Karl Ravech on a few days of crazy travel and baseball

ESPN’s Karl Ravech had a trying and unusual start to his work week.

He was part of the network’s coverage of a bizarre Monday doubleheader between the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves, where both teams needed just one win to advance to the playoffs. A long, strange day ended with a separation and Ravech on his second day flying as he headed to San Diego, where he’s working the Padres’ Wild Card series against the Mets.

Ravech spoke to Sports Illustrated about the announcement of three high-leverage games over a period of about 30 hours on opposite ends of the country.

Sports Illustrated: How are you feeling? Are you tired?

Karl Ravech: I try to think of the day we started this whole journey. Buster (Olney) and I boarded a plane Monday morning at 6 a.m., which meant a 3:50 a.m. wake-up call, then I drive an hour to the airport. He and I get on this plane to Atlanta. We have rooms at the airport hotel. So basically you go to your room, you take a shower, and then you get in the car to go play the two ball games which you know were incredibly unique. We knew it was going to be a weird day going in. You just knew it was going to be weird.

For the first game to go the way it did, you’re talking about the air of a balloon. In the second game, no one wanted to be there, even the Braves, who had to win the game. So you go through that and then you head to the airport and you take a 10:30 p.m. flight to San Diego because the decision has been made regardless of the outcome, you go to the Padres and the Braves or the Padres and the Put on. . This is how it was going to happen. We arrive in San Diego and enter the room at midnight, which is 3 a.m. ET, which means you’ve been awake for 24 hours. Then you go to bed for a bit and wake up on the west coast, which means you get up at a ridiculously early hour because your body is on the east coast. Then you go and play a game of Wild Card. I’ve never experienced anything like this.

I will say that I am not physically tired. I think most of these types of things take more from you mentally than physically. But when you’re involved in environments like this with such a unique seat, you don’t have time to get tired, you don’t have time to think about what you just did. You’re in the game. You can’t take these things for granted, because they won’t be there forever. I love every minute of it and I think after so long, to be honest, I love when there are unique challenges. It was one. Well, being there makes you feel really good.

Sports Illustrated: The way the Padres started this game last night, with Michael King looking electric and Fernando Tatis Jr. hitting an early home run, there was a ton of energy. Did this help at all?

Karl Ravech: It was a cup of coffee, it was a shot of adrenaline. I think what makes San Diego unique is that there really is a party atmosphere in the stadium. San Diego basically has this since Peter Seidler decided to invest all his money, may he rest in peace. He made it a must-visit venue and the Padres, being the only game in town, played well and attracted the masses. When they go to the ballpark, it’s a participatory event, it’s not idly. They are into every second.

And now you feature a team that has a chance to go further in October if they don’t win the World Series. So that Tatis shot may have been like a boost, but all day long you knew what it was going to look like once you got there and he delivered. The baseball stadium certainly transports you because it is unique. The relationship between the fans, the team and the city is unique. The home run and King’s performance sped up the game a bit, but it was there. I had no doubt about our ability to get back up. And I’ll be honest, the first three games of the day contributed to that. There were three very good matches. Coming in, you feel really good about how the day is going from an ESPN and network perspective.

Sports Illustrated: Do you worry about the logistics of it all when you’re dealing with all this travel? I’m the type of person who has to get to the airport very early and any kind of delay really worries me.

Karl Ravech: We actually had this conversation on air at one point. I think any time a situation like that arises, flying on game day is always a risky proposition. We certainly don’t do this as a practice, we rarely, if ever, do it for baseball. But in this case where you weren’t sure about going to San Diego and who they were playing, I chose not to spend a night in Atlanta if those games weren’t going to be played, so yeah, absolutely. I went to bed around 9pm Sunday night, knowing we had to get up at 3:50am for that drive to the airport. And for about four hours you sleep really peacefully. Even though there were flights at 6, 7 and 8 o’clock, so you have the backup plan in mind. Okay, so if the 6 hour flight doesn’t leave, there’s a 7. And God forbid, there’s an 8 just in case. Around 1am is when you wake up and can feel your brain working when you don’t want it to. Your brain tells you what happens if a pilot is sick, what happens if the plane has a mechanical problem.

Sports Illustrated: I’m looking at the graphic that ESPN put out right now with all the coverage teams. It’s an impressive group with you, Michael Kay, Jon Sciambi and Sean McDonough calling the plays and a lot of great analysts. Is this the biggest showcase for the network’s broadcast teams?

Karl Ravech: When you talk about Sciambi or McDonough, you’re talking about guys that I grew up with in the business, who I’m very friendly with and have a ton of respect for. I think as a company with Sunday Night Baseball It’s really the only game we do once a week, when you have the opportunity to do four and you’re able to cycle through guys who I think are Hall of Fame type broadcasters and d ‘to be one of them and to be under the big top. the game is extremely rewarding, flattering, humbling, all of those things. Listening to them all, I think they’re all fantastic.

It’s a challenge and I think Sciambi talked about it the other day. It is well known that Major League Baseball is a sport in which local broadcasters, 140 to 150 times a year depending on the team, are listened to by fans and are the same voices. It’s such a unique, comfortable and intimate relationship. I always knew that. You want to hear familiar voices. You want to know that they know exactly what happened last month, last week and yesterday.

When the nationals come, the feeling is that they’re not as invested, they don’t know the players, they’re skydiving and parachuting. All I can say is that we are not on a daily basis with these teams. Definitely Sciambi with what he’s doing with the Cubs, Sean with the Red Sox and all of our broadcasters. It’s not like we don’t follow the teams and the games. We do it. And we talk to so many people involved. When we get there in the early hours of the match, you talk to the players, you build relationships. We also have enormous respect for local broadcasters.

Sports Illustrated: You were wondering if we could go back and if you could talk about the support staff that you have that made something like this happen?

Karl Ravech: What I benefited from during my years at ESPN, sitting in studios and certainly doing Baseball tonight Over so many years with over 60 different analysts is that you learn that the only way to become good – and I don’t mean individually but collectively – is to trust the people around you and make them best. While I’m sitting here trying to get the best out of, in this case, Eduardo, David Cone and Buster, there’s… I’d love to name them all, but I’ll leave some of them . But all you have to do is look at the email chain we have and how many people behind the scenes make it work.

The ESPN baseball group is a family and I know you can ask anyone about the importance of the relationships between the people in front of the camera, the people in the control room, the camera operators, the audio, the people who support us. in every way, from graphics to hotel rooms. Everyone has each other’s best interests at heart. It’s not just about the television side: as we talked about earlier, how are we going to get from point A to point B? We have to take care of all this. I love the people I work with.