The Fox MLB lead producer role was never on Pete Macheska\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n
Macheska had been producing regular-season baseball games on Fox. But even when he read in the New York Post that his predecessor, Michael Weisman, was departing the top spot in 2004, Macheska said, \u201cI didn\u2019t think anything of it.\u201d <\/p>\n
As it turns out, however, Fox higher-ups \u2014 including David Hill and Ed Goren \u2014 thought Macheska would be the perfect replacement. <\/p>\n
More than two decades later, they were right. <\/p>\n
Later this month, Macheska will be in the truck for his 22nd and final World Series. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had an amazing run, and it\u2019s time for somebody else to have that run,\u201d Macheska, who will remain the lead producer on Fox\u2019s No. 2 NFL broadcast team, told Sports Business Journal. \u201cI will be thrilled as hell next year to be sitting on my couch and watching it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Macheska, who simply grew tired of the October postseason grind after more than two decades at the helm, will be a tough act to follow. <\/p>\n
\u201cI will say definitively he is the best television live event producer for baseball in history. Period. End of story. Nobody has been better, nobody could be better,\u201d said former No. 1 Fox MLB play-by-play announcer Joe Buck, who worked 18 Fall Classics with Macheska from 2004-21. <\/p>\n
Producing memories<\/p>\n
Macheska, a native of New Jersey, learned the craft from John Filippelli, Bill Webb, Goren and Hill. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was put in a position to succeed,\u201d Macheska said. \u201cI was a younger guy doing baseball with Bill Webb, who could basically do the game by himself in the truck. And Joe Buck and [analyst] Tim McCarver were the best to ever do it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Among many career highlights, Macheska wound up producing the curse-breaking championships for both the Boston Red Sox (2004) and Chicago Cubs (2016). <\/p>\n
He was thrown into the fire right away, as the Red Sox became the first team in MLB history to rally back from a 3-0 deficit during the 2004 American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees. <\/p>\n
Macheska recalled McCarver watching Boston\u2019s ninth-inning comeback in Game 4 on a monitor because he\u2019d been sent down to the clubhouse for postgame interviews. \u201cHe was in my ear going, \u2018I shouldn\u2019t be down here,\u2019 and he shouldn\u2019t have. But that\u2019s what we did back then,\u201d Macheska said. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s probably why we got a sideline reporter eventually.\u201d <\/p>\n
Twelve years later, Chicago overcame a 17-minute rain delay in Game 7 to finally capture the title. \u201cThat was unbelievable,\u201d Macheska said. <\/p>\n
Broadcast technology has continued to evolve, but the drama and unpredictability of baseball remains the same. Macheska appreciated that there was no clock involved. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing like the intensity of postseason baseball when everything is on the line,\u201d Macheska said. <\/p>\n
Buck said Macheska\u2019s best quality is his ability to laugh at himself. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t take himself too seriously, but he takes the job seriously,\u201d Buck said. \u201cWe joke all the time that I had to come up with like, a Pete Macheska Rosetta Stone in my headset because he would always mispronounce names to me. Not intentionally. For all his brilliance, for the six years [analyst] John Smoltz was my partner, if you asked Pete, it was John Smalls.\u201d <\/p>\n
When Mike Pereira worked for the NFL and did rule presentations for the Fox NFL broadcast crew, Macheska regularly served as Pereira\u2019s tackling dummy as he demonstrated what was going to be called a penalty in the upcoming season. <\/p>\n
Macheska said he learned about the value of camaraderie during his days as a broadcast associate for John Madden and Pat Summerall from 1987-90. Every Friday night, the crew would play cards, with Macheska sometimes serving as the butt of the joke. <\/p>\n
\u201cBack then we were the lowest men on the totem pole, and John and Pat would make fun of us. That was part of the education,\u201d Macheska said. \u201cIf you can laugh at yourself, it\u2019s easier to get along with people.\u201d <\/p>\n
Joe Davis, who took over for Buck in 2022 and works with Macheska on NFL broadcasts, called him \u201cone of one.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHis super power is his ability to see the next day\u2019s headlines as they\u2019re unfolding and make sure we don\u2019t miss them,\u201d Davis said. <\/p>\n
Brad Zager, Fox Sports president of production and operations, called Macheska \u201ca larger-than-life producer in a lot of different ways.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s so passionate about the craft of producing, and over the last 20-plus years, he\u2019s been so passionate about making sure that the World Series sets a new bar every year and a new standard every time that he goes in the truck.\u201d <\/p>\n
Now, it\u2019s someone else\u2019s turn. Macheska plans to spend more time at his place in Saratoga, N.Y., and play a lot of golf. <\/p>\n
\u201cGod gives you a certain amount of talents,\u201d Macheska said. \u201cSome people are good at sports. Some people are great talkers. I think he gave me good instincts in the truck. That\u2019s what my God-given talent is. And I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to make some pretty good decisions.\u201d <\/p>\n
Three questions with Pete Macheska:<\/b><\/p>\n
What is one of your favorite memories in the Fox MLB truck?<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cWe always used to [do impressions] and I think it was 2011 [the World Series] when \u2018We\u2019ll see you tomorrow night,\u2019 when Joe Buck did [the same call] his father did. We played that clip so many times. And when we\u2019d show him things over the years, we\u2019d say it. We said it a lot. I\u2019d say it in his ear, but it never made the air. So when [David] Freese hits the [walk-off] home run, he said it. And I sort of said, \u2018Huh, that\u2019s terrific. Finally, you used it.\u2019 … He never used it and then finally found the opportunity, and boy, did he use it.\u201d<\/p>\n
How has technology changed over the years?<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cWe went from fighting for interviews to talking to players in the dugout during a game and talking to managers. They were one of the first sports that allowed us to interview a manager during a game, so it\u2019s come a long way as far as the access. Putting cameras on umpires when that wasn\u2019t previously allowed. We\u2019re putting cameras in the dirt to get Base Cam for shots. We\u2019ve gotten super slow-motion cameras that are slowed down so much you can see exactly the impact where a bat breaks.\u201d<\/p>\n
What was your favorite part of doing the role for over two decades?<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nothing like postseason baseball on television. In football and other sports, there\u2019s a clock. When it\u2019s fourth and 1, they either make it or they don\u2019t. It happens once [penalty aside]. In a baseball game, it could be a full count with the bases loaded and a guy fouls it off five straight times. And so that tension revs up and goes away. … [If] you\u2019re a fan of a team, you can feel that tension. Then you release and get nervous all over again. It\u2019s great. You can\u2019t script these things, and they happen over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fox MLB lead producer role was never on Pete Macheska\u2019s radar. Macheska had been producing regular-season baseball…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":299922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[591,41318,1266,4281,62,67,132,8971,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-299921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-fox-sports","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-print","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-upfront","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115366904719012513","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}