Sean McDonough was 22 years old and calling games for the Syracuse Chiefs when the photo was taken. He looks like what he was: a kid with a microphone and a dream that hadn’t paid off yet. That photo hangs on the wall at NBT Bank Stadium, right next to Marv Albert, Matt Vasgersian, Jason Benetti, Kevin Brown, and a dozen other names that became household ones.
Joe Puccio walks past all of them every day on his way to work.
The reigning National Sportscaster of the Year has been on big-league scenes since 1988, four years out of college and four years removed from his time with the Chiefs, which overlapped with his studies at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Now he tells the latest aspirants what many other forebears will echo.
“One common piece of advice that I hear from all of them is to keep doing the work, keep improving at the work, and keep being humble,” said Puccio, who is in his first season as co-announcer for the Triple-A Syracuse Mets. “All of those people had to grind to get where they are.”
Puccio is 24. His partner, Jack Gordon, is the same age and also a Newhouse graduate who came of age in Central New York, listening to the guys whose photos now line that hallway. Brown was calling games here when Puccio was in middle school. Benetti was building the reputation that eventually landed him NBC’s Sunday Night Baseball while Gordon was still figuring out what he wanted to do with his life.
Now they have his old chair.
The lineage is almost hard to believe when you lay it out. Seventeen notable alumni, eight of whom went on to regional play-by-play jobs with major pro franchises. They all started exactly where Puccio and Gordon are, doing the unglamorous operational work that nobody above Triple-A has to do anymore.
That’s intentional. Longtime Syracuse general manager Jason Smorol built it that way. The booth at NBT Bank Stadium is a place to become a broadcaster, not just perform like one.
“This is Triple-A baseball, and we have an expectation of a quality broadcast for our fans,” he tells AA in an email.
But quality here means more than what happens on air. Between innings, between pitches, around the actual work of calling a baseball game in real time, his announcers are typing pregame notes, writing postgame recaps, coordinating interviews, and approving credential requests. The glamour can wait.
“I think the most important thing they can learn here is the work that goes in here and not just ‘being talent,’” Smorol says. “As they rise up through the ranks, these jobs are done by others, but our folks will know what it’s like and hopefully appreciate the hard work that goes on behind the scenes because they have done it.”
Gordon is in his second season of sandwiching those tasks around his real-time pitch descriptions for the Triple-A Mets. He, like Puccio, is an SU product who grew up in the area, listening to a litany of next McDonough hopefuls.
As he recalled in an email to AA, Gordon heard from the one real McDonough, “‘Be the best version of yourself and be the best broadcaster you can be.’”
His interpretation: “If you keep people informed, tell great stories, and keep people entertained, your broadcast career will work itself out. It was refreshing to hear that sometimes being the best broadcaster you can will separate you from the pack.”
“The other advice from Sean that I always try to remember,” Gordon continued, “is to be grateful for the opportunity.”
Every game at NBT Bank Stadium brings reminders of an opportunity and tradition Puccio pronounces “sacred.” Syracuse is celebrating its sesquicentennial of professional baseball in 2026, and for roughly half of those 150 years, the booth has been a launching pad.
The list goes back to 1952, when Jim Gordon called games here before moving on to the Brooklyn Dodgers, the NFL’s Giants, and the NHL’s Islanders. In 1962, Marv Albert announced as an undergraduate while 26-year-old Hank Greenwald was doing the same. Albert became the defining NBA broadcaster of his generation, while Greenwald spent 18 seasons with the Yankees and Giants. Since the early ’80s, the names have only gotten bigger. Of the 17 notable alumni on the media guide, eight have worked regional play-by-play jobs for major pro franchises: Benetti, Brown, McDonough, Vasgersian, Dan Hoard, Greg Papa, Bob Socci, and Bob McElligott.
“Pictures of McDonough, Hoard, Vasgersian, Brown, and all of the legends in the Syracuse broadcast booth instill in me that my dreams are attainable,” says Puccio. “There is a path to the big leagues by making a pit stop in Syracuse.”
To Puccio, the wall gives and takes away in equal measure. The names are legendary now, but the faces staring back are just kids, the same age he is, with the same job he has.
It’s “carpe diem” meets “If you build it, he will come.” “It” being an old-fashioned Syracuse reputation, and “he” a coveted offer elsewhere.
“I smile when I walk by those photos because I realize how, at one point, all these broadcasters lived the life I am currently living,” Puccio said. “There is an immense sense of pride and honor to be in their shoes.”
The current casters personally recall when some of those household names were still being made. They came of age in the 2010s when the Chiefs partnered with the Washington Nationals, and time was liable to slow down in Central New York whenever a future star passed through, even for a fraction of a season.
“Whether it was Kevin Brown talking about Bryce Harper’s meteoric rise or Mike Couzens narrating Stephen Strasburg’s must-see tenure in Syracuse, the voices kept the fans engaged and informed,” Gordon said.
After they ascend, the voices keep talking to each other and never truly graduate. With a few exceptions, such as the Southern California-educated Vasgersian, Syracuse baseball announcers are generally plucked from competitive pools at SU. Professors will take their classes on field trips to NBT Bank Stadium for hands-on learning, and students can claim shifts to do a simulated broadcast.
“Newhouse and Syracuse University is more than just a pipeline,” said Smorol. “It is a valued partnership.”
Recent years have unveiled a straightforward chain of seniority and succession. Michael Tricarico, who was Gordon’s partner last season and whose exit left a spot for Puccio, began in 2014 as an intern with the tandem of Benetti and Brown.
By the time Tricarico and Evan Stockton were the Mets’ voices, Puccio had his shot at a simulated gamecast as a sophomore and credits the incumbents with better preparing him for a summer gig at another illustrious baseball broadcast training ground, the Cape Cod League.
They also amplified his craving and confidence toward an eventual homecoming. He had a feel for the pros and for the sensibility that binds his hometown institutions.
“The Syracuse Mets carry the Syracuse University broadcast tradition,” Puccio said. “A tradition that values objective journalism, entertaining execution, and personal resonance.”
As green as Puccio still is, he has already garnered that sense of inescapable connection among Triple-A Mets rooters and other International League fans. The parent club’s cable partner, SNY, lends him and Gordon regular TV exposure to such opposing datelines as Rochester, Buffalo, and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Audiences everywhere can often pick them up when Syracuse plays in MLB.TV’s minor league game of the week.
“That is the kind of relationship that got me into this business,” he said.
When Benetti and Brown come back to town, Smorol says, they make sure to stop into the Change of Pace next door — former pitcher Steve Grilli’s bar — for wings. The conversation never really stops. Neither does the line of young broadcasters coming through the door.
The chair turns over. It always has here. And somewhere on that wall, there’s already a spot for whoever comes next.