It was the fourth of July and The Lansing Lugnuts had scheduled an earlier game to avoid overlap between the city of Lansing fireworks show and the baseball game happening that night. However, an extended injury timeout delayed an already long game and before long fireworks were the unintended ambiance for the final innings of the game.
In the ninth inning, a Lugnuts batter hit a game winning home run into a field appropriately engulfed by fireworks. The stadium erupted in cheers with ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ playing. Broadcaster Jesse Goldberg-Strassler watched in awe from the broadcasting booth.
Goldberg-Strassler retold the events to the MIPA students in attendance at the Monday night press conference. He was visiting MIPA to share his broadcasting experience with the next generation of journalists and students in attendance had the opportunity to ask him any questions they may have about his journey.
Goldberg-Strassler is the voice of the Lansing Lugnuts Baseball team from April to September, and Central Michigan’s Women’s Basketball team from November to March. Goldberg-Strassler has also broadcasted for the Montgomery Biscuits, filled in for Lansing Sports talk radio and even did a play by play of Jesus Christ Superstar for the visually impaired.
But before Goldberg-Strassler ever stepped foot in Lansing, he was a high school theater kid. Believing acting was not a viable career option, he set his sights on sports broadcasting and attended Ithaca College.
“At Ithaca College, a DIII school, they said we will put you on the air your very first week here on campus” he said “And I needed that time. I needed the experience. I needed to be bad in order to figure out my voice.”
In college, Goldberg-Strassler was told he could be the voice of a baseball team. But he had no idea what that meant or if it could be a reality. But he was determined to figure it out.
One winter in Baltimore, Goldberg-Strassler went in to shadow a local sports reporter at WBAL and left with his first internship.
“I said, ‘Can I just come? Can I see you work?’ And the morning that I arrived, one of the other sports reporters there was sick, and they looked at me short handed, and they said, Do you have the skills? And I had those skills. I had learned them in college. And so immediately I had my first internship, just from a shadow and someone getting sick,” he said.
Goldberg-Strassler joined the Lansing Lugnuts in 2009 in charge of media relations and broadcasting. In his tenure with the Lugnuts, he has been honored with Midwest League Broadcaster of the Year in 2013 and Ballpark Digest’s Minor League Baseball Broadcaster of the Year in 2019.
For Goldberg-Strassler, broadcasting is a continuous learning process. In Montgomery, Alabama he learned to drop his Gs. His inner theater kid still believes in a script, whereas as a broadcaster he strives to be authentic.
“Within broadcasting, [getting lost in a performance] is something that I’ve been fighting for years, where I listen back to my past stuff and I go, this is fake. This is me trying to act like a broadcaster, changing my voice, delivering things. This is not real, and I’m continually striving to be more real.”
In his experience as a broadcaster, Goldberg-Strassler preaches preparation.
“I have this life where people trust that I can do things, and I have gigantic imposter syndrome,” he said. “I do not subscribe to the fake it till you make it. I need to believe that I can do something. I need to prepare, to know that what I’m getting into that I’m prepared and ready for it. Preparation is right. Mindset is right.”
As a broadcaster, Goldberg-Strassler travels with his teams to every game. He has fallen in love with cities from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Chicago.
“I went to Spokane, Washington and loved it,” he said. “I had no idea I would love Spokane, Washington so much, but Central Michigan Women’s Basketball made the sweet 16, knocked out Ohio State and Kelsey Mitchell, knocked out LSU and faced Sabrina Ionescu up in Spokane, and it was such a lovely time.”
He credits his love for baseball and career path to watching baseball with his Dad.
“I was raised on [baseball] by my dad, and if I hadn’t, it’s nature versus nurture,” he said. “I might now be going in a totally different direction, and I might be, I don’t know, economics, or whatever, engineering, electrical engineering if my father was an electrician, and that was all that we talked about.”
In addition to broadcasting, Goldberg-Strassler has published two books: The Football Thesaurus and Baseball Thesaurus.
“The baseball book was written first and written because I needed it. I love words. I love trying to understand,” said Goldberg-Strassler. “Communication isn’t really what you’re writing or what you’re saying, it’s what they’re hearing or what they’re reading.”
Goldberg-Strassler believes he has found his passion in sports broadcasting. His favorite game to call is the one right in front of him.
“Everybody in the [journalism] industry, media, reporting, sports broadcasting, whatever it might be, it is a job that does not pay very much, but it’s a passion job, because all of us who want to get into it, we don’t care about the pay, we just want to do it,” he said