June 7, 2008
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| VU ticket manager Eric Jones dressed up as legendary baseball broadcaster Harry Caray for Halloween last year. |
(Editor’s Note: Mallory Jones is a summer intern with the Athletic Communications Office. She will be a junior at Belmont University this fall.)
Behind the walls of Vanderbilt’s athletic ticket office is a guy whose face and welcoming mustache are not seen too often, but whose voice is heard and appreciated by family and fans of the Vanderbilt baseball team.
He is Eric Jones, who for most of this year is the busy Vanderbilt ticket manager, charged with and then accounting for tens of thousands of game tickets. But for several dozen glorious days, he substitutes for play-by-play announcer Joe Fisher, doing what he loves best, broadcasting baseball games.
“Anytime I can be around baseball, that is the only job that I want to have. Being the ticket manager allows me to do what I would almost do for free, broadcast games. They are symbiotic, I can’t do one without the other,” says Jones.
He began this day a few minutes later than normal–by making a pit stop for doughnuts to surprise a co-worker on her birthday.
His office is cluttered with baseball paraphernalia. A poster framed and signed by Casey Weathers, David Price and Pedro Alvarez is leaning against the wall waiting to be hung. Above a bookshelf hangs a triangular box that protects 10 signed baseballs. A dozen or so bobble heads cover the top of the bookshelf. Loose baseballs are scattered.
“The greatest part about working in college athletics is you get to root for the student-athletes,” says Jones, who lives and dies with the Baltimore Orioles.
Jones grew up in Baltimore and it shows. There is a poster of the Orioles’ stadium, one of Cal Ripken, Jr. and of Oriole coaches.
His love of baseball and interest in marketing brought him to Nashville. Shortly after graduating from Belmont University, Jones began working as its assistant athletic director for marketing and then director of baseball operations.
“I’m a marketing and communications kind of guy. There is a type of power in persuasion that I find interesting. Going into college I knew I wanted to do something with sports, and by the end of my sophomore year I knew marketing was what I wanted to major in,” says Jones.
“During baseball games we were asking parents and major alum for money, and they were asking us for access to all the games. Because Belmont was growing, parents were coming from further away to watch their kids play. We needed to make them satisfied with the program,” says Jones.
He teamed up with Richard Tiner, a professor of media studies, and began kicking around the idea of broadcasting the games over the Internet.
“I had never done radio or play-by-play,” Jones admits, “I took a crash course from Tiner. He is the one that really put me into a comfort level with the games.”
He continued covering the Belmont baseball games while working at Vanderbilt until about two years ago. Belmont played Vanderbilt at Hawkins Field.
“I did the play-by-play at Hawkins for Belmont. Afterward I was asked to cover the Austin Peay game for Vanderbilt. Coach Corbin heard the rebroadcast,” says Jones. Shortly after, Tim Corbin, head coach for the Commodores, emailed Jones asking him to permanently do the Vanderbilt games.
“For me there is nothing like sitting at a baseball game in, arguably, the best seat in the house, doing everything you can to tell the people not at the game what is going on. Radio forces the broadcaster to bring the experience through sound only to the listener. You paint a picture basically, that one function is very rewarding,” says Jones.
Jones makes sure his hectic office is under control before he leaves to “play” radio. But it’s another day, another game and another rendezvous at the diamond for the man that loves baseball, loves his job and is proud to be a Commodore.