Gay broadcaster makes MLB history with Nationals radio debut
After climbing the minor league ladder, Eric Bach puts in the work during his three game stint with the Nats. The post Gay broadcaster makes MLB history with Nationals radio debut appeared first on Outsports.
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At this point in his broadcasting career, Eric Bach has spent practically every day of the past few summers sitting in press boxes and preparing to call baseball games on the radio.
But when he did that Monday at the start of the series between the Washington Nationals and Atlanta Braves — on the day before his major league debut — that’s when it struck him that his next broadcast would sound different.
“I sat down and they wired me into the headset and the whole audio system. And I think once the game started and I could hear the pop of the glove and the FX in my ears, I was like, ‘Wow, yeah, this is really happening. This is what the major leagues sounds like,” he remembered.
That sensory experience hit him immediately and it was a reminder of why he had worked so hard at his job for years leading up to this moment.
After honing his craft as a play-by-play broadcaster for the minor league Fredericksburg Nationals since 2023, Bach was called up to fill in for three games of this week’s Nats/Braves series. The whole experience seemed to come together in the blink of an eye.
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Bach, who told his coming out story to Outsports in 2019, received the news of his impending MLB debut on Friday, September 12th and had to be ready to go on the air by the following Tuesday. His mind immediately focused on what he needed to do now that he had landed this opportunity.
“The first emotion was, ‘Wow, I have a lot of work in front of me,’” he said.
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He set about doing preparation for the series, putting in “double digit hours” to learn everything he could about the Braves and Nats big league rosters. During that time, Bach realized that the reps he put in during his stint in the minors had trained him to know what to do when he was able to land a big league assignment.
“I’ve been doing this long enough that I know what preparation process works for me. I just had to spend a few more hours than I normally would on the FredNats given that I see the FredNats every single day,” he noted.
When Bach got to Nationals Park on Monday and toured the clubhouse, he met up with several players he had originally got to know in Fredericksburg who were now part of the Washington roster. To a man, they expressed how happy they were to see him get a big league opportunity himself.
Eric Bach starts his MLB game-calling career
Once the first game of Tuesday’s doubleheader rolled around, Bach officially began his major league play-by-play career in the third inning. With all the work he had put in to get to this moment, as Nationals radio legend Charlie Slowes tossed it to him, everything felt comfortably familiar.
“Everyone’s advice was ‘It’s just baseball.’ And it was just baseball. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of baseball games. The only difference was that the audience was a little bit bigger and the players were a little bit better,” he noted, “I tried to just remind myself constantly that this is your wheelhouse. This is what you do for a living.”
Once on the air, Bach nailed the assignment. His cadence was perfect for the rhythm of a baseball game and his excitement in calling standout plays was a natural extension of his style. He also showed an aptitude for incorporating stats and making them sound conversational.
After two innings, Bach threw it back to Slowes and felt a wave of pride and professional satisfaction.
“I think after I threw it back, it was like, ‘Oh, OK, you can do this!’ I mean, I knew I could do it. But it’s one thing to know you can do it and it’s one thing to actually do it. Once I had actually done it, it was like, ‘This isn’t so bad! This is baseball!’” he said.
Eric Bach is a first, as a gay broadcaster, for MLB
As an out gay broadcaster working his first major league assignment, Bach was grateful to be making a bit of baseball and LGBTQ history. First and foremost, though, he remained focused on putting in the work necessary to continue establishing a place for himself at the highest level in the game.
“If me being there helps a community or gives the community a new space to exist in, then that’s just a wonderful bonus part of it for me. But it’s about doing the work as well as you possibly can,” he declared.
Over a whirlwind few days, Bach had a taste of what it’s like for his work to get recognized and rewarded. Throughout the series, the Nationals made him feel welcome, giving Bach the lineup card from his first game and the ball from the first strikeout he called on the air.
“The thing that I’ll remember most is how nice everybody was,” he said, “Major league debuts for anyone—player, coach, announcer—are a big deal for that person. I think that baseball people understand the gravity of a debut so they just went above and beyond to make me feel comfortable.”
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The post Gay broadcaster makes MLB history with Nationals radio debut appeared first on Outsports.
