Pirates play by play announcer Greg Brown in the booth at PNC Park (Christopher Horner/Tribune Review) In the end, Brown believes it wasn’t the news talk that got him his job with the Pirates, but rather doing color commentary for the Buffalo Bills in the 1990s, a stretch that included the Bills going to four consecutive Super Bowls. It was very exhilarating and exciting for me.” Can you handle it until he gets there?’ I said, ‘Absolutely’. We want to stop talking sports right now. Our program director called me and said ‘We’re trying to get the news talk guy into the studio to go into full-blown coverage of the war. “I just happened to have finished my sports talk shift when it happened. “I was on the air when the United States invaded Kuwait under the first President Bush,” Brown said. Ironically, it was a non-sports event that was one of the biggest moments of his young career. He went on to do minor league baseball, hockey and basketball games, and also did sports talk radio and news talk radio. In Pittsburgh, Brown did stats, promo work and voice-overs and even was the public address announcer at Three Rivers Stadium. I don’t know how realistic it was, but I thought that would be the ultimate.”ĭespite being with the Pirates in non-broadcasting roles for a decade, Brown still had to work his way up through the business to achieve his dream. After high school, it became a real dream.

I never thought of myself as an announcer until I started working for the Pirates and got to know Lanny and Jim Rooker. “Truthfully, I would’ve been a peanut vendor. “If I could just someday work for the Pirates, somehow, someway,” Brown said. He enrolled at Point Park College, and set his sights on working for his favorite team. When Brown realized he wasn’t going to be able to make it as an athlete, he shifted his focus to broadcasting, specifically for the Pirates. “When were playing against me, I would be announcing the game.” “When I was playing sports on the playground, not only was I playing but I was also announcing,” Brown said. Louis, and even NFL announcers Merrill Reese with the Eagles and Joe McConnell with the Bears.Įventually, Brown began to impersonate his favorite broadcasters. He also began to realize who he enjoyed hearing call the games most, including the likes of Pirate announcers Milo Hamilton and Lanny Frattare, Harry Kalas in Philadelphia, Chuck Thompson in Baltimore, Jack Buck in St. The future voice of the team was able to enjoyed some of his favorite players from Willie Stargell and Dave Parker to Omar Moreno and Kent Tekulve. I went to as many as I could from that point forward.” That kind of set me on the path to want to go to more games. I thought it was so cool to be at a major league game. I remember just loving that experience, the atmosphere. I remember being in the upper deck with not very good seats.

It was not long after Three Rivers Stadium opened that I went to my first game. He promised me that if I listened to the doctors and nurses, he would take me to Pittsburgh with him on a trip and we’d see a baseball game. “I broke my elbow off my bicycle and was in traction for two weeks in the hospital. “My father would have business in Pittsburgh often,” Brown recalled. Not long after, around the age of 10, Brown fell in love with the Pirates with help from his dad. I became transfixed watching this video of what I thought was poetry in motion. It was one of those things that was in slow-mo and they set it to music. “I remember vividly watching one of those NFL Film videos of Gale Sayers. “The earliest sports memory I have is I became a Chicago Bears fan when I was about eight years old,” Brown said. Brown will tell you, though, just being able to broadcast for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team of his childhood, is a dream he never thought could have come true.īrown grew up in central Pennsylvania, and despite him now being most associated with baseball, it was football that was Brown’s first love. Yet, despite all the losses, the one win Pirates fans have been able to count on for almost three decades has been the voice of their franchise, Greg Brown.īrown, set to begin his 28th year with Pittsburgh, has called the third-most Pirates broadcast games in club history and will be behind the mic once again for the upcoming 2022 season. Last season was the fifth year in the past six that the Pirates have finished the season with a losing record. The Pirates had 20 losing seasons after that infamous game in 1992. Greg Brown preparing for a Pirates in the broadcast booth in DetroitĪs Sid Bream slid across home plate, sending the Pirates home in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS, in slid what has now been nearly 30 years of losing baseball in Pittsburgh.

Color announcer