Moving ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” into a minor league ballpark comes with its production challenges, but it’s a small price to pay for the unique content that flows with it.
From the moment the Mets and Phillies arrive in Williamsport, Pa., on Sunday for the Little League Classic that night, ESPN will have cameras on them as they board buses and head to the Little League complex. Some players will be mic’d up as they go watch games in the Little League World Series and interact with kids, hours before they actually play in their own game at 7 p.m.
“That whole day of activity is vastly different than any other game approach,” said Phil Orlins, the senior coordinating producer of MLB on ESPN, who oversees production for the Little League Classic. “In some ways, the most memorable images [last year] really came from the players — Josh Harrison, [Andrew] McCutchen, Tommy Pham — and all the things they did at the Little League complex during the day. It’s a really nice game and a really cool atmosphere, but it does become a baseball game, whereas the whole day is a little bit of a festival of major leaguers visiting with Little Leaguers and kids in a very open, comfortable atmosphere.
“I would probably say that’s the most unusual element of this and actually provides the most memorable images — Tommy Pham last year buying snow cones for 200 Little Leaguers, stuff like that.”
Bowman Field, home of the Williamsport Cutters of the New York-Penn League, will play host to an MLB showdown for the second straight year. The Cardinals and Pirates played in the inaugural game last season while the Mets and Phillies will take center stage Sunday night.
The NL East rivals come with the bonus of having a combined three players on their rosters who once played in the Little League World Series themselves: Todd Frazier, Michael Conforto and Phillies utilityman Scott Kingery. That opens plenty of doors for content on the broadcast for Matt Vasgersian, Alex Rodriguez and Jessica Mendoza.
“When you’re looking at Todd Frazier or Conforto or those guys, you got all the video from them playing in Williamsport, you’ve got the cute little introductions when they say who their favorite player is, you’ve got all these tools to work with,” Orlins said.
They won’t be the only flashbacks featured during the game, though. The production crew is still working on collecting youth baseball pictures of all 50 players who will be on the rosters Sunday night.
The rest of their job of fitting a major league production inside a minor league park is manageable. Much of the ground work was taken care of last year, but the crew will begin setting up for the broadcast in Williamsport on Friday.
“It’s got some wrinkles to it, but we deal with harder things in the course of this industry,” Orlins said.
With Bowman Field’s normal broadcast booth being barely big enough to fit two people, the announcing crew will move into the crowd for a more open workspace.
Another challenge of the small park is finding the right spots for the core baseball camera angles, which was solved last year by moving them to the roof of the stadium. In addition to intimate positions close to the field, the crew also has more flexibility beyond the outfield wall with no seats to contend with.
“On balance, I would say the shots are considerably better than we would get in a typical major league ballpark,” Orlins said.
ESPN has a full slate of baseball and special coverage from Williamsport scheduled for Sunday, beginning with a Little League game at 9 a.m. and concluding with Mets versus Phillies.