Yea, I’ve been a Benetti critic and still struggle with some of the game broadcasts, although I think he has been far better this year.
This article is fantastic and a great read into who Benetti is as a person not just a broadcaster. It would be great to sit down over a beer and talk baseball because it is also very clear he knows the game and does a great job in drawing information out of his partner, Dirks, Petry etc.
# Detroit Tigers don’t have perfect TV broadcast — but it sure is fun to watch
Full article at link.
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Benetti, a talented broadcaster, can capture a big moment with the best of them but his true gift is how he always seems to bring something else. A slice of the unexpected,whether it’s a pop culture reference, a joke or just an unusual take.
Sometimes, you get it. Sometimes, you don’t.
Either way, it’s entertaining and compelling.
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Wanting the best
To fully appreciate how we got here and how Benetti ended up calling Tigers games – when he’s not doing college football or basketball or some Fox national baseball game or even the Lions preseason home games – you have to go back to 2023, when the Tigers broadcast situation was a mess of uncertainty. Diamond Sports Group – the owner of Bally Sports, broadcaster of Tigers games – had filed for bankruptcy. The situation was so unsettled, there were times the Tigers didn’t know if they would have to take it over.
The Tigers did extensive research with their fans and found there were issues with the broadcast.
“We had something that we knew needed to improve,” said Ryan Gustafson, president and CEO of Ilitch Sports and Entertainment.
Tigers owner Christopher Ilitch had a clear directive: “He wanted the best television broadcast possible,” Gustafson said.
Ilitch decided to invest in the broadcast when other teams were cutting costs – with uncertainty across baseball spread by the money woes of Diamond, which carries the majority of MLB broadcasts – and the Tigers decided to hire a broadcaster to work for the organization, instead of one employed by Bally. Or FanDuel. Or whoever might come next.
The next key? Italics added by frm
It was Dan Dickerson, actually.
The Tigers brass went to Dickerson, the team’s talented radio broadcaster for more than two decades, with a request: We want to go after a national TV guy. We know he might miss some games. Would you be willing to move into the booth when he’s gone?
For years, Dickerson was reluctant to do TV because he loves the magic of a radio broadcast, the rhythm and beauty and poetry of it – not to mention the daily challenge of painting a game through words, bringing the action to life.
“I just love radio,” he said. “Your brain works differently.”
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Dickerson thought he would do about a dozen games a season. In 2024, he ended up doing 28.
“It’s worth it to me,” said Dickerson, who has earned a spot on the Mount Rushmore of Motor City broadcasters. “I like that they aimed high. We got Jason freaking Benetti.”
Perhaps Dickerson deserves a spot in the Humble Hall of Fame as well.
Benetti was given an unusual contract with the Tigers. He gets 35 days of “vacation” days during a season; he uses them to bounce around to other sports. He plans to do approximately 127 Tigers games, 15 MLB games on Fox, 15 college football games and probably 30 college basketball games (though those won’t overlap that much with the Tigers in the regular season).
How does he do it?
He shrugged, as if to say, no big deal.
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Benetti works almost constantly, bouncing between sports, going anywhere there is a TV camera and a game because he loves the team nature of doing a TV game, being around other creative people who want to be great and the rush of adrenaline of nailing a broadcast.
Not to mention, the challenge of doing several sports.
All by a guy who happens to have cerebral palsy.
“If we’re gonna psychoanalyze me, like, don’t tell me I can’t do this,” he said. “I walk with a limp. My eyes don’t look directly straight forward. Like, yeah, I’m gonna get on 300 planes a year. Take that. I bet there was some of that in there.”
But now, it’s so much more than proving doubters wrong. He’s way past that motivation.
“I just love play by play – I love, love, love, love, love, doing games,” he said. “It is like a crossword puzzle but verbal. You need to find the right thing for the right moment. There is no perfect, but you’re searching for perfect. You just need to fill in those squares to make sure it all connects, and it can be maddening, but it is phenomenal.”
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Was it all this mixing and matching by design? Not really.
“There is some serendipity to that,” Gustafson said. “But at the same time, part of the strategy for us was, we have somebody like Jason in the seat, let’s go try different types of personalities and skill sets in the analyst role and see what sticks.”
In some ways, the Tigers have built the broadcast team the same way they did the squd on the field: They brought in some projects with different skill sets but with projectable upside, putting them in high-pressure situations and expecting them to grow from it.
That’s how you discover somebody like Dirks, who is fabulous and has an obvious chemistry with Benetti.
“We had some really great people that sort of came together in a unique way,” Gustafson said. “One of Jason’s biggest strengths is his ability to adapt to different people. You’ll see Jason be a different broadcaster when he’s with Dirks than when he’s with Petry. It keeps the broadcast fresh, entertaining and we think we’ve landed in a great place.”
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Going behind the scenes
Let me take you behind the scenes. Way, way behind the scenes.
When I was covering the Tigers on the road earlier this season, more often than not, I would end up eating pregame meals with the Tigers broadcasters – usually, some collection of Benetti, Dirks, Petry, Scales, Johnny Kane and Daniella Bruce, depending on the day or series.
It was like sitting inside an old TV sitcom. The stories and jokes started flying and it was like there was a laugh track running in the background. You think they are entertaining on TV? Or during their impromptu rain-delay Q&A sessions? They are even better in real life.
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And now, the Tigers have a first-place team – with a first-place TV broadcast to match.
The Tigers TV ratings are “through the roof,” according to Gustafson – the second-highest MLB broadcast ratings (behind only the Philadelphia Phillies). Is that because the Tigers have improved on the field or because the broadcast has improved significantly? The answer is yes. To both.
“We have the fifth-most actual viewers, which is remarkable when you think we are the 18th-ranked market size,” Gustafson said. “We are out-viewing the Red Sox and the Cubs and some of these other pretty big markets.”
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Different strokes, different folks
Not everyone thinks the broadcast is perfect.
Some have criticized Dirks and Benetti for their seemingly constant humor that veers wildly from the actual baseball at times. Old-school fans would rather have a “focus on the game” approach.
Benetti is the first to admit they have had good games and bad ones. Good series and ones he’d rather forget. He thinks of the broadcast as a long – incredibly long – TV series.
“A couple months ago, I totaled up the entire run of ‘Ted Lasso’ in minutes, and the entire run of ‘Parks and Rec’ in minutes and a couple other shows,” he said, referencing two popular binge-able TV shows. “This was, I want to say, in late May or early June. We had already done more television than Ted Lasso his entire run.”
They do this without a writer’s room. Without prewritten scripts.
“I say that because you’re just gonna have some moments that you want back,” he said. “But you’re also gonna have easter eggs that are phenomenal, and you’re gonna have to do the entire range of it and just be okay with it.”
Dining with Benetti
Another behind-the-scenes secret?
When they are on the road, Benetti has a habit of taking people out to dinner from the TV crew and the radio side.
“I give Jason a lot of credit for this,” Dickerson said. “It’s brought the two sides together. It’s just like one big unit. It’s interchangeable parts that makes one big team.
“It’s always Italian – good Italian,” Bruce said, smiling.
A word here about Bruce. She is so impressive the way she does her job, working her way through the clubhouse every day, talking to players, getting tidbits she shares on the broadcasts. She’s a true pro. But she credits Benetti for her development.
“As the play-by-play, you are the leader of the broadcast,” she said. “Jason brings us all together and makes us all feel a part of it. We’re all friends outside of this. We hang out on the road. We all really enjoy each other.”
Benetti is quick to praise everybody else – from the director and producer to the camera crew to the reporters to graphics people. Everybody.
“It’s a ton of people,” Benetti said. “It’s a lot of people who make this thing really sing. When it’s really good, it is lively and beautiful.”
All of this change has not been without hiccups. Some were upset when Kane didn’t land a full-time spot on Tigers broadcasts. But the Tigers wanted a reporter who would work for the organization and do both Tigers and Red Wings (also owned by the Ilitches). But Kane couldn’t do the Wings because he is still highly involved with the Pistons.