Heads up, Skip Bayless! It seems Fox Sports’ Joe Buck is intruding on your territory. With Buck scheduled to work both Rays and Buccaneers games this weekend, The Tampa Bay Times’ Tom Jones caught up with the veteran baseball and football announcer to discuss a variety of subjects, though sadly, Randy Moss wasn’t one of ’em.
Take me through the preparation for doing a baseball game one day and a football game the next. I imagine the football takes more prep work.
It does. I try to split my time each day working on both. It’s not like I work on baseball on Monday and then football on Tuesday and so forth. I try to put in a couple of hours on baseball and then move on to football. That way I can keep track each day and not fall behind on either.
For baseball, would you pay more attention to, say, the Rays series last week against the Orioles than normal?
Absolutely. If this was June, I don’t know that I could tell you who the winning and losing pitchers were or who had the big hit as much I could now. So I’m paying attention to the teams a lot closer.
Do you talk a lot with Tim McCarver and Troy Aikman during the week?
Well, Troy and I will text each other lot. I can’t text with Tim. Tim doesn’t text. I’m better off sending smoke signals and sending up a pterodactyl. But we’ve been doing games together for 17 years now, so we fall right back into it even if we haven’t seen each other or talked in a few weeks. The chemistry is great with both. For example, I’ll throw out a reference like Foo Fighters. Tim has no idea who the Foo Fighters are. Neither does Troy, probably. I need to say Kenny Chesney to get his attention. But both are such pros and we’re so comfortable around one another that we are able to work together well.