Josh Maurer

And then the pandemic happened, and the minor league baseball season was canceled.

The major leagues ended up playing.

The minor leagues never did.

And I was waiting tables.

Really?

And I was about to turn 40 years old.

Yeah.

Our AAA baseball team in Pawtucket had turned its outfield grass into a somewhat full-service restaurant, which was, yeah.

And the boss of the team, who was Larry Lucchino, actually, said to all of us,

Hey, you know, you work for a baseball team, but there's no baseball, so you actually now work for a restaurant if you'd like to still be employed this summer.

So that's what I did.

I waited tables.

But it made me really kind of reaffirm my love for calling play-by-play and broadcasting because I missed it so much.

And then a year later, I got hired in Milwaukee.

I would have, but yeah, baseball was the first love and it was always the ultimate goal.

I grew up in Philadelphia and I listened to that Harry Callas and Richie Ashburn called the Phillies games.

And it was magical for me.

I, and I know this sounds cliche, but I did, I lay in bed at night starting probably when I was 11 or 12 years old and I would go to sleep listening to their voices and

as the soundtrack of my youth, and that's what formulated my love of sports, was listening to that.

And I knew at a pretty early age that I wasn't going to be good enough to be an athlete professionally or do anything that actually had to do with playing the games.