Mike Wilner: Blue Jays broadcaster enjoying ‘dream job’

Paul Lungen interviews broadcaster Mike Wilner ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays home opener.

For fans of the Toronto Blue Jays, Mike Wilner is a familiar voice. For 17 years, he hosted Jays Talk, a pre- and post-game call-in radio show, and a couple of years ago, he began doing some work in the broadcast booth. Beginning with the 2019 season, Wilner will share the radio play-by-play booth with Ben Wagner. He spoke to The CJN from Dunedin, Fla., where he is covering spring training.

Tell me about your Jewish education. I understand you went to day school growing up.

Yeah, I did. I went to Bialik Hebrew Day School all the way through and graduated from one of their last Grade 9 classes way back when.

I then finished off at CHAT for high school. I thought at the time it was pretty terrific and I came out of it well prepared for university and life beyond.

I made great friends who I still have to this day. I was very happy that I did that and I sent both my kids to Bialik, as well.

Were you involved in baseball as a player back then?

I played softball up until I was 16. Like many Jewish mothers, mine thought that me playing baseball would be too dangerous, so I didn’t get into baseball until I was 16.

I played for eight or nine years after I turned 16 and it was a lot of fun. It was never intense competition, but it was great.

Was baseball always your favourite sport?

Yes. My first memory of a Jays game was in 1978, when my father took me to a bunch of games. I listened to the broadcasts on a little pillow speaker, a little thing I bought at Radio Shack – a speaker I put under the pillow so I could listen to Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth when I went to sleep.

I was also into baseball simulation games. I remember when I was nine or 10, my father created a dice-baseball game for me to play. It was super rudimentary.

I remember when I was 12, we went to a family bar mitzvah in Detroit. My cousins and I were taken to a Toys “R” Us, which we didn’t have yet in Toronto, and I found a game called Statis Pro Baseball. It was a far more advanced baseball simulation game.

When I was 11 or 12, I sat in my room and replayed the entire 1980 Blue Jays season, all 162 games. So yes, I was very geeked out, very early.

What is it about baseball that appeals to you?

I’ve said on the air before that it’s the greatest game ever created by anyone in the history of anything. I love how difficult it is. I love how cerebral it is. I love how there’s meaning in every pitch. There’s so much to look at, to see, so much for me to talk about. It’s a great strategic game and it’s really hard.

The fact that you can master hitting and still miss over half the time is incredible to me. And yet, you see pitchers who will make a little mistake by half an inch and the ball gets hit 480 feet. I think it’s great and it’s full of great history and stories to tell. I think it’s a wonderful game.

When did you realize that you wanted to get into the reporting and broadcasting side of sports?

After I graduated from CHAT, I went to the University of Toronto, with the intent of either being an accountant or a lawyer.

And then, the first week of school, on club day, I saw the radio station and I thought that would be kind of cool. I talked to them and said I liked sports and it would be fun to do sports on the radio. A gentleman named Tim Haffey was the sports director at the time and he said, “Do morning sports on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Come in and do a sportscast at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 and noon.”

It started from there. I remember the lead story in my first sportscast was Ben Johnson giving back his gold medal in Seoul. I remember walking out of the radio station and feeling exhilarated.

I’m sure that almost nobody heard me, but I thought it was really cool to have done this sportscast on the radio.

That summer, I pursued a play-by-play job in minor league baseball and I got one with the Welland Pirates. So I guess somewhere in there, between starting on the radio and doing Welland, I thought, well, I love baseball and this radio thing is a lot of fun, so let’s see what we can do.

What makes a radio broadcast entertaining for the listeners?

First and foremost, the team has to be entertaining. Even the best broadcaster can’t broadcast 162 games and make them exciting. An exciting team makes for an exciting broadcast.

But as far as the broadcasters go, it’s chemistry and a sense of humour and a sense of history and the ability to play off each other. If you’re having fun, then the listener is having fun.

I think it showed last year. Ben Wagner  and I had this immediate great chemistry and we genuinely enjoy each other and have a good time together. If we’re having a good time, the listener is having a good time.

The season is 162 games long, half of them on the road. What is your season like? Is it more glamorous or tedious?

Glamorous is probably the wrong word, though I know a lot of people think it is. It’s more of a grind, but the truth is nobody wants to hear that. While it’s a grind physically, you’re travelling first class all the time, you never have to touch a bag, you’re staying in luxury hotels and you get to travel to wonderful cities across North America.

The worst part of it is being away from my kids, so it’s wonderful that they come down to Florida for spring training, because I don’t know if I could do five weeks without seeing them. The hardest part of the job is saying goodbye to my daughters when we go on a road trip.

It’s a long year. I think I have four days off at home between the end of February and the end of September, but it’s a dream job that I know many people would love to have.

How do the Blue Jays look this year?

They look better than they were last year. It might not be reflected in their record. They might lose as many games as they did last year, but they’re young, they’re athletic, they’re exciting.

There’s a ton of young and up-and-coming talent. It’s going to be a fun and exciting year and hopefully a couple of months in, we’ll get to see Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who is a generational talent and has an opportunity to become a franchise icon.

This team reminds me of the 1982 Blue Jays. They were very young and close to being very good for a very long time. You could see the building blocks. After 1982, the Jays had 11 straight winning seasons and five division titles and they won two World Series. That was a building block year, and this year seems very similar to me.

READ: JEWISH HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL TEAM WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS

Is there a special connection between Jews and baseball?

It feels like it. I know there’s a great documentary, Jews in Baseball, which I’ve saved on my PVR at home. It talks about the connection. Maybe it came from New York City and the huge Jewish community. They had three teams there in the early days and the Yankees and Dodgers had a great rivalry. Maybe it fed that.

Maybe it is because it is a cerebral sport. I really don’t know. But I do know my grandfather was a huge baseball fan and my father was a huge baseball fan. Having grown up in that environment, surrounded by Jews growing up, baseball was always a big thing.

And now that I’m doing this, I put out a lot of hearty mazel tovs on Twitter, which I think is just me having fun, but I get mazel tovs coming back. And I think there is a connection between Jews and baseball and I’m not sure where that came from, but it sure seems to be a thing.

 

This interview has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.

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