The home run call was great: “Fire up the fountains!” What was even better, from the perspective of many observers, was that fact that it came from a woman, making her the first in 25 years to do play-by-play on an MLB game’s telecast.
That honor belonged to Jenny Cavnar, a familiar figure to Rockies fans as a fixture on the team’s pre- and postgame TV coverage for several years. On Monday, she not only was in the booth for the broadcast of a game against the Padres, she called it, putting her in extremely select company even within the small sorority of women who have been on the mic for major league contests.
According to MLB.com, just one other woman has called a regular-season MLB game on TV, Gayle Gardner in 1993. The website noted that Suzyn Waldman has called Yankees games on the radio, and that Jessica Mendoza is an analyst for ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball.”
ESPN pointed to Mary Shane as “the first female in a booth,” when she worked on radio broadcasts of White Sox games in 1976, and cited Pam Boucher, who worked a number of Yankees games in 1977.
“I am very excited about tonight,” Cavnar told MLB.com before the game, a 13-5 Padres win. “I’m really honored on the historical context of it, but I’m more so excited for the team effort. We have such a great team of broadcasters, producers, directors — so it’ll be really fun to collaborate with them and do the game tonight.”
Cavnar is a native of Colorado whose father was inducted into the state’s high school baseball hall of fame as a decorated coach, and between gigs with the Rockies and Padres, she has 12 years of MLB-related broadcasting experience. She was joined in the booth Monday by analysts Ryan Spilborghs and Jeff Huson, both former major league players.
When Colorado’s Nolan Arenado launched a first-inning line drive over the left-field fence Monday, Spilborghs and Huson sounded like they were more excited for Cavnar’s catchy call — “Fire up the fountains! She’s gone!” — than the home run itself.
“This was a long time coming,” Spilborghs told CBS Denver. “A female broadcast voice in major league baseball is necessary.
“Jenny has just as much intelligence knowing the game as anybody, probably more so than me, and I hope people realize how passionate she is about this. This is a really big deal for her and it’s a big deal for our broadcast.”
“She knows her stuff,” Dallas Braden, a baseball analyst and former MLB pitcher, said to MLB.com. “I believe that by the third inning, after all of the pleasantries have been exchanged, you will forget who is on the microphone, you will be learning about the game of baseball, you will be enjoying the stories being told to you — and that’s all a credit to her knowledge.”
Cavnar got a chance to call a Rockies game during spring training, and on Monday, she likened her experience to that of a “minor leaguer” getting promoted to the top club. “Now it’s the big leagues and you get your call-up,” she said (via CBS Denver). “It’s exciting and fun.”
She credited Spilborghs and Huson with being “great supporters,” saying, “They’re obviously very natural and knowledgeable about the game and have so much to share.” Cavnar also pointed out the other women involved in Rockies telecasts, “our producer, director, chyron director,” who are “putting their mark on this game.”
“If there’s a little girl out there tonight that wants to have that big dream, and it’s because they get to hear a voice that’s different calling a game than they’ve heard before, that’s awesome,” Cavnar said.
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