Chris Withers ’03 producing a Minnesota Twins game.
In March, Chris Withers was preparing for a Major League Baseball season like he has numerous times in the past. That was until, like the rest of the country, the sports world was shut down and put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe.
After being involved in television production for more than 15 years, Withers — who graduated from St. Cloud State University in 2003 with a degree in mass communications — was embarking on an exciting new opportunity with NBC Sports Chicago, going into his first season with the network covering Chicago White Sox games and his 16th season overall in the MLB.
As he was flying down to Arizona to cover a White Sox spring training game against the crosstown rival the Chicago Cubs, Withers watched the sports landscape as he once knew it change in the blink of an eye.
“I watched it all happen from a seat on an airplane. At the time, a few basketball games were starting to get canceled and questions were starting about what was going to happen,” Withers said. “I had a game that I was planning on working, and from when I boarded a plane in Minneapolis to when we landed, spring training had been canceled and everything was being canceled. While preparing for that game, I was watching SportsCenter and knew it was just a matter of time.
“As I landed (in Arizona), everything was shut down. From that day, we haven’t really seen sports since.”
At the end of July, Withers will make a return to the producer chair for NBC Sports Chicago to assist in broadcasting White Sox games during the course of the shortened 60-game regular season. For Chicago, it is scheduled to open up the regular season against the Minnesota Twins on July 24 in Chicago.
“There were points where I thought baseball wasn’t going to happen and the next day it seemed like things were more positive and we’d come back at some point,” he said. “Eventually, the MLB and the players got a deal done and I couldn’t be happier. I’m ready to go, I’m just ready to do a game.”
Uncertainty of a season
Like others in the sports industry, there were points over the past few months where Withers didn’t know exactly when or even if he would be returning to his job for a baseball season this summer.
Unlike other sports leagues that had their seasons put on hold only to now start back up again, the MLB was in a different situation as it navigated through the offseason while the players and owners negotiated an agreement involving how many games the season would consist of.
Chris Withers ’03 producing his first Chicago White Sox game for NBC Sports Chicago during spring training.
That level of uncertainty made it difficult for Withers to remain optimistic that a season would eventually come to fruition, but all he could control was whether or not he would be ready once he got word that a season would take place.
“I stayed on top of things and tried to be ready whenever we were ready to go. Since the season never really started, any sports fan knows how ugly the negotiations got and everyday things seemed to change,” Withers said. “I just wanted to stay ready. I love what I do and I love the sport so much that they could have just said one day ‘OK, we’re back tomorrow’ and I would have been ready to go.
“This is all so much bigger than any of us and beyond my control, so it was just a long period of rolling with the punches. Whenever they said it was time to go, then it was time for me to go and get ready.”
Although the MLB regular season won’t consist of its typical 162-game schedule and will feature just 60 games spanning from late-July through September, Withers is happy to once again be gearing up for the start to his 16th season working in the league.
“In March, I was preparing for what would be any other baseball season that I’ve done before. There was excitement because I am in my first year with a new team and a new network. Now, it is so much bigger than that,” he said. “In my entire career, I don’t think there will be a more important opening day. I personally feel we cannot come on the air like normal and move on while ignoring what has gone on for the last four months. On top of that, the way we are doing baseball games will also be completely different now.
“I don’t even know what to say about 2020 anymore. I just hope everything is done correctly and everything is done safely. We’ve seen so much happen this year and it’s been an insane year for a number of reasons, but I’ll believe baseball is officially back when a first pitch is thrown on July 24.”
Let the games (finally) begin
Chris Withers ’03 (left) and fellow SCSU alumnus Matt Gangl ’95 (right) pictured together before the Minnesota Twins’ 2016 Opening Day.
In a typical baseball season, Withers is part of a team that is in charge of the everyday happenings of broadcasts fans watch, whether that’s making sure sponsors are taken care of, finding important messaging that teams want to relay to fans or keeping fans entertained and giving them a reason to watch every game.
For the most part, those duties will remain the same in 2020, although the way broadcasts are conducted behind the scenes will be a bit different than normal.
“My role doesn’t really change, but everything around us changes with how we do games. We won’t travel anymore, and nobody is traveling TV-wise. It will be what we call a world feed,” Withers said. “For Chicago White Sox home games, we will provide a world feed in Chicago that will also be used for other teams like the Twins broadcasts on Fox Sports North. On road games, the announcers won’t travel and they will be announcing games on monitors in the booth in Chicago when the team is away and we will broadcast that world feed from the crews in other cities. Basically, we need to produce our game around what is being done by that home crew, and vice versa.”
The upcoming season will present some unique obstacles for Withers, but his experience will help him pick up where he left off once games do resume. Before joining NBC Sports Chicago, Withers produced live events for Twins and Minnesota Timberwolves games and also worked in Wisconsin for five years producing Milwaukee Brewers and Milwaukee Bucks games. While also working some college football games on FS1 and college basketball games on both FS1 and FOX, Withers has won 16 Regional Emmy Awards during his career. He has also worked alongside fellow St. Cloud State alumnus Matt Gangl ’95, who is a director for FOX.
“The thing I enjoy most is the adrenaline rush and the live aspect of the job. You have one chance at everything and you have to try and make it the best possible production every time. You can’t stop a game and you only get one chance at how you are going to cover that event,” he said. “It doesn’t go perfect every time, but it’s that rush of trying to make it perfect that makes it enjoyable. I also enjoy the creative aspect of it, mainly what I can do differently to present that broadcast to the fans. It’s up to me to figure out a different way to present an event to fans and that challenge gets me out of bed every day.”
While at St. Cloud State, Withers quickly became involved at UTVS and started to realize television production was something he wanted to do for the rest of his life. St. Cloud sparked a love in live production for Withers, and he is ready to once again get back into that producer chair living out his dream for another summer in 2020.
“It’s been a wild ride. I tell people all the time, I haven’t worked a day in my life. I get to cover sports for a living and that’s pretty awesome,” he said. “It sounds cliché, but every day is a dream come true for me. During my time at St. Cloud, I had these visions of what I wanted for my career while not knowing if they would happen or not, and they have. There’s a lot of really cool jobs out there, but no matter what you end up doing, as long as you are happy that’s the key. Each night, only 30 people can say they’re a producer for a Major League Baseball team and I don’t ever take that for granted.
“I look at my job a lot from the fans perspective and they are investing their time in watching these games, so they deserve the best possible product we can present to them. That’s why we have to bring it every single night and every single production. That’s a pretty cool opportunity.”
