Anthony KristensenEvansville Courier & Press
EVANSVILLE — Every day after school, Brandon Gaudin’s family foyer became a big-league ballpark.
Pillows marked the padded fence. An empty paper towel roller became his Louisville Slugger. A taped-up, deflated balloon was his baseball. The surrounding walls were a sold-out stadium and Gaudin was the headliner. Or perhaps better put, he was all of the stars.
Gaudin was Mark Lemke and Terry Pendleton. Lonnie Smith and Greg Olson, Jeff Blauser and Otis Nixon. He was the Atlanta Braves and their opponents.
He didn’t go 162-0. Gaudin wanted his Major League Imaginary Baseball campaigns to be realistic. The Braves won more often than not, but he did what he could to make it lifelike. Gaudin wouldn’t swing the cardboard tube as hard when he was deeper in the order. He had to throw in a loss here and there.
“I knew their lineup by heart. I still know their lineup from the ‘90s by heart, which is probably a sad thing to admit,” Gaudin said. “I would write out the lineup card, keep the score, keep my record on a little legal pad.”
That was his routine throughout middle school.
Gaudin became a Braves fan by watching every game on TBS after attending Game 5 of the 1991 World Series. He embodied his team and every part of the game. Perhaps most importantly, though, Gaudin was also then-commentator Skip Caray. He picked up on his mannerisms and put them in place in the foyer stadium.
“I loved the Braves, obviously, but I really loved broadcasting,” Gaudin said. “That’s what kinda, as silly as it sounds, gave me my start: There in the foyer of my home.”
Decades later, Gaudin’s imagination became reality.
The Evansville native and Harrison High School graduate no longer pretends to be Caray. He stands in the same booth his idol did, calling Atlanta games for Bally Sports with many of the same mannerisms and sayings he used in his foyer.
“I’ve thought about, ‘What would the 8-year-old Brandon say to the 39-year-old Brandon, and how excited would that 8-, 9-year-old kid be?’” Gaudin said. “I remember how cool I thought it would be to be able to announce a Braves game on television.
“I remember that feeling of dreaming.”
Brandon Gaudin’s letter to Skip Caray
An envelope lies buried in the depths of Gaudin’s sock drawer. There are two letters inside: The one he wrote to Caray and his hero’s response.
Gaudin remembers the process clearly. His uncle found the address to Turner Sports, so Gaudin wrote the letter at 13 years old and then checked the mail every day for a return. A few months passed with no word before he found the envelope with the Turner Sports letterhead.
“That was a big moment for me,” Gaudin said. “When I got that letter, it was kind of an affirmation that, ‘Hey, this guy that I watch on TV every night is real. He’s a real person.’ It got me excited to follow in his footsteps.”
Caray had the idea of putting Gaudin’s letter to him in the envelope to send back to him. Gaudin still has both. Gaudin admitted the letter he received didn’t contain anything groundbreaking, but that it was “the unofficial kickoff” in his broadcasting career.
Gaudin started calling high school baseball games on local radio. He covered University of Evansville basketball games at Roberts Stadium before moving up to Butler, his alma mater, on the heels of its first Final Four run. Gaudin followed his time with the Bulldogs with a stint calling Georgia Tech, which put him in Atlanta. He then joined Fox Sports and Big Ten Network. He’s the voice of the Madden NFL video game franchise.
Gaudin loved those jobs, but none of them were the Braves.
It was always in the back of his mind.
“That would be really cool to have that opportunity that I dreamed of as a kid,” he thought. Chip Caray, Skip’s son, who was the Braves’ play-by-play caller at the time, was young and seemed like he’d be there forever.
However, Chip Caray moved to St. Louis to replace Dan McLaughlin on the Cardinals broadcasts.
“My mind just went into overdrive,” Gaudlin said. “‘Oh my gosh, could this open the door?’”
The memories flooded back. The foyer stadium. Being the players. Mimicking Skip Caray.
This was a rare opportunity. These jobs don’t open often, let alone broadcasting your favorite team and fulfilling a lifelong dream. Gaudin applied and was selected for an interview.
He hadn’t dug into his sock drawer and looked at the contents of the envelope in a while, but this was the time. Gaudin wanted to hold it again, and re-read it. The letter he wrote to his hero is dated: frayed, slightly browned with some smudged pencil writing.
“It looks like something from the days of Abraham Lincoln being in office,” he said. “It looks like the historical remains of a once-clean sheet of paper.”
‘Going back and holding that paper, it felt different’
Gaudin was at dinner at 8 p.m. on a Wednesday in Atlanta when his phone rang. The call was from the agent he was working with two days after interviewing for the Braves job.
“I knew it would happen quick,” Gaudin said. “I didn’t know it would happen that quick.”
Gaudin answered.
“I just heard from them,” the agent said, “and they want you to be the guy.”
Then, a three-to-five-second silence.
“I was just kinda taken aback,” Gaudin said. “It just hit me for a second.”
“Are you there?”
There was a strange moment. Gaudin needed to gather himself. His middle-school self prepared for that moment. The foyer stadium was built for it. Gaudin’s time as Mark Lemke and Terry Pendleton and all the others flooded his mind.
Everything was done for this moment.
“It was almost like it was frozen in time where I was flashed back to my childhood self,” Gaudin said. “For a minute there, I was a kid again.”
Gaudin remembered when it was announced that he got the job. He scoured through the sock drawer and uncovered the treasure underneath. Gaudin pulled out the envelope and read the letter he sent to Skip Caray and vice versa.
“Going back and holding that paper, it felt different,” Gaudin said. “For all the times that I picked it up through the years, it felt different and much more emotional. … I don’t know that the weight and impact of holding that letter is ever felt any more than the day that they called me.”
He’s had three firsts since taking the job. The opening Spring Training game made him realize it was real. Atlanta’s opening game, a 7-2 win over the Washington Nationals, was his first MLB game. Braves general manager Alex Anthopulous called him while he was in the elevator, prompting fears he said something that got him in trouble, and asked him to meet by the clubhouse. Anthopulous and manager Brian Snitker gifted Gaudin the official lineup card from the game. Gaudin plans on framing it.
“Congratulations on your first win in the big leagues.”
Then was Gaudin’s first home game. He was calling a game in his home booth, looking at a photo on the wall of Skip Caray. Gaudin still calls back to those moments as a child playing in the foyer, pretending to be the Braves and, most importantly, Skip Caray.
He still uses some of his hero’s phrases and mannerisms, now doing it in the same seat Caray once used. The Braves won in walk-off fashion, prompting Gaudin to pause and let the crowd take over, a moment he imagined when he took the job.
These are the moments that have made him pause and remember this is real, this is his life. The dream he turned into an imagined stage is now his everyday experience.
“It’s crazy to look back on now,” Guadin said. “It’s been a whirlwind. In a lot of ways I feel like I’ve been drinking out of a firehose and am just now catching my breath. It’s been a pretty incredible start.”
