Beyond the Game: Twins baseball broadcaster Cory Provus
MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- Listening to a Brewers game on the radio is common in Wisconsin. For many, the action is the soundtrack of summer. One voice that used to be heard around Milwaukee has a new audience now.
Radio broadcaster Bob Uecker remains the most famous member of the Brewers organization, but rather than rest on those laurels, he still shows up for work every day and uses his singular style to bring the game on the field to listeners at home, or work, or in their cars. He still influences young broadcasters, like Cory Provus, who is in his second season of calling Twins games after leaving the seat next to Uecker.
"Bob was always great about -- don't do me, be you. You want to call games the way that Cory Provus does, and I've tried to do that, but definitely, I'll sprinkle in things that I've learned from osmosis and listening every day. This is my seventh year of doing Big League ball, and I'm starting to develop my niche and my own style, but sure enough, every once in awhile I'll drop some Ueckisms in there and I do it with respect and love and friendship because that man, to this day, means the world to me," Provus said.
Provus was at home with the Brewers, but when you leave to become the voice of a new team, it is pretty important that you quickly become a credible voice of that team.
"I knew about Maurer and Morneau and those guys, but when I got the job, I said at the time that as great as you guys are, you're doing yourself and the fans a disservice if you don't study up on the Killebrews and the Olivas and the Carews and the Blylevens and the Kaats and the Violas and the Gladdens and the Pucketts and that was my job," Provus said.
Provus has called games for the Cubs, Brewers and now, Twins. He doesn't think that is by accident.
"There's something I think romantic about baseball and the radio and that image in the summertime in cool climates like Milwaukee and cool climates like Minneapolis and throughout Minnesota that people are doing work in the yard in the summertime. They're painting the house. They're cleaning up the deck. I want to turn the Twins game on the radio, and I'm just going to sit back, maybe a beverage in hand, and I'm just going to enjoy it -- enjoy the sunshine, enjoy baseball and maybe enjoy the way I was brought up on the game. It wasn't so long ago that generations, the only way they could find out about their team was every day, through the medium of radio," Provus said.
Provus doesn't take his role as the steward of that blend between the game's past and the game's present lightly, and he continues to lean on what he learned from Milwaukee's Mr. Baseball.