Query “Don Orsillo” on YouTube, stop, and watch 14 suggestions appear. Two of them append “funny moments” to the 25-year MLB play-by-play veteran’s name.
That includes the top match, one of three mentioning his late friend and batterymate Jerry Remy from 15 years in Boston. Another reads “Don Orsillo Mark Grant,” signifying a scroll of memorable calls by the Padres TV tandem of nine years going on 10.
Grant, a pitcher turned commentator of 30 years affectionately dubbed “Mud” for “Mudcat,” holds a cache of catchphrases. One of his expressions, “Some Kinda Nice,” is his website’s namesake.
So if Orsillo, who except for high school in Southern California and five seasons in the Mets farm system had spent his whole life and career in New England, was going to work anywhere else with anyone else, San Diego was most ideal.
“Honestly, where there are only 29 jobs, at the time of my Boston end, I was willing to go wherever anyone wanted me,” he told Awful Announcing via email. “But when I found out who I would be working with and his philosophy was so similar to mine, we meshed immediately.”
Perhaps no YouTube testimonials confirm that better than the annual scrapbooks San Diego podcaster Ben Fadden compiles for the Talking Friars channel. Last season’s 19-minute, 48-second montage bears no fewer than 52 outbursts of mirth.
The reasons are as varied as they are numerous. At one point, in spring training, Grant alerted the umpires that the network wasn’t back from its commercial break and, to his and Orsillo’s astonishment, paused the action. In-game booth-to-dugout chats with players and coaches revealed everything from pet preferences to confessions of poolside football shenanigans. The two deftly analyzed a Texas Rangers fan’s near-fall and beverage spill into the third-base dugout in pursuit of a foul ball.
Within the Church of Baseball, the televangelists from Petco Park’s archdiocese are among the least inclined to shy away from humorous sermons. They witness a lot and relish the freedom to call it as they see it.
“I have fun and have always been of the opinion that local baseball broadcasters are different from national television broadcasters,” Orsillo said.
He ought to know. Between his local duties this past quarter-century, he has answered summons to neutral booths for TBS and Fox. But he finds playing to a partisan congregation most enriching.
“You are part of the fabric of the team and the fan base,” he said. “As a result, I have always felt comfortable sharing my personality. My philosophy on this has opened the door on both coasts. Baseball is fun and we are gonna have a good time. Join us!”
Entering this milestone season, Don Orsillo accepted a generous invitation from the Padres brass. In February, he inked a contract extension where the terms were not disclosed, but CEO Erik Gruepner’s statement plainly confirmed this announcer is wanted for as long as he is active.
“I was here about 10 minutes when I realized this was where I wanted to spend the rest of my career,” said Orsillo. “And to have the Padres leadership, namely CEO Erik Greupner, feel the same way was amazing and the best news of my career.”
He says that as someone whose saga has packed highs and lows as divergent as Fenway and Petco Park are distant. Radio broadcaster turned professor Glenn Geffner — who worked in San Diego himself from 1997 to 2002, then overlapped with Orsillo in Boston for five years — knows those varied experiences equally well. He is not the least bit surprised by his friend’s proficiency in any city or scenario.
“In good times and bad,” Geffner said in an email to AA, “they’ve heard him as their voice. His calls reflect exactly what they’re thinking and feeling at the moment, whether it’s a dramatic walk-off home run or an error that contributes to a five-game losing streak.”
Indeed, Don Orsillo took NESN viewers through four losing campaigns and four others that fell short of the playoffs, and therefore missed perennially lofty expectations. But he also called the regular seasons that positioned the Red Sox for their 2004, 2007, and 2013 World Series runs.
With the Padres, he has chronicled a steady ascent out of irrelevance. He came when they were coming off five straight sub-.500 seasons, then described four more in a row. But since 2020, they have reached the playoffs three times.
“I could never have imagined what this would become in San Diego,” he said, “especially the last five years. We sell out most of our games and Petco Park is one of the loudest and electric atmospheres in all of MLB. Teams don’t like coming here. It’s pretty awesome and continues to get louder and the reach extends on the road now.”
The same can be said about his and Grant’s appeal to national audiences when their broadcasts are syndicated on MLB Network. Opposing clubs may dread the Padres’ cathedral, but opposing faithful love hearing their announcers.
Indeed, if Orsillo and Grant’s lively style arouses any sin, it’s the envy of other markets. Late last spring, a Cubs fan took to Reddit and declared the pair “a hilarious breath of fresh air!”
The post, which also lamented the way Chicago’s National League entrant used to have something like that, soared to the top of the Padres subreddit and drew overflowing replies by San Diegans. Meanwhile, one of Orsillo’s many unofficial best-of reels was uploaded by a YouTuber answering to the pseudonym “miserable cardinals fan.”
Another vice is anger, namely that which still smolders in the religious seamheads subscribing to NESN. The channel (80% owned by the Sox’s parent company) announced late in the 2015 season it would not bring Orsillo back.
But when he worked with Remy, there was nothing puritanical in their chemistry. Remy was a born-and-bred New Englander who patrolled second base at Fenway for seven years and was entering his 14th season as the team’s TV color analyst when Orsillo filled the play-by-play vacancy in 2001.
Orsillo’s first game was the first of five no-hitters he’s called (three for the Sox, two for the Pads). But as MLB’s own YouTube channel and countless citizen accounts attest, the droll diversions from the game are just as integral to his legacy.
There was the drizzly matinee when he and Remy multitasked calling the action and analyzing a Fenway ticketholder’s trouble donning “a defective poncho.” Or the time he admired umpire Tom Hallion’s theatrics. Or when he laughed at himself over a Ron Burgundy moment reading a misprint on a network teaser script.
And, of course, in a class of its own, there was the Patriots’ Day pizza toss. Orsillo was ready to react to all of it in a way that reflected the fan base’s mood.
“He and Rem brought out the best in each other in Boston,” Geffner said, “and he and Mud have taken it to another level in San Diego.”
AA’s annual local MLB TV announcer survey provides hard data to confirm that upgrade. In 2015, Orsillo’s NESN swan song, the Padres placed 12th in those rankings, one slot ahead of the Red Sox.
Boston’s squad dipped from No. 13 to 16 to start their post-Orsillo era. They have been middleweights, at best, ever since.
Conversely, when Orsillo was the legendary Dick Enberg’s heir apparent in San Diego, the Padres pole-vaulted to fifth. They have earned a bronze medal each of the last two seasons, trailing only their Giants and Mets counterparts.
The way Orsillo matches Grant’s knack for neologisms has helped their standing. Complementing the color analyst’s “Shillelagh power” and “F.O.P. (full of Padres when the bases are loaded)” are the play-by-play announcer’s “Crone Zone” for second baseman Jake Cronenworth, “Merrill Madness” for centerfielder Jackson Merrill, and “Friar Faithful.”
But on a par with “Some Kinda Nice,” given its resonance in the local culture, is “Slam Diego.”
Don Orsillo opportunistically hollered that pun in August 2020 when Eric Hosmer belted the club’s historic fourth four-run dinger in as many games. His team and network at the time (Fox Sports San Diego) altered their names on Twitter for a while after, and apparel bearing the moniker soon rolled out.
For one of only three franchises without a world title in their annals, these have been a roaring ’20s so far. The dawn of “Slam Diego” underscored that, as Orsillo started having more opportunities to thunder in triumph.
Those all come after his own triumph over self-doubt when he made the cross-country conversion. Despite his familiarity with the region, he was wholly new to the Padres’ inner workings.
“I felt I had a lot working against me,” Orsillo remembered.
“Boy, was I wrong. The fans and team, and its former players, embraced me like I never imagined and my relationships with those players and our fans continue to grow every day.
“I am so grateful to be in San Diego during arguably the best period in the team’s history, and I get to narrate it.”