The Tigers Got the Call of the Year
After the final Tampa Bay batter struck out to clinch another come-from-behind victory in their improbable chase for the playoffs on Thursday, play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti stayed silent.
He knew not to talk over the roar of a crowd after a big play. Nothing on TV can compete with the goosebumps-giving roar of a victorious crowd.
Then he struck a chord: “A city that doesn’t care about the odds has a baseball team to match.”
That call has gone viral. It registered more than 3 million views on the Detroit Tigers X page in less than a day.
Sports Illustrated labeled it the “Call of the Year.” The website Awful Announcing, which spends a lot of its time ripping bad sportscasting, even took note of it.
“The only thing better than a team that’s made an incredible run in a pennant race is when said team has the soundtrack to match it,” author Sam Neumann wrote. “Man, what a call.”
It’s not often people write as much about a sports call than the game itself, but there are moments when the soundtrack can sometimes rise above the moment.
The greatest sports calls of all time often have more than just a big hit or championship at stake.
Listen to the unbridled enthusiasm of New York Giants sports announcer Russ Hodges in 1951. He deliriously screams, “The Giants win the pennant!” over and over when Bobby Thompson’s walk-off homer won the Giants the pennant.
On Aug. 11, 1951, the New York Giants were 13 games out of first place. Sound familiar? On Aug. 10, 2024, the Tigers were 10 games out of the last wildcard spot.
Those Giants, like these Tigers, rose from the dead.
But Benetti was more than just relaying that his hometown team had won. He gave a nod to a much bigger experience.
Sportscaster Al Michaels did the same at the 1980 Winter Olympics.
Michaels recited, “Do you believe in miracles? … Yes!” as the final seconds ticked off in the United States’ 4-3 victory over the Soviets. It’s the most memorable sports call of all time.
Michaels’s call dug deeper into a most improbable storyline. The U.S. hockey team had lost to the Russians 10-3 in an exhibition just weeks before this stunning upset.
And these great calls were not made during the World Series or gold-medal round. The teams still had work to do.
That U.S. hockey team still had to beat Finland two days later to win the gold medal. The Giants had to go on to play the World Series, in which they lost to the New York Yankees.
“The Giants win the pennant!” “Do you believe in miracles?”
One exclaimed the news of the day. The other asked a question.
Benetti’s call did both.
A week before the Tigers beat the Rays, yet another website rated Detroit as one of the worst places to live in the U.S., trailing only Gary, Indiana, Camden, New Jersey, and Flint. It was a sort of vacuous, numbers-crunching reporting churned out by websites looking for clicks.
But just listen to the cheering in that stadium.
Worst place to live? Not to the folks filing into Comerica Park to watch their team, which is the center of the baseball universe right now.
Tigers fans care about the odds. They care about their team. And now they have a team to match.
Tom Gantert is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer.