How About Those Announcers?

By Michael Walsh

Two out, bottom of the first, no score. Here's Canseco, who homered off Hurst in Game 1. The left-hander sets and deals. Canseco swings and it's hit deep to center, way back . . . Home run, Jose ("Can You See") Canseco! A's lead the Sox, 1-0!

What a blast. Every baseball fan's fantasy is to be Jose Canseco, launching a 500-ft. moon rocket in the fourth game of the American League Championship * Series. But what's the next best thing to doing it? Why, calling it, of course.

Welcome to Fantasy Play-by-Play. "Ever since the first baseball broadcast, fans have said, 'That bum doesn't know what he's talking about. I can do better than that,' " says Fantasy founder Fred Greene, 33, a rabid A's fan who last season brought his dream to life in a box overlooking first base at the Oakland Coliseum. For $50, any Tom, Dick or would-be Harry Caray can announce a full inning of baseball with all the electronic panoply of a network broadcast booth. And this year for the first time -- at a premium of $75 -- you can do an inning of the World Series.

Video monitors, instant replay, cue cards -- it's just like the real thing. Except nobody hears it but you. A TV camera records your every utterance for videotape, and when your inning is up you get a cassette of your performance as well as two tickets to another game. Bring a buddy to do color commentary! Amaze your friends! Appall your mother! No holds are barred, no sentiments bleeped, no expletives deleted. The ump blows a close play at the plate? Give 'im hell.

Or don't. Check out Jimmy Freeman, a reliever for the Clayton Valley (Calif.) Cubs. Jimmy, 12, was cool as he took the mike last week for the ninth inning of the final play-off game between the A's and the Red Sox. "And he walked him," said Jimmy as relief ace Dennis Eckersley delivered ball four to Spike Owen. But the Eck got out of the jam when he popped up Jody Reed, and suddenly Jimmy dropped all objectivity. "The game is over!" he shouted. "The A's have won the pennant! Dad, you owe me five bucks!"

Jack Curry, 42, a San Mateo, Calif., bar owner, indulged his fantasy last June. "I was kinda nervous before my inning, sitting up in the stands practicing my home-run call," recalls Curry, who grew up listening to Red Barber. "The Yankees came up, and the first two slugged homers. I had lockjaw and just kinda mumbled something."

Greene, a radio producer who used to work on A's broadcasts for station KSFO, San Francisco, this year added the Pittsburgh Pirates to his service and got a beer company to help defray costs in exchange for a plug. Eventually he hopes to expand to all 26 major league parks. So far, most of the media Mittys are male, but females are also starting to find their way into the booth. "Women announcers are generally quite good," says Greene. "The difference is they seem to take more of an interest in the aesthetics of the % players' physiques."

How 'bout that? You can hear it now: One out, no score. Here's Canseco, who homered off Hurst in Game 1. Will you look at the glutes on that guy!

With reporting by Dennis Wyss/Oakland