Friday, February 22, 2019

Sportscaster Kevin Burkhardt To Call Some MLB Rays' Games

Kevin Burkhardt
Fox’s Kevin Burkhardt will be part of the Tampa Bay Rays’ TV broadcast team this season, The NYPost reports.

Burkhardt, Fox’s lead MLB host, will call approximately 20 Rays games on Tampa’s regional sports network.

“I think it is the perfect opportunity to add to my workload,” Burkhardt, 44, said.

Dewayne Staats, the former Yankees broadcaster, is the longtime TV voice of the Rays. Staats is not going anywhere, but Burkhardt will take some road games to alleviate Staats’ schedule.

While Burkhardt does NFL and college basketball, he only called a handful of baseball games last season — albeit high-profile ones on Fox on Saturday nights — so this will help keep his craft strong.

A decade and a half ago, Burkhardt was selling cars in his native New Jersey, unsure if he would make it in broadcasting and trying to make ends meet when Eric Spitz, then WFAN’s program director, took a liking to his work and put him on the radio in a full-time role.

Burkhardt’s next big break came when SNY’s Chris Cotter asked off the Mets’ dugout role, paving the way for Burkhardt to land the job, which he probably did as well as anyone has ever done it.

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