It was raining cats and dogs, absolute hammers and nails, in Dunedin one recent late afternoon when the Blue Jays were set to begin their final 2026 series against the Tampa Tarpons in the city variously known as Cigar City. Or The Big Guava.
Or Tampa.
Dunedin’s skies were sunny all day, and while mysterious thunder echoed throughout the area, it would have been a fine day to play two at TD Ballpark.
The Birds were finishing their regular season on the road, though, and unless fans wanted to fight traffic for the 4 p.m. start of what was supposed to be a double header at George M. Steinbrenner Field, they’d have to find another way of keeping up with their boys.
Fortunately, the MiLB app allows diehards to tune in to the team’s game streaming, and the Blue Jays’ Eli Fishman proved to be a fine companion as he and Florida State League Hall of Fame former manager Dennis Holmberg called what turned out to be a single game that day as Dunedin’s precipitation eventually hit Tampa and doused game two.
When the heavens opened up in “Dogedin”, there was no reason to think anybody was playing baseball anywhere, so only the closest followers knew about the 4 p.m. start and it wasn’t hard to miss the first inning or so of the first contest.
Listening to radio, er, streaming, broadcasts of baseball games is a singular pleasure of the former National Pastime. Other sports are too abstract, sometimes too fast, for a leisurely listen. They become white noise on the radio, but calling a good baseball game requires a precise sense of pacing and banter, an innate ability to know when silence is golden but also when a slowdown in action calls for a fill-in anecdote or game factoid.
Baseball, with its ancient echoes of dozens of dulcet tones of old storytellers like the Detroit Tigers’ Ernie Harwell, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Vin Scully and the Milwaukee Brewers’ Bob Uecker, has been part of the American summer soundtrack since the first radio broadcast when Harold Arlin called the Pittsburgh Pirates-Philadelphia Phillies game from Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field on KDKA in 1921.
Fishman, a hard-working young dynamo and baseball devotee who is the Blue Jays’ Broadcast and Media Director, is far too young to join the likes of the San Francisco Giants’ Jon Miller or the Phillies’ Harry Kalas in the baseball broadcast pantheon. But his fluid delivery and deep knowledge not only of the FSL and the Blue Jays but of baseball itself kept listeners well-informed of the day’s proceedings and held attention throughout the rain-shortened seven-inning match-up.
Fishman’s voice is youngish, though not any more so than the new generation of announcers. Age, experience and perhaps bourbon will deepen his tone over time.
Holmberg, whose low-key, avuncular delivery serves to slow things down a bit from Fishman’s more rapid-fire delivery, added color and the occasional, if unnecessary, affirming “yeah” to Fishman’s commentary and play-calling.
It should be noted that as Fishman and Holmberg called the streaming game, some listeners were also watching the silenced Boston Red Sox-Seattle Mariners game on MLB.TV. For the Blue Jays’ pair to keep attention focused in Tampa audibly rather than Boston visually is a feat in itself. (It should be further mentioned that an endlessly understanding and patient spouse/partner is required when two different baseball games on two different media are crowding the living room.)
In the end, Dunedin’s rain reached Steinbrenner Field, and they rolled out the tarps with one strike left in the final seventh inning. The Tarpons won 4-0, and game two was rained out.
But the pair left no doubt that when play resumed, they’d be there to call the action.
It was comforting to know, even if Major League pennant race distractions prevented a return to the stream.