Throughout my life, I’ve tried to leave as small a footprint as possible. When I leave a room, can I make it seem as though I was never there in the first place? This is, of course, a terrible way to live. My aim should be to leave things better than they were when I entered. In recent years, I’ve made an earnest effort to change my philosophy. Is it enough simply to not do any harm? Or should I make an attempt to improve my surroundings?

The problem is, simply by existing, by breathing the air and using resources to keep ourselves alive, if we do nothing, we are actually a net negative. That means that we have to put in some honest work just to achieve balance. And, as we all know, doing work is just the worst.

This spring, after four years away from the broadcast booth, I decided to return to the play-by-play chair for the Windy City ThunderBolts. I don’t take it for granted that this is a decision afforded to me. A broadcasting job for a professional baseball team is a prized commodity and the fact that I can slide in and out of the position on a whim is an incredible luxury. Still, I didn’t feel great that I had to let our previous broadcaster – a good guy who didn’t deserve this treatment – go in order to regain my spot. I was also told in no uncertain terms and by more than one person that my move was not in the best interests of the team. If I wanted to make a positive impact, I wasn’t off to a good start.

There were many occasions in the leadup to the season and during the summer itself where I questioned my decision. Was I really doing right by anyone in broadcasting instead of acting as the PA announcer?

Last year, when I did an appraisal of my life, I came to the determination that I was generally pretty happy except for one area: my work with the ThunderBolts. I reasoned that if I was going to spend this much time somewhere, I should feel a little more passionate about the work that I’m doing there. With that in mind, I soldiered on, working my 12th season on Bolts broadcasts, and tried not to look back.

The ThunderBolts finished this season with a 36-60 record. Even in the midst of a 15-year playoff drought, this was one of the toughest seasons to get through on the field. Following a 3-17 start, the team righted the ship somewhat before fading to a seven-game skid to close out the year. By now, though, I’m used to that. It sounds harsh to say so, but I no longer enter the season with illusions of a postseason run. That’s not to say anything against the players or the coaching staff this year or any other year. It’s just the mindset you develop when you’re used to watching the ThunderBolts. No different than being a fan of the Cubs or White Sox for so many years.

This year was especially difficult because the winter before it began, we found out that Bobby Jenks, the Bolts’ manager since the fall of 2023, had been diagnosed with cancer. His illness and eventual death in early July cast a pall over the season that was hard to recover from.

But baseball can often act as a healing balm and when there’s a new game every day, you have no choice but to move on and be ready for the next one. Sure, it would have been great for the team to go on a big run, but as I’ve reflected on many times over the years, it’s fun to watch baseball, win or lose, and as a broadcaster, you have to call both a win and a loss everyday. Yes, I am employed by the ThunderBolts and am more emotionally attached to them than any other team, but even every loss that I call ends with half the participants in a good mood. The older I get, I think the more I appreciate that at least someone gets to leave the park happy.

The game I always think of was played in Gateway in 2018. The Grizzlies overcame a 4-1 deficit and beat the Bolts on a game-ending home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. The crowd of nearly 6,000 went wild. It was a devastating result but a truly electric ballpark moment. Afterward, as I sat alone in the press box writing my game recap, two Grizzlie interns came in, glowing over the thrill of their victory. After a few seconds, they noticed me sitting nearby and began an exaggerated show of apology. They were so sorry for rubbing it in after my team had just suffered so difficult a defeat.

But their apologies just made me chuckle. Of course I didn’t mind that they were excited. They had every right to be. And as difficult as that postgame show had been for me, after taking the time to process it, my biggest takeaway when leaving the field wasn’t that the ThunderBolts had lost. It was that it had been one of the most awesome atmospheres I had ever broadcasted from.

That’s part of what I was thinking of when I returned to broadcasting this year. I wanted to be part of more moments like that. It’s not as though we haven’t had some of those at home in recent years, but as PA announcer, I always felt like a spectator of amazing games. As a broadcaster, I feel like I’m a part of them. So on the second day of this season, when the Bolts erased a four-run eighth-inning deficit and won on a Christian Kuzemka sacrifice fly in the tenth inning, any lingering doubt about whether I had made the right choice to go back to play-by-play was gone.

The first few weeks of the year featured more great performances – a 15-run outburst against first-place Québec, an extra-inning walk-off hit from Cam Phelts, Michael Sandle’s game-winning homer against Mississippi. There were enough of them to make you momentarily forget about the team’s record and remind you of the fun and joy of being around a winning ballclub.

But it isn’t those individual games that served to challenge me as a broadcaster this year. It was the return to the grind. The Bolts play Tuesday-Sunday and I worked elsewhere every Monday (strictly my choice, so you won’t hear me complaining). That meant that I didn’t get a real day off for over four months and I’ll admit that by the end of the summer, I was as worn out as I’ve ever been by a baseball season.

Over the years, my responsibilities have escalated to the point that I never feel that I put in enough prep work for a broadcast at home because I’m too busy with other things around the park. I try to rectify that on the road, but the road can be a slog too. Every morning I wake up with the intention of getting myself as caught up on the comings and goings of the Frontier League as possible but I also make sure to find time to visit the St. Louis Arch or the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum or some days, I seek out a park so I can read my book under the watchful gaze of Mother Nature. I do these things to reset my equilibrium when I have the time to do so but slog or not, I know I’m going to enjoy life on the road. I was afraid I’d miss the flexibility in my schedule when I returned to traveling with the team, but as it happens, my enjoyment of my work (and the occasional trolley museum visit) negates that desire for flexibility.

So much of my season was devoted to determining whether I had done the right thing for myself that I probably didn’t spend enough time figuring out whether I had made the right move for the others concerned. I got a mixed bag of reviews for my broadcasting this summer. Some people told me that they really enjoyed hearing me back on the air while others made it clear that they would have preferred having just about anybody else in the role. My own critiques of my broadcasting are always harsh and this year was no exception. I made some critical mistakes that kept me up at night and I was far from my A game most days, but until I invent my time machine and can go back and redo those games, all I can do is keep pushing forward and trying to get it right the next time.

I try to apply that same mentality off the air. I spent so much time working with others around the ballpark that I’d like to think that I made some kind of positive impact on some of them. But who knows? Some would argue that the effort is the end goal. If I’m satisfied that I tried my best, maybe I succeeded. If not, let’s just try to get it right next season.

One area I know I found success was that I hired well this year. We had a great staff in the press box working towards making it the most efficiently run in the Frontier League. Again, I don’t know if I always put them in the right position to do their best work but it really makes a difference to have people around you, whatever their motivations, who you know have the same mentality you do: they all tried to leave things better than they were before.

As the season wore down to its close and the game results no longer seemed to carry much weight, I continued to attack each day with the same mindset I had when it all began. I wanted to put everything I had into each and every day, both on and off air. Tired or not, I had a responsibility to myself and to the ThunderBolts organization to try to be a valuable member of the operation. After 16 seasons, I still want to make sure there’s more positive than negative in my ledger.

This summer, we lost a lot of games, we lost our manager to a terrible disease, I lost a lot of sleep. There were sad and frustrating nights and mornings where it was tough to get out of bed. Through it all, though, I never stopped enjoying getting to call a full season of baseball games. It was a blast. I just hope I did a little good along the way.