Often, one of the most enjoyable things about baseball broadcasts is when they take a wild digression. That happened with the third game of the NCAA Division I series between the TCU Horned Frogs (No. 15 as per Baseball America, No. 25 as per D1baseball.com) and the UCF Knights Saturday. There, the ESPN+ streaming TV feed saw extensive discussion of an osprey who alighted on a field light pole ahead of the top of the seventh inning:
This came with long-time UCF play-by-play voice and director of broadcasting Marc Jacobs on the call there alongside analyst Stephen Branca, and Jacobs had some particularly great lines. Those included “Looks like someone’s brought lunch home,” “That’s where you stand up and say ‘Look at I, I am the master of the kingdom.'” and “Wow. Don’t know if we’ll go back for highlights of lunch.”
Of course, it’s not terribly surprising that a bird might see a stadium light pole as a good place to perch. And this is a far more positive bird interaction than we’ve sometimes seen in baseball. But this was pretty funny, and came thanks to smart decisions by many on the broadcast.
This came at the very top of the inning (after footage of kids in a donut race), so it wasn’t distracting from the actual game. And the osprey landing on the light pole with its fish provided a great opportunity for a camera operator to get a cool shot. Jacobs and Branca then did a solid job of quickly commenting on those shots before pivoting back to the game. But it all made for a fun moment, and added to the rich history of wildlife (sometimes including birds) on sports broadcasts.
For what it’s worth, the home Knights won this one 4-2 to secure a series victory. There’s no indication of how much of that was about the rally osprey.