Mets Credit: SNY
Local NetworksMLBBy Michael Grant on

America’s most historic sport is often slow to change.

However, SNY director John DeMarsico and his crew’s new perspective is receiving critical applause. By mixing unusual camera angles and homages to movies, New York Mets broadcasts have become a must-see event.

DeMarsico, a former walk-on catcher at NC State, was a film studies major. He grew up as a Mets fan in North Carolina because his parents are from New York. Now, the Emmy winner is working with the highly acclaimed broadcast team of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez and bringing a cinematic experience to the game. We recently caught up with DeMarsico to ask him about how his team is changing the way we view baseball.

Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Awful Announcing: First, the most critical question: Where do you keep your Emmys?

John DeMarsico: “My predecessor, Bill Webb, won, I think, 40 Emmys in his career. He used to joke that he had not only one in each room, but he started using them as doorstops because he ran out of cabinet space. I keep mine on a shelf in our living room. There are seven of them up there right now.

“I’m looking forward to one day being able to use them as doorstops like Bill did.”

How did you convince the people at SNY to try something different?

“I think a lot of that comes with sort of the consistency that we’ve had with our group in production. Our producer, Gregg Picker, has been there since SNY’s inception. This is his 20th season. I started as an intern in 2009 and was hired in 2010. This is my 17th Mets season, and so when you have that longevity with a group as talented as the one that we have, it allows you the freedom to start thinking out of the box.

“I talk about experience and longevity together. Our crew at Citi Field has been doing Mets games since Shea Stadium. They were Bill Webb’s camera people when he did the Mets games. When you have the people in places that we do, the experience allows you to flex your creative muscles.”

What makes baseball cinematic?

“The language of baseball is inherently more cinematic than the other sports, just by the nature of the mechanics of the sport. In other sports, you stick a camera at the center of the court or the center of the field, you pan left, you pan right. You cover a ball going into an end zone or a basket or a net. Hockey, basketball, football, and baseball, the action is produced.

“We start on a camera in center field to cover the pitch, and then when the ball is put in play, we cut 180 degrees to the other side of the ballpark to a high home camera to cover the ball in play. If we want to show runners scoring, we have to cut low to the low cameras showing runners rounding third base. It’s one of the only sports where a lot of the points or runs are scored away from the ball. There are a thousand decisions that our group has to make on any given play to produce the action.”

Are there particular moments that you’re proud of?

I’m proud of the moments that are unexpected. You put your cameras in the right spot and hope you get the moment. The shot of Edwin Diaz coming out of the bullpen to Narco is wonderful. Being able to capture Jacob DeGrom on the mound coming out to Simple Man is amazing. I love those shots, but it’s the stuff that’s unexpected.”

Do you have an example of an unexpected moment?

We were just in Los Angeles. We took a shot of the guys having some fun in the dugout playing a flip-the-bottle game. Juan Soto is down there amongst the guys. We decided to put that into a picture-in-picture at the bottom of the screen so that fans could watch the game and also watch this moment in the dugout. During that moment, we saw Juan Soto end up winning the game that they were playing in the dugout. You got this human moment from Juan Soto that we haven’t seen a whole lot of because he’s come over here, and he has this huge contract. He didn’t have the start that he probably wanted. It’s moments like that where you’re able to humanize the players and create organic moments that resonate the most with people.”

What directors do you take inspiration from?

“I feel like Brian De Palma would have been a good baseball director. In his thrillers specifically, he shows you all the pieces on the chessboard so that when checkmate happens, it makes it extra exciting. He sets the scene better than any director. He wants the audience to know all the players. I think that philosophy would apply well to baseball. You have all of this extra time built in, even with the pitch clock to set the scene and let the viewers know everything that’s happening on the field visually without the announcers even telling you.

Have you heard from any famous directors?

“Edgar Wright has reached out to me and said that one of the homages that I did to one of his films was cool, and he reposted it. It was Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. That movie is filled with all kinds of really cool comic book flourishes: split screens and flashy effects. When I get bases loaded, I have this effect that almost looks like a triptych unfolding. It shows the runner on third, second, and first. That’s taken directly from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.”

How does a film major become a director for baseball games on TV?

“I thought I was going to be a film editor. That’s what sparked my creative interests at the time, sitting down at the computer with all of the clips in front of me and being able to tell the story clip by clip. When I interned for SNY in 2009 and saw the art that then-director Bill Webb was doing, I saw a lot of the same principles that I had already learned in school and was obsessed with. It was storytelling, and it was live editing. Instead of having all the clips in front of me, you have all the cameras telling these stories in real-time. Seeing somebody like Bill piecing it all together was a real light bulb moment for me.”

Does being a former college catcher help you do your job?

“I spent a lot of time in the bullpen. That was a good way for me to get my higher education when it comes to baseball from an amazing coaching staff. In this job, you have to be able to speak baseball before you can speak production, if that makes sense. I’m not just talking about ‘see the ball, hit the ball, or pitching.’ I’m talking about knowing what’s going to happen if the ball gets hit here. Knowing what the runner is going to do if it’s a line drive. It’s being able to anticipate what’s going to happen when the ball is put in play.”

What’s your all-time favorite film?

“When someone asks me what my favorite movie is, I often say Kill Bill. The movie came out at a very pivotal time in my life. I was 16 years old. I had never seen a Quentin Tarantino movie in the theater before. It was a gateway film, broadening my horizons to films I didn’t know existed because Quentin Tarantino films are filled with homages to other films and filmmakers. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of nods throughout those films, specifically Kill Bill, to other genres and eras of film that I’d never seen before. It’s fun for me as a baseball director to do the same thing, to do these homages to other films.”

About Michael Grant

Born in Jamaica. Grew up in New York City. Lives in Louisville, Ky. Sports writer. Not related to Ulysses S. Grant.

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