The master has put down his mic. Now it’s time for the apprentice, a rather savvy and prepared apprentice, to pick it up.
Steve Klauke called his last baseball game a couple of months ago, having sat in the Bees’ broadcast booth, weaving his poetry into his stories, for just shy of three decades. Whether you cared if Salt Lake’s Triple-A club won a game over the team from Round Rock or Reno or Vegas or Albuquerque didn’t matter. Here’s what did matter — Klauke’s voice carried over the airwaves into the summer night, into the car, into the den, through the radio speakers into the minds of Utahns, where they could beam the clear pictures he painted up on the big screens in their brains, drawing from them the best gift a baseball announcer can give.
Comfort. A feeling of being a kid again.
That will be his replacement’s greatest challenge, to give that same gift in his own way, however he can.
The fellow now called to the role and the opportunity, appropriately enough, is Tony Parks.
You’re likely familiar with Tony’s voice by now. He’s sat in for Steve in the booth some 50 times in the past. He’s called other kinds of games in other sports. He’s hosted radio shows. He’s fired off his opinions. He’s done his bang-on impressions of folks like Hot Rod Hundley and David Locke and Lou Holtz and many more. Having grown up in Chicago, he’s rooted for his Cubs, his Bears, his Michigan Wolverines. Congratulate or forgive him for those allegiances, as is necessary. He characterizes them as “massive.”
The significant thing here is that Parks is the right person to take Klauke’s rather large and legendary seat in the booth, and if you don’t already know why, you soon will.
One reason is the man’s passion. He’s got it by the mittful. He learned the game as a youngster from his mom, Cindy, a baseball expert and purist, alongside listening to the tones of old-time WGN Cubs broadcasters Harry Caray and Steve Stone. Parks sat with his mother for as many games as possible, watching, listening, absorbing the game’s basics and its nuances, breaking them down.
(Salt Lake Bees) Tony Parks will take over broadcasting duties for the Salt Lake Bees next season. Longtime broadcaster Steve Klauke retired at the end of last season.
“You won’t find a more passionate sports fan than my mom,” Parks says.
He’s right there with her.
“My passion for baseball is at 100,” he says. “It’s a part of me. I love the strategies, the historical players, the current players, the trends, all of it.”
Another reason fits snug with that — his knowledge. Parks is beyond familiar with the game, not just Shohei Ohtani’s, but Steph Curry’s, Patrick Mahomes’, Connor McDavid’s. He probably knows Joe Root’s game, too. I have no clue who Joe Root is, I think he plays cricket, but I’d count on Parks to know him, probably his season and career stats, as well as his backstory.
That’s what you get with the 41-year-old Parks.
I’ve known him for years, listened to him, done shows with him, argued with him, learned from him, laughed with him, cried with him. I’ve stood outside of sports venues having long discussions with him, talking about sports, about issues of all kinds, about friends and family and loyalty and disloyalty, about silly little things and the things closest to the dude’s heart.
He’s the right person to tell us all what’s going on with the Bees as it pertains to the details of a specific game and as it’s framed up with baseball’s tradition, and the history of so many other sports. He’ll do that with enthusiasm and with abundant preparation and happiness.
“Steve Klauke set a standard for 29 years,” he says. “Not a minor league standard, his broadcasts were at a major league level. It’s a privilege to continue that standard. I won’t settle for anything less. He never made it about him. He told stories about the players, about the game. He and I won’t be the same broadcaster, but the standard will never come down.
“I love it. I love it so much.”
So when the new voice comes through the speakers on a sweet Utah summer night, night after night after night, when it comes off the crack of a bat or the pop of a slider into the catcher’s mitt or as the ball sails over the wall in left-center, it will inform everyone of what’s going on and, more importantly, it will register with the frame of reference, the nostalgia in the listener’s mind.
That’s cool. That’s what Tony Parks will do. He’ll bring something that is far too scarce these days, inside and outside of sports, to the ears and the baseball soul of anybody who tunes in.
Comfort.
