Jarah Wright: From Minors To Majors, Broadcasters Share First-Year Experience, Lasting Bond

Texas- Matt Hicks and Aaron Goldsmith met during the 2010 season while working as broadcasters in the Texas League. Little did they know that three years later, they would be sitting in major league broadcast booths, doing play-by-play for the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners, and sharing their first full major league seasons.

Matt Hicks was bitten by the broadcasting bug as a kid in the suburbs of Washington D.C. He remembers the first time he ever did play-by-play during the Super Bowl.

“I invited my friend over to my house and my dad somehow challenged us. I’m pretty sure it was broadcast on CBS. We had a cassette tape recorder and we cut out the rosters (from newspapers),” Hicks said. “Super Bowl VI was between the Cowboys and the Dolphins so neither one of us had a real connection to either of those teams besides disliking them. We turned the sound down on the TV and sat down at the coffee table with the roster and did play-by-play into a cassette recorder. To this day, I still have those tapes.”

Hicks attended the University of Maryland and landed a job at the campus radio station during his freshman year. His main career goal was to land a broadcasting job in the National Hockey League instead of Major League Baseball. His job with the radio station led to a unique opportunity covering the Washington Capitals and meeting broadcaster Ron Weber.

“I was actually a real fan of the Capitals from about their second year in 1975. I really enjoyed listening to him doing hockey,” Hicks said. “I had the chance to meet Ron covering the Capitals for the radio station and over the years sat in and did stats for him.”

When Weber decided to retire, Hicks was hoping to get his dream NHL job but decided to take a job with the newly founded Carolina League Frederick Keys, the Class-A Orioles affiliate, instead.

“It wasn’t full-time working for the club. The radio stations did the hiring and I got $50 a game and I parlayed that into a full-time job because the Director of Marketing at Mount St. Mary’s College heard my baseball play-by-play and thought ‘I want to get that guy to call men’s basketball,’” Hicks said. “He contacted the radio station and they put together a package for Mount St. Mary’s so I became full-time at the radio station.”

After covering the Keys for six seasons, a change in radio station management led to Hicks coming to Texas.

“Everybody that was an employee at the Frederick radio station had been fired because the radio station was a radio station owned by two men in their 70s that ran an AM and PM station. They sold the stations to this conglomerate in D.C.,” Hicks said. “I got in from a road trip with Mount St. Mary’s, went to the radio station and was told I was fired and I had lost my benefits. So whenever I got the El Paso job, I said I guess I need to take that job. That was my first venture away from the east coast.”

Hicks joined the El Paso Diablos, the then Double-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers and later the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he was the primary play-by-play guy from 1995 to 2004. At the end of the 2004 season, he was hired to become the voice of the Corpus Christi Hooks, the Double-A affiliate of the Houston Astros where he remained before landing the MLB job in the middle of the 2012 season. Hicks said there are several moments that stand out to him from his time with the Hooks.

“Winning the championship in Corpus in 2006 was a terrific memory. The game that we won the championship series was probably still to this day the best single game I’ve called not because of what I did but because of the game,” Hicks said. “There were so many turns and twists. It was exhausting for everyone when the game ended five minutes after midnight. Just winning the game the way we did was just let’s say if that game had been a World Series game, we would still be talking about it as the game of all games.”

Hicks also holds the special distinction of having a league operate under schedules he created and proposed.

“The Texas League operated in 2005 and 2006, the first two years that I was here in Corpus Christi, with a schedule that I devised. I came into the league in 1995 and thought there’s got to be a better way to play 140 games in this league and what we’re doing now,” Hicks said. “I started tinkering with schedules somewhere around 1998 and eventually my first schedule got thrown up in front of the league and got put down. I think it was in the middle of the summer of the 2004 season that the league adopted my proposal for 2005 and 2006.”

It was during the 2010 season that Matt Hicks met Aaron Goldsmith, the broadcaster for the Double-A Frisco RoughRiders. The 2010 season was Goldsmith’s third season in baseball and, truthfully, he kind of stumbled in that direction.

“I was about 45 days away from graduating college and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do as far as a career after school,” Goldsmith said. “I woke up one morning and thought it would be really great to get paid to talk about sports on the radio.”

Goldsmith’s began his baseball career in 2007 with the Gateway Grizzlies, an independent league team. In 2008, he was the broadcaster for the Bourne Braves, a collegiate summer league team. In 2009, he was the number two broadcaster for the Portland Sea Dogs, the Double-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. To help pay bills, he took a landscaping job during the season. He joined the Frisco RoughRiders in 2010 and met Hicks that season.

“He and I formed a pretty quick friendship and by the time I left the league at the end of 2011, he was one of my closest friends in the Texas League,” Goldsmith said.
“He and I got along as people pretty easily but it was also great because he’s been doing this for so long, broadcasting that is, and is so talented that he was somebody that I really felt comfortable asking questions to and seeing how he would handle different situations if something would come up recently on the air. Hicksie was somebody who I really had respect for not only as a person but also what he was able to do on air.”

After 2011, Goldsmith got the call to join the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox as one of their radio broadcasters. He said he remembers Hicks calling wishing him well.

“He was really excited for me. He was thrilled that I had a chance to come out East and get back in the Red Sox system,” Goldsmith said. “I had previously been with their Double-A club in Portland and little did we know, that we would be not only in the same league but in the same division a year or two later.”

Hicks was the first to get the call in the middle of the 2012 season after Dave Barnett had a lapse on-air. Barnett made several references to “fifth base” among other confusing references. Due to health concerns, Barnett announced he would be leaving the broadcasting booth. This meant Steve Busby would join Tom Grieve in the TV broadcasting booth leaving a spot open alongside Eric Nadel for a radio broadcaster. That spot went to Hicks and Goldsmith said he was very excited for him despite the circumstances.
“Well, obviously the situation itself is disappointing. You never want to see something like that happen but as far as the silver lining comes out of it, I can remember telling my wife just how thrilled I was for Hicksie,” Goldsmith said. “There are some guys in the minors who you wonder ‘why is this guy still here’ and Hicksie is one of them. Hicksie just needed the opportunity and once he was able to put that big league headset on, everybody would know really quickly that he belongs in the major leagues and I don’t think Hicksie has done anything to prove that theory wrong.”

Later in the season, Hicks and Goldsmith were able to reunite.

“When the Rangers played in Boston later in the year, while we were there Pawtucket had an off day and Aaron took that off day with his wife to come up to Fenway and he was excited to see me,” Hicks said. “We took pictures together. We only had a short amount of time to talk before the game before we got working but it was really great to see him and I appreciated the effort.”

After the 2012 season ended, Goldsmith got a phone call that would put him in not only the same league as Hicks, but the same division.

“I applied for the Mariners gig a month and a half or two after our season was over with. It was obviously the best phone call of my life,” Goldsmith said. “I was at McCoy ballpark and they called around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon and I can remember having to sit down on the ground after they gave me the news because at that point it had been some time since my in-person interview and of course, my head started to play mind games. I kind of began to effectively psyche myself out of thinking I had a chance of getting the job. They interviewed four candidates and I knew they had their pick of the litter. They could have whoever they wanted and it became pretty tough after awhile to stay optimistic.”

Hicks was one of the first people to call Goldsmith and said he couldn’t be happier for him.

“I think in the short amount of time he’s risen through the ranks,” Hicks said. “He’s a hard worker and grinds it out so I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

Both said they're looking forward to learning a lot this season and that despite their team rivalries in the American League West division, their friendship will remain intact.

“Our friendship is a strong one,” Hicks said.

Follow Jarah Wright on Twitter @jarahwright and read her baseball blog 'Wright Beyond The Bleachers' http://wrightbeyondthebleachers.wordpress.com/

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