The view from his office window is the envy of top executives, couch potato jocks and playground kids, all of whom dream to sit where he does. It’s the best seat in the Sistine Chapel of sport.
But they all have a lengthy wait before Paul Friedman, a longtime Chicago Cubs fan and the new Wrigley Field public address announcer, gives up his 8-by-10-foot office overlooking home plate that he shares with an organist and electronic message board operator.
To Friedman, this is sacred ground.
“I walked by Wrigley during the winter,” Friedman said, “and I looked up at the crossbar of the empty flag pole and this light was shining on it, and that’s when I realized, it really is a cathedral.”
And now Friedman is one of its preachers. At 28, he has gone from selling compact discs at a Barnes and Noble bookstore to telling thousands of fans who is batting and pitching for the Cubs and their opponents.
As he entered the ballpark on a recent Saturday, four hours before the Cubs battled the Colorado Rockies, Friedman said he still is awed by the fact that he can roam the empty stadium and walk on the same field where such giants as Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ryne Sandberg have played the sport of kids.
Friedman has arrived two hours earlier than usual to serve as master of ceremonies to a group of girls and boys who have come with their parents to participate in a clinic run by Cubs’ coaches and players.
“I don’t mind coming to work early. I don’t mind rain delays,” Friedman said. “I’ve told everyone that if I ever, ever regret coming to work to watch a baseball game, then someone should shoot me. As a Cubs fan, this is the ultimate dream.”
Without a little help from a friend, his new job would have remained a dream.
Friedman, who grew up in Evanston and graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in theater, had spent most of his post-college life working in retail. Then a co-worker showed a newspaper clipping announcing the public address job, and Friedman, who had given up acting two years before in favor of voice-over work for radio commercials, went into a studio and made a recording.
“When I went in to make the tape of the script they had sent me, I thought that since Wayne Messmer had been doing the job for 11 years that the last thing the team would want is (something very different) from that,” Friedman said. “I tried my best to sound a lot like him and I have had a lot of people say that I do.”
The tape, along with a resume that he placed inside one of his 1984 Cubs scorecards, put him into a group of eight finalists. Next came an interview with the heads of marketing and personnel.
Opportunity of a lifetime
“I was so nervous coming to the ballpark that day,” Friedman said. “I realized that this could be the opportunity of a lifetime. But as soon as I came in the park I felt totally relaxed because I had been here so many times, since I was a kid.
“Then a week later they asked me to come and audition at the ballpark and again I was really nervous at home. When I got here I felt confident and I just hit it. I had never had a better audition.”
On April 3, three weeks before the start of the strike-shortened season, John McDonough, the vice president of marketing and broadcasting, asked Friedman if he’d like to become the fifth full-time public address announcer in Wrigley Field’s 80-year history.
Friedman gave notice at his job and made plans to move from his parents’ house to an apartment within walking distance of Wrigley Field. In less than a month he had gone from not even knowing about his new job to becoming the newest member of the baseball organization he has loved since childhood.
After the Saturday afternoon kids clinic, Friedman made his way from the field up through the stands and into the corner media booth, three windows away from veteran broadcaster Harry Caray.
Organist Gary Pressy bopped his head to his samba-styled “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” while Les Brettman prepared his electronic scoreboard messages for the game. Friedman settled down to his gray formica desk and checked his game day activity sheet.
It was time to go to work. Friedman pushed the button on the chrome gooseneck Shure microphone that appears to predate the last Cubs pennant-winning team (1945) and began to hock hardware, Italian beef sandwiches and burritos.
Wrigley Field is one of the only stadiums in professional sports with no billboard advertisement, so the public address announcer reads all of the commercials before each game and between innings.
The phone rang and James Blunk, the director of promotions and advertising, gave Friedman the correct pronunciation of the name of the singer for the national anthem, who he must introduce in two minutes.
“The thing I have learned since doing this job is just to stay relaxed,” Friedman said. “It can get pretty crazy with pitching changes, or when the phone rings while I’m announcing the players, but I can’t worry about making a mistake. One thing I’ve learned, is that if you make a mistake, but if you say it with a deep enough voice, you can get away with it.”
Friedman said he has been careful enough not to make any major gaffes, but during the first few games he did occasionally forget to announce a player.
“I would be so into the game, I would think, `I wonder when the public address guy is going to announce the next batter?’,” Friedman said. “I have to remember that this is a job too. Once during the first regular-season game, Mark Grace hit the right-field gap and slid into third and he was safe and the umpire called him out.
“I got up out of my chair and yelled, `He’s safe!’ but then I realized that I’ve got to call the next batter.”
No time to relax
Between innings Friedman ordered a soda, a dangerous thing for a man whose job allows for little free time.
“I have only one time when I can go to the bathroom,” Friedman said. “It’s during the fifth inning, and when they go to the new rules I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
During the seventh inning, Friedman performed one of his favorite tasks, “Tale of the Tape,” when shortstop Shawon Dunston belted one over the left-field wall onto Waveland Avenue.
“412 feet!” Friedman, microphone off, screamed as he jumped from his seat. “412 feet!”
Friedman, remembering that he is no longer just a fan, relaxed and announced the distance to the crowd. Sure enough, from his mouth to television screens across the nation, the Tale of the Tape for home runs reads 412 feet.
Although it may not be as scientific as fans have believed, Friedman has learned the home run distance skill from Pressy, who has been in the booth for nine years, and has seen many fly out of the park.
“See the center field is 430 feet and I bisect that with the left-field bleachers and . . .”
“It was really more like 410,” Pressy interrupts, “because you thought it hit before the median line when it actually hit the line.”
But the distance is already in the record books.
After the game, a Cubs victory, Friedman gives the game statistics while the crowd exits.
Friedman plans to supplement his modest income (the Cubs hire him as an independent contractor and pay him on a per-game basis) during the off-season with more voice-over work. A job in radio or doing announcing for other sports is also a possibility.
“I’m not supposed to say this, but I would do this job for nothing,” Friedman said. “It really is an honor. I know they were looking for someone who didn’t mind paying their dues and who was looking to stay at this job for a while.
“I want to be here for as long as possible. I have no plans to move from Chicago, I love it here, and if they want me for 40 years I’ll be here.”
Cubs fans, eat your heart out.
