Voice of Fish inks two-year extension

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This article was published 28/10/2024 (561 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The pressure of calling games for a professional baseball team sunk in shortly after Trevor Curl sat down in the broadcast booth inside Blue Cross Park for the first time.

The 24-year-old was on the cusp of his first big gig as a broadcaster, and while he wasn’t in the major leagues, his new digs at the home of the Winnipeg Goldeyes were certainly a step up in class from his time behind the mic for U.S. collegiate summer leagues.

Curl quickly captured listeners and impressed his colleagues this summer, and on Monday the Goldeyes rewarded the young broadcaster with a two-year contract extension that locks him in as the play-by-play voice of the team through the 2026 season in the American Association.

“I probably might exaggerate the timeline here, but maybe an hour or less after the final pitch was thrown in Game 3 (of the AA championship), I immediately expressed my interest to come back for the 2025 season because I had just as much fun as I did and it was just such a unique opportunity to really give myself some security for the next couple of seasons now,” Curl told the Free Press.

The two-year pact with Curl was announced along with the Goldeyes extending its radio partnership with Nostalgia Broadcasting Cooperative, which will continue to broadcast all of the club’s pre-season, regular season and potential post-season contests on CJNU 93.7 FM next summer, marking the 10th season of that affiliation.

Curl, a product of Bellevue, Wash., joined the Fish after calling games for the now-defunct Swepsonville Sweepers (North Carolina) of the Old North State League in 2022 and Auburn Doubledays of the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League (New York) in 2023.

The communications grad from Eastern Oregon University only had a faint idea of where Winnipeg was before arriving — somewhere above the Dakotas, as he put it — but that didn’t stop him from sending in his application for a job that had been posted for the second time in as many years. Steve Schuster, an award-winning broadcaster who spent nine years with the Fish, left Winnipeg after the 2022 campaign, while his replacement, Doug Greenwald, another veteran in the booth, moved on after the 2023 season.

With young manager Logan Watkins already in the building, owner Sam Katz continued the youth movement by bringing in Curl.

“For a young guy that had some experience calling some college games, for him to come into a professional league like this and with the Goldeyes, with the history of the quality of broadcasters we’ve had, I thought he did a fantastic job and I think he’s only going to get better as he gets more experience,” said general manager Andrew Collier.

“Sam has a pretty good feel for these things. He made a good choice.”

Curl admitted he was hesitant to accept the job in Winnipeg at first, as he hoped that an MLB affiliate club would pick him up, but through multiple conversations with Katz became convinced that a prime development opportunity awaited in the provincial capital.

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“Something that we talked about was this was going to be a stepping stone for me to try and get somewhere bigger at some point down the road,” he said. “The two-year deal, right now, it shows that they’re interested in me still, it shows to me that they had trust in me… and it’s also that extra security knowing that I’m not going to have to try the whole emails again for another season or two.”

Like a true pro, Curl expressed he’s happy with how his first season went but said there is still plenty to improve upon if he wants to meet the standard set by those who graced the booth before him.

“It was great in certain aspects but I knew that there was a bunch of mechanical parts of the broadcast that I need to sharpen up for the 2025 season,” he said. “And so far I’m on track for that.”

joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca

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Joshua Frey-Sam
Reporter

Josh Frey-Sam reports on sports and business at the Free Press. Josh got his start at the paper in 2022, just weeks after graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College. He reports primarily on amateur teams and athletes in sports. Read more about Josh.

Every piece of reporting Josh produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.