Quick Hits On Sports Audio Gone Wrong: Dynamite to Deep Left Field

00:00:30 Speaker 1: The idiom to wing it, as in I didn't study for this test, but I'm just going to wing it comes from theatrical slang during the late nineteenth century England, where the phrase was used to describe the improvised performances of understudies who had to fill in last minute for the main actors without having memorized their lines. These understudies would either rely on a prompter standing behind a curtain on either side of the stage called the wings, or they would stand in the wings and attempt to memorize their lines in between scenes. Over one hundred years later, winging it is part of our everyday vernacular, and it's not just used by procrastinators. Some of history's greatest achievements have more or less occurred thanks to someone or a group of someone's winging it. While the achievement of human flight is quite literally due at least in part to wings, I'm not talking about that. Rather, I mean that the Wright brothers, the pioneers that invented the first working airplane, were winging it. Orville and Wilbur actually had five other siblings, and none of them were given middle names. The two were exceptionally bright and despite lacking a degree, Wilbur had plans of attending Yale. Unfortunately, and I swear I'm not making this up. In the mid eighteen eighties, Wilbur was playing in a hockey game when he was violently smashed in the face with a hockey stick wielded by Alliver Crook Hall, a bully and acquaintance of Wilbur's, who years later became a physician and then a serial killer. I mean, what the fak And it wasn't until eighteen ninety nine that the duo took up the pursuit of creating a machine capable of flight. On December seventeenth, nineteen oh three, following years of experimentation, glider prototypes, testing and retesting, the Wright brothers, through sheer ingenuity, creativity, and self taught findings, successfully flew the world's first ever engine powered airplane. Well, it's fair to say they didn't wing it in the same way an improv actor might wing a scene. You have to put yourself in my shoes? How could I not include this example after learning that Wilbur had his front teeth knocked out by a future serial killer in high school. But back to the main topic. When people wing it. The end result always seems to reach an extreme. It could be extremely bad, extremely good, or just extremely entertaining, and that's certainly the case with sports. So on today's Quick Hits episode of Sports Dot MP three, I'll be diving into two iconic soundbites caused by things going a bit off script. A teleprompter malfunction leading to a college student reporter uttering the legendary phrase boom goes the Dynamite, and a solemn mid broadcast apology turned unforgettable play call thanks to the timing of a home run. So sit back, relax, and let's get into it. Our first iconic SoundBite occurred in March of two thousand in the city of Munsey, Indiana, home to Ball State University. Our main character is a student named Brian Collins, an inexperienced freshman who hopes to be a professional sportscaster someday. It's a few months into his freshman year and he's been given a promising opportunity. The regular anchor for Newslink at nine, Ball State University's televised sportscast show was unable to make it, and Brian was going to take his place. The nineteen year old had to have been nervous leading up to the segment, at least in part because he had never hosted a live television broadcast before. Fortunately, even if he completely blanked during the live taping, he could just read off the ever present teleprompter located right behind the main video camera. When the program started and the camera started rolling, the lines on the teleprompter began moving a bit too quickly for Brian to keep up. As it turns out, a different inexperienced operator had messed up and accidentally set the teleprompter to fast forward, leaving Brian live on air with nothing to do but improvise. What followed can only be described as a complete collapse. He stumbled through segments, trailed off mid sentence a few times when he realized the highlights being shown on screen were different than what he was talking about, and went completely speechless a few times. In the middle of this disastrous broadcast, just when it seemed as if all hope was lost, highlights from an NBA game between the Indiana Pacers and New Jersey Nets began to play, and, for some inexplicable reason, during a clip showing Pacers shooting guard Fred Jones, making a very normal, inconsequential three pointer in the first quarter. Out of nowhere, Brian Collins uttered a legendary phrase. 00:05:46 Speaker 2: Playoff hopes. The Nets won the last Sunday's matchup ninety four to eighty five, which left the Pacers one game behind the Chicago in the seventh series spot Let's check out the highlights, Steven Jackson's, David Ridgie Miller's looking good. He shoots a three and it's good. Later he gets the rebound, passes it to the man, shoots it and boom goes to dynamite. The final scores ended up with the Pacers sixty three to the net sixty one. He associated a press of the All American First Sea. 00:06:19 Speaker 1: A few months after airing, a video of the broadcast was posted on YouTube, cementing the embarrassing segment's place among the funniest televised sports bloopers of all time. The aftermath of the incident was remarkable for starters. Brian made a guest appearance on The Late Show later that year with Ball State alumnus David Letterman, and was sent words of encouragement by ESPN anchor Scott Van Pelt. In twenty eleven, he made a guest feature on Tosh Poino's web redemption segment, where he leaned into the infamous broadcast and shared that he was working as a reporter, just not one who covered sports. Brian also revealed the inspiration behind Boom Goes the Dynamite, stating that he came up with the phrase while playing Super Mario Kart with his friends in college. One four minute long YouTube video of his live segment, posted in December of two thousand and five, has garnered nearly thirteen million views, and it's known as one of the most iconic bluebers in sports history. For a reason, the clip is hilarious, though not completely in a look how awful this is way, There's something endearing about how authentic and raw it is. The humor is the juxtaposition between his meager delivery for most of the segments and then out of. 00:07:36 Speaker 2: Nowhere, boom goes the Dynamite. 00:07:39 Speaker 1: For many years, Brian Collins was the undisputed king of sports broadcast bloopers, but the crown is no longer his to wear ever since it was taken during a regular season Major League baseball game on August nineteenth, twenty twenty, the Cincinnati Reds were playing a double header against the Kansas City Royals. Tom Brenneman, a play by play announcer for the Reds, was one of the game's broadcasters for Fox Sports Ohio. During the first game, just before the seventh inning started, Brenneman's microphone was accidentally turned on without him knowing. The mic caught him describing an unknown location, which was later revealed to be San Francisco as one of the quote blank capitals of the world. End quote, the blank being a homophobic three letter slur. Now, just so there are no misunderstandings, what he said was awful. I don't support his views whatsoever, and I don't think it was funny. While Brenneman should have been instantly pulled from the broadcast after the incident, that particular audio was only aired on the MLB's out of market streaming service and not on the game's cable or satellite feeds. As the first game ended, clips of him saying the slur were slowly spreading on social media. And I say slowly because Brenneman hosted the pregame show for the second game and later began providing play by play commentary once it started The consequences for his actions caught up to him at the beginning of the fifth inning of that second game, when he was finally removed from the broadcast and replaced with Jim Day. Immediately before his removal, Brenneman delivered an on air apology. Nick Castianos, an outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds and the first batter up in the fifth inning, had other plans in mind. As Brenneman reaches the approximate halfway point of his apology, Castillanos hit a deep home run, with the ball landing right next to a Planet Fitness billboard displaying the phrase judgment free zone. Its absolute poetry. 00:10:00 Speaker 3: Uh. If I have hurt anyone out there, I can't tell you how much I say, from the bottom of my heart, I'm so very very sorry. I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith. As there's a drive in a deep left field by Costillanos, it will be a home run, and so that'll make it a four to nothing ball game. I don't know if I'm to be putting on this headset again. I don't know if it's going to be for the Reds. I don't know if it's gonna be for my bosses at Fox. I'm gonna apologize for the people who signed my paycheck. 00:10:37 Speaker 1: Unsurprisingly, the resulting audio clip went viral, and it has definitely become the most referenced or at least the most infamous announcer blooper of the last decade. Shortly after the incident, Brenneman was suspended from the Reds and let go from his position on Fox Sports. About a month later, he resigned, and Red's CEO Bob Castellini made a statement in support of Brenneman that in turn caused people to turn the birable clip into copy pasta, which is basically when Internet users past large blocks of text as a reply to anything. In this case, the text was and there's a drive into deep left field by Castillanos. There's one other thing I have yet to mention, a conspiracy that sounds far fetched at first. You see, Nick Castillanos has a weird propensity to hit the ball at very odd, usually unfortunate times. If you don't believe me, don't worry, because I have an entire list of examples. Here we go. July fifth, twenty twenty one, he hits a home run as the Royals broadcast is eulogizing a World War II veteran who died two days earlier at the age of ninety seven. March twenty seventh, twenty twenty two, he makes his first hit as a Philadelphia Philly during a spring training game against the Blue Jays, right as the broadcasters are talking about the apology Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker recently gave for a DUI arrest. May thirtieth, twenty twenty two, he hits a home run on Memorial Day. Not that crazy of a coincidence, but he hits it right as the Phillies announcer is paying tribute to fallen service members. October eleventh, twenty twenty three, he hits his second home run in a Game three of a playoff series, as the broadcaster is sending well wishes to a former Phillies manager who recently suffered a stroke. June eighteenth, twenty twenty four, he hits a game winning home run one hour after the San Francisco Giants announced the passing of baseball legend Willie Mays. July thirteenth, twenty twenty four, he hits two home runs and everything seems fine. Two hours later, Donald Trump is shot in the ear during a political rally. July twenty first, twenty twenty four, he hits a home run deep into left field. Two hours later, Joe Biden announces he's dropping out of the presidential race. September eleventh, twenty twenty four, he hits a home run. Need I say more? That list is just from the past five years. Guess what happened on the day Nick hit his first ever home run in the minor leagues? Well, it was May first, twenty and eleven, the same day Osama bin Laden was killed. One of the core lessons we learned from sports is that preparation is important. You need to practice in order to improve, and if you want to find success, you have to be prepared to do whatever you need in order to achieve that. Sports also teach that preparation can only take you so far, and there will always be moments when, no matter how prepared you are, things don't go as planned. In those moments, like when the teleprompter went turbospeed on Brian Collins, we might completely fail or mess up, and that's okay, so long as we don't give up on trying. Brian obviously didn't crush his appearance as a sportscaster, but he didn't walk off the set or completely stop talking throughout it. He kept trying through the struggle, and it's because of that effort that we are blessed with such a legendary SoundBite. If you know that bloopers are inevitable, it's easier to laugh at yourself when they happen and not take them so seriously. If there's a lesson from the second story, it's probably that you should practice what you preach, not use slurs, and treat others equally. 00:15:26 Speaker 3: And on that. 00:15:27 Speaker 1: Uplifting note, I got nothing else for you, so thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Sports Dot MP three. As always, I'll be back next Thursday with a new episode. See you next week. 00:15:39 Speaker 4: Piece the talk about the under the act don't don't until it's not an alterna