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When sportscaster Jason Benetti ’05 is on the microphone, he treats every game like it is Game 7 of the World Series—ready for anything to happen and prepared to tell the stories of the game.

“Sometimes the best moments are the things you’d never expect in a game,” Benetti says. “You have to be ready for the strategy and the tactics, discussing what pitch might be thrown to this batter or how a manager will handle his bullpen.”

For Benetti, that balance between preparation and the unpredictable is part of the sport’s charm.

“Baseball has this chess feel to it, and then it rapidly becomes like sitting in an airport food court people watching,” he says. “I love that about baseball.”

Benetti’s excitement reached a new level when he called the Cleveland Guardians/Seattle Mariners game on March 29 as part of NBC and Peacock’s new primetime “Sunday Night Baseball” coverage.

“This was an opportunity to be the lead broadcaster on something I grew up watching,” says Benetti, who also serves as the Detroit Tigers TV broadcaster. “‘Sunday Night Baseball’ games always felt like the game of the week. To be the lead announcer for something like this, it truly is the one thing that hadn’t yet happened in my career.”

Benetti, who has called Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Basketball Association and college football and basketball games, dreamt of this moment ever since his agent, Kevin Belbey ’13, G’16, L’16, and NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood broached the subject.

“I get to see a lot more of the league and get to form relationships with players and managers through ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ that I like to think will help with my calling Tigers games. I’m very fortunate,” says Benetti, who earned bachelor’s degrees in broadcast journalism, economics and psychology.

Finding His Calling

Benetti says from an early age he had to navigate the world differently due to how people perceived his cerebral palsy. He has a drifting eye and walks with a limp but doesn’t live with chronic pain or major health complications.

“My hurdles are because I don’t look the same as everybody,” says Benetti, one of the leading advocates for those with cerebral palsy, including working with the to create a YouTube animated video series aimed at promoting awareness and inclusion.

Determined to become a sportscaster since high school, Benetti found his calling as a student broadcaster with .

“WAER teaches so many marvelous things about play-by-play. I wouldn’t be where I am today without Syracuse and WAER,” says Benetti, who called lacrosse and women’s basketball games for WAER.

Baseball Is the Perfect Sport for Sharing Stories

Benetti holds deep admiration for broadcasting legends like Vin Scully, Bob Costas and Ernie Harwell, who called Tigers games for 42 years.

Benetti and his broadcast team like to bring the fans into their telecasts, showing them attempting to catch a foul ball or sampling ballpark treats. Benetti will often say “message and data rates may apply” when featuring fans, because “anybody in the crowd can be a star, and when we show people on TV, their phones will blow up.”

Honoring a Broadcasting Legend

Calling Detroit’s playoff-clinching, 4-1 victory over the Chicago White Sox on Sept. 27, 2024, stands out as Benetti’s favorite baseball broadcasting moment. He paid homage to Harwell, who said a batter “stood there like a house by the side of the road” whenever he struck out.

Benetti was listening to Harwell’s old broadcasts as the season wound down, and as Tigers players and fans celebrated, Benetti told the audience that the rest of the American League “stood there like the house by the side of the road and let the Tigers go by.”

“That fan base hadn’t seen the team make the playoffs in a long time. There was so much joy and beauty watching the fans experience that playoff-clinching moment at Comerica Park,” Benetti says of the Tigers, who earned their first playoff berth in 10 years. “It’s a beautiful thing being able to connect history to the moment now.”