It was a head scratching season for the Diamondbacks this past season both on the field and in the broadcast booth but on Monday, they introduced their present and future for telecasts. President and CEO Derrick Hall introduced Steve Berthiaume and Bob Brenly as the new broadcasting team in Arizona.
“This is an exciting day for the D-Backs,” said Hall. “We’re out to put together what we think and what we hope to be the best broadcast duo in baseball…Looking forward to many many years of great broadcasting from the two of you.”
Berthiaume, 47, has spent the last 12 years with ESPN and six of those as the host of “Baseball Tonight.” While he has spent most of his broadcast career as a host in-studio, Berthiaume has had opportunities to do play-by-play while with ESPN doing Major League games as well as College World Series Super Regional games. Baseball is his one true passion in sports and is very excited about this opportunity with the Diamondbacks.
“I want it to be a very inclusive broadcast, I want it to be a shared experience with the fans, I want the fan to know that I am here because I love the game of baseball,” said Berthiaume. “I am part of the Diamondbacks organization and we are going to watch the games together.”
So far the reception from the fans after the hiring of Berthiaume has been great. The fans took to Twitter to share that with Berthiaume after the announcement was originally made on October 18th.
“Finally I want to thank all of the Diamondbacks fans,” said Berthiaume. “I stay fairly active on twitter and I got hundreds and I mean literally hundreds of tweets from Diamondbacks fans and every one of them was so enthusiastic and so welcoming and so supportive…it was really humbling and it just felt great.”
Bob Brenly is someone who the Diamondbacks faithful are very familiar with. Brenly was the original color analyst for the Diamondbacks for two years before becoming the manager of the team in 2001. He led the Diamondbacks in one of the most storied seasons in Arizona sports history winning the World Series in that same year. He spent the last eight seasons with the Chicago Cubs organization before now returning to the place he and his family call home.
“I am very excited about this opportunity to come back to the desert,” said Brenly. “I think it is a great time to be with this organization again. A lot of tremendously talented young players…it’s a part of what Derrick and Ken and everyone involved with the organization are looking to do is not having a little success, having a sustained amount of continued success over a long time. I am sure Steve is excited and I am very excited to be a part of it.”
The duo will appear on Fox Sports Arizona for the first season of Diamondbacks baseball next season.
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Jared Cohen
A born and bred Arizonan, Jared has had great passion for the hometown teams all his life. He now channel's that passion into covering the pro, college and high school teams around the state as a Multimedia Reporter for Sports360AZ.