Living a King's Life: The Story of the 2009 Kalamazoo Kings from the Radio Broadcast Booth

By John Leahy

Living a King's Life is the day-to-day story of a professional minor-league independent baseball team, the 2009 Kalamazoo Kings of the Frontier League of Professional Baseball. John Leahy, the radio broadcaster of the team, describes the team's season from his perspective in the radio booth. This book introduces the reader to the personalities of the team and the day-to-day experiences of a group of men as they compete for a league championship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889609551

John Leahy

Capt. John Leahy is co-founder of Flight Coach - a resource dedicated to help passengers overcome their fear of flying. Alan Keane is Flight Coach CEO, founder and publisher. He is also a director of Alan Keane & Associates Ltd., an incentive marketing company established in 1982 and based in Dublin, Ireland.

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Living a King's Life

The Story of the 2009 Kalamazoo Kings from the Radio Broadcast Booth

John Leahy

Copyright © 2024 John Leahy

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-88960-940-7 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-955-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Wednesday, September 16Kalamazoo, MichiganAfter tying up a few loose ends, I said goodbye to everyone for the last time, then began the long trek back home to Boston. That is the said part—saying goodbye to those fine people whom you have bonded with for four months. Some guys will be back here, while some guys won't. Joe Ramos has aged out, and he played his final game as a King. Tim Brown will not return in 2010 either. (By the way, Tim beat me in the chess tournament we had all summer.) I'll miss those guys. They are more than ballplayers. They are friends—for life.As for me? I'll do what I do every year. I'll take same time, reconnect with my wife, and ponder the future. Whether I'm back here in Kalamazoo or not, one thing is certain—I'll be broadcasting baseball somewhere again. I love it too much not to.EpilogueThe Lake Erie Crushers went on to defeat the River City Rascals three games to two to win the Frontier League Championship. The Rascals won the first two games before the Crushers rallied to win the next three, including the deciding game 5 at T. R. Hughes Ballpark.John returned home to broadcast Merrimack College ice hockey, joined by a new color commentator, Mike Machnik of College Hockey News. Merrimack finished sixth in the regular season standings and lost two games to one to Boston University in the first round of the Hockey East playoffs. It was their first playoff appearance in six years.Over the winter, in February of 2010, John was named the play-by-play voice of the Florence Freedom after the Kings chose not to retain his services for the 2010 season, which ultimately was to be the final year of the team's existence.About the AuthorJohn Leahy is a professional sportscaster who has done play-by-play since 1995. He spent sixteen years broadcasting Minor League Baseball for teams in Michigan, Kentucky, and Massachusetts and has been the play-by-play voice of Merrimack College hockey since 2005.

Foreword

After thirty-three years of broadcasting games for the Montreal Expos, I was given the opportunity to keep my passion for baseball alive with the Quebec City Capitales of the Can-Am League. It was during my first year with the Capitales that I met John Leahy, who was broadcasting the games for the North Shore Spirit. We struck up a friendship almost immediately as we both share a passion for our work. John always shows up early for the games. He talks with players, coaches, managers, and front-office people. He never hesitates to share information with fellow broadcasters or writers. He searches the Internet on a daily basis in order to keep his listeners well informed. Most of all, he never hesitates to double-check information with people in the know. When he moved to Kalamazoo, we kept in touch, and I was honored when he asked me to write a foreword for Living a King's Life. As you read it, you will discover that broadcasting baseball is much more than showing up in the booth five minutes before the first pitch. There is a lot of work involved. But as with me, John enjoys every minute of it.

Jacques Doucet

Montreal Expos Broadcaster 1972–2004

Quebec City Capitales 2006–2009

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is far from an individual accomplishment. I would like to thank the following people for their assistance with this project: Fran Riordan, who set aside time for me on a daily basis and was truly as valuable a friend a person in baseball could have; Joe Rosenhagen, general manager during the 2009 season, who showed enough belief in my work to have me back behind the microphone again; Jay Morris and the folks back at 1660 the Fan in Kalamazoo, who were steady as a rock behind me all season and introducing me to a great new technology that I fell in love with; all my fellow broadcasters in the Frontier League, a great group of guys who made it fun to come to work every day; Jacques Doucet, the legendary voice of the Montreal Expos for over thirty years, who continues to be my greatest role model in baseball broadcasting; and lastly, and most importantly, my wife and best friend Lori-Ann, who made an incredible sacrifice for the second year in a row, holding down the fort back home while I continued to pursue the work I love. She is my rock and my strength. I have no bigger means of inspiration. I love you all.

Introduction

I'm John Leahy, and I broadcast sports for a living. I would like to welcome you to a journey, a special journey, through a season of baseball as seen through the eyes of a broadcaster. What you are about to read is a day in the life of a professional baseball club, specifically the journey of the 2009 Kalamazoo Kings baseball club of the Frontier League of professional baseball as seen from my spot in the broadcast booth. So many North American baseball fans watch our national pastime and see only the action on the field. But trust me when I tell you there is so much more to being involved with baseball than just that. What I would like to accomplish in this book is to take you up close and give you a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes to the best of my ability. I'll take you into the clubhouse and into the front office of a minor-league team and show you what I saw and heard all from my seat in the radio broadcast booth. And most importantly, we'll go down on the field, day by day, and tell the story of the 2009 Kalamazoo Kings. I hope this book will be as fun for you to read as it was for me to write it.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Kalamazoo, Michigan

I arrived in Kalamazoo yesterday after a two-and-a-half-day journey from my native Massachusetts to begin my 2009 season as the voice of the Kalamazoo Kings. The journey was a pleasant one, winding through such cities as Buffalo, New York; Erie, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; and Detroit, Michigan. To be sure, it is a long, exhausting trip, but I never seem to mind. The excitement of another season of broadcasting baseball always makes it worth the effort to get here. Last year, I made the trip for the first time and marveled in the sights—the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, a beautiful museum right on Cleveland's waterfront, and the always awesome Niagara Falls near Buffalo, to name a few. I have only been to the US side, but I have heard great things about the Canadian side too.

After settling my personal affairs, I drove down to our ballpark, Homer Stryker Field, for my first visit of 2009 in which I made my first contact with the coaching staff. I will once again have the good fortune of working with Fran Riordan, considered by many to be one of the best managers in the minor-league game. To say Fran loves and embraces the game is an understatement. As a player, he holds several Frontier League records, and he also has a citizenship award named after him. I met Fran for the first time last year. And not only are we great friends, we share a common bond—Fran played for the North Shore Spirit (Lynn, Massachusetts) in 2003, a team for which I broadcasted for from 2005 until their final season in 2007.

Fran will be assisted this season by John Sexton, who will serve as our pitching coach. John had the same role last season for the Traverse City Beach Bums, who play in our league as well and are our in-state rivals. He will replace Joe Thomas, who stepped away to spend time with his new family this season. The coaching staff promises to be a good one—a nice mix of technical knowledge and experience.

Today's meeting was to reacquaint with Fran. I talked with Fran about his thoughts on what we could expect this season and to meet John for the first time. There was a tremendous amount of optimism that rang out in Fran's voice about this season. And you could tell that he felt there was unfinished business from his demeanor. You see, last season, we advanced to the championship series here in the Frontier League, only to be swept by the Windy City Thunderbolts three games to none. Granted, last year we missed out on playing two home games in that series due to flooding of our field, but we felt we could have played better on their field and won it. So needless to say, this team will be motivated.

Let me tell you about the Frontier League, the league we play in. It is a twelve-team league spilt up into two divisions of six teams each. The Frontier League is one of six independent leagues in North America. Independent teams have no affiliations to Major League Baseball. The league lost one team to contraction from last season, the Chillicothe Paints, who played in Chillicothe, Ohio. They will be replaced this season by the Lake Erie Crushers, who will play in Avon, Ohio, just outside Cleveland. So the divisions will look like this:

Eastern Division—Florence (Kentucky) Freedom, Kalamazoo (Michigan) Kings, Lake Erie (Ohio) Crushers, Midwest (Michigan) Sliders, Traverse City (Michigan) Beach Bums, Washington (Pennsylvania) Wild Things.

Western Division—Evansville (Indiana) Otters, Gateway (Illinois) Grizzlies, River City (Missouri) Rascals, Rockford (Illinois) River Hawks, Southern Illinois (Illinois) Miners, Windy City (Illinois) Thunderbolts.

The league's season runs from late May to Labor Day, with the playoffs extending another one to two weeks from there. We finished tied for the league's best record in 2008 at 60–36 with Windy City, and we won the Eastern Division title. We defeated Gateway in the first round in 2008 three games to one before losing in the finals to Windy City. The first two games of that series were supposed to have been played at Homer Stryker Field, our home ballpark, but severe flooding forced the entire series to be moved to Crestwood, Illinois.

To finish the day's events, I met with some of the players from a year ago. This is the closest-knit group of athletes I've ever been around. But more than that, they are good young men of exemplary character. I connected today with John Brownell, one of our key starters on the mound; Brandon Anderson, our speedy outfielder from Massachusetts; Jeff Grose, our center fielder from New Jersey who possesses a cannon for an arm; Simon Williams, another outfielder from Portland, Maine, and a truly carefree spirit; Randy Moley, a reserve outfielder from Buffalo, New York; and Joe Ramos, our veteran second baseman from San Diego, California. After talking with these guys, I feel this will be a special season.

Friday, May 15

Kalamazoo, Michigan

I talked with Fran today, and he mentioned to me that Brandon Parillo, our closer from a year ago, might start for us this season. Parillo is one of the hardest-throwing pitchers I've ever seen—not to mention that he is a bulldog for a competitor. It's always a mystery to me to wonder about whether it is harder to go from starter to reliever or vice versa. We have a pitcher on our roster, John Brownell, who made the successful transition from reliever to starter last year. If Brownie could do it, I'm sure Parillo could do it too. I have even more confidence in him because he started when he was in the Milwaukee Brewers organization.

I got a look at the field conditions, and I was amazed at how much better the field looks compared to the flood damage at the end of last season. Just before the Championship Series started a year ago, two days of torrential rains pummeled the Kalamazoo area. The field was literally underwater. The bullpens, the infield, the outfield, you name it—it looked like a lake. As I look at it today, the only part of the field that looks in tough shape are the dugouts, which sustained serious structural damage. I am hopeful that those problems