The best time to catch Mike Blowers this summer was when he was in his car. The Mariners broadcaster had plenty of time to talk on the nearly hour-long drive from his home in Pierce County to (or from) T-Mobile Park, where he called games during the 60-game regular season.
I wanted to know what it was like to call games without fans and the challenges of going strictly off the monitor for road games. But I also wanted to ask him about one of his first mentors, Dave Niehaus, the revered Mariners broadcaster, who died 10 years ago on Tuesday.
Advertisem*nt
While Blowers, 55, didn’t have the longest working relationship with Niehaus (four years), he did have a unique bond and a great perspective on the most iconic voice of Mariners baseball, a treasure in these parts for the way he called games, telling stories that made you feel like you’d known him a lifetime.
Consider Blowers’ history with Niehaus: He listened and watched Mariners games while growing up in Spanaway, rooting and hanging on Niehaus’ every word as a teenager. Then Blowers formed a professional relationship with Niehaus during his three stints as a player with his hometown team (1992-95, 1997 and 1999). Finally, Blowers joined Niehaus in the television booth, working side-by-side as a color analyst in 2007.
“Junior high and high school, I was a huge fan,” Blowers said. “I would watch and listen. I was well aware who Dave was and what he meant to me growing up. He was the voice of summer in the Northwest.”
Blowers played at Bethel High in rural Pierce County and then Tacoma Community College before finishing his college career at the University of Washington. He was selected by the Expos in the 1986 draft before being traded to the Yankees in 1989. Blowers made his major-league debut that September, and in a game against the Mariners on Sept. 15, he struck out twice against Seattle’s Erik Hanson and his big curveball.
“I guess Dave said I was from Spanaway and went to the UW,” Blowers said. “In Dave’s best way, it was like he was saying, ‘Welcome to the big leagues.’ My family wasn’t happy, but I thought it was really cool.”
In 1991, Blowers was traded to Seattle, where he became the starter at third base in 1993 and started to form a relationship with Niehaus.
“Getting traded here and getting to know him, Dave was always fair and terrific to me,” Blowers said. “I hit a home run in Anaheim, and it was at a point where I’d gotten really hot at the plate, and Dave said something like, ‘It’s unbelievable right now.’ Because it was from Dave, it was super cool.”
Advertisem*nt
When Blowers’ playing days ended in 1999, the team’s radio producer/engineer Kevin Cremin approached Blowers and asked about his future. Not long after, Blowers joined the Mariners’ flagship radio station, KOMO-AM, offering insight as a pregame and postgame analyst. In 2006, Randy Adamack, the Mariners’ vice president of communications, asked Blowers if he wanted to interview for a television job.
When offered the job, Blowers said he was ready to jump at the opportunity — with one considerable caveat.
“I told them that the only way I’ll do the job is if Dave was good with that,” Blowers said. “Dave’s the name. He’s the Hall of Famer, and if Dave is good with it, I’ll take the job.”
Niehaus signed off, and when Blowers arrived in Arizona for spring training in 2007, he was given some quick-and-dirty marching orders from senior producer Curtis Wilson. “He said, ‘Whatever you see, talk about it. Pay attention to what Dave is talking about. Dave will tee you up in the open.”
This was nothing like radio, Blowers told himself. He was nervous. He would have rather taken his chances with those Erik Hanson big benders, but Niehaus sensed the anxiety in the room and did his best to diffuse it.
“He said, ‘Mike, I bet you’re pretty nervous,’ as we’re about the go on-air. I went completely blank,” Blowers said. “He had a joke for me before every broadcast because I was really nervous. He would tell the joke, laugh and then say, ‘3-2-1,’ and he’d go. He was so good at setting a scene. I never saw him prep for it. He just did his thing. That was a real blessing for me.”
The arrangement that first year involved Blowers and Niehaus working the first three innings of each game on television, when Niehaus would switch to radio to work with his old partner, Rick Rizzs. Blowers was learning something new every day, it seemed. Niehaus was always there to help him.
Advertisem*nt
“I learned with live TV that you have to be prepared for anything. It doesn’t always go by the script,” Blowers said. “Dave used to tell me all the time, ‘Hey, if you’re thinking something is going to happen … just say it. Because if it does happen, you’re going to look like a genius.’”
Well, Blowers had his moment of genius on Sept. 27, 2009, when the Mariners faced the Blue Jays. During a pregame segment, Blowers predicted that Matt Tuiasosopo would hit his first career home run in that game. But Blowers went far beyond that. He said that the home run would come in Tuiasosopo’s second at-bat off a fastball from Toronto pitcher Brian Tallet with a 3-1 count — and the ball would land in the second deck.
The ball didn’t land in the second deck. But everything else happened. All of it.
Blowers was working television that day and Rizzs and Niehaus were calling the game on radio. When the count got to 3-1 on Tuiasosopo, the anticipation was palpable. “I’ve never been so excited for a 3-1 count in my life,” Niehaus said. When Tuiasosopo connected for the home run, Rizzs and Niehaus went nuts. “I see the light! I believe you, Mike!”
Today, Niehaus’ voice and memory still resonate with Blowers, as it does with countless others who fell in love with the game by listening to Niehaus or came to adopt him after joining the party late. Gary Hill Jr., the Mariners’ executive producer/engineer, is currently knee-deep in a long project to take old Mariners audio — on reel-to-reel, cassette tapes and compact discs — and digitize it so, among other things, Niehaus’ voice can be preserved for years to come.
“I think it’s so important what Gary’s doing,” Rizzs told The Athletic last year. “People who have been around certainly remember Dave. But I love the fact now that fans who are younger can have a chance to hear that beautiful, melodic voice call games. A generation of fans need to know how good he was … what a great storyteller he was, how he was able to make the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up by creating that drama. Dave made you see and feel the game with your own imagination.”
(Photo of Niehaus and Blowers: Courtesy of Seattle Mariners / Root Sports NW)
