of the 2011 season. Chris Carpenter joked he pitched the most boring game of the night -- an 8-0 win over the Houston Astros.
Down 7-0 entering the eight the Rays rallied to force extras. Meanwhile, at 12:05 a.m. the Orioles recorded three straight hits in the bottom of the ninth after Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon had struck out two. Then Nolan Reimold tied the score, and Robert Andino won it with a single. At 12:08 a.m.,
Evan Longoria lined a solo homer to left to give Tampa Bay to the AL Division Series, 28 minutes after St. Louis clinched its spot. MLB Network bounced around. Never mind March Madness, this was September Suspense.
“We have former players on air, but they are not talking about one or two teams (like a club broadcaster does each night),” said Petitti. “They have to be prepared ... we could be talking about the bullpen of one team and then jump to another game where a player is struggling.
“The women and men we hire know their stuff. You can’t fake it. You can’t mail it in.”