Sean McDonough

Sean McDonough (born May 13, 1962) is an American sportscaster, currently employed by ESPN and the WEEI Boston Red Sox Radio Network.

McDonough was an intern at the short-lived Enterprise Radio Network in 1981.

It was in Syracuse where McDonough began his broadcasting career in 1982 as the play-by-play announcer for the Syracuse Chiefs of the International League.

McDonough was also an Ivy League football announcer for PBS.

The son of Boston Globe sportswriter Will McDonough, McDonough graduated from the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications of Syracuse University in 1984 with a degree in broadcast journalism.

At Syracuse, he joined the WAER-FM sports department and provided play-by-play calls for Syracuse Chiefs baseball games.

During college, he worked for Syracuse football coach Dick MacPherson.

He was a sideline reporter from 1984 to 1985 and a play-by-play announcer from 1986 to 1987.

Four years after graduating from Syracuse, he began broadcasting Boston Red Sox games on WSBK-TV (Channel 38) in Boston with former Red Sox catcher Bob Montgomery and later former Red Sox second baseman Jerry Remy.

He began work for CBS Sports in 1990, where he broadcast college basketball (including 10 NCAA tournaments), college football (including the prestigious Orange Bowl game), the College World Series, the NFL, US Open tennis, three Winter Olympics (bobsled and luge in 1992 and 1994 and ice hockey in 1998), and golf (including four Masters and PGA Championships).

In 1992 at the age of 30, he became the youngest man to announce the national broadcast (and all nine innings of all of the games played) of the World Series.

Coincidentally, that particular record would be broken four years later by Fox's 27-year-old Joe Buck, the son of the man McDonough replaced on CBS, Jack Buck.

Perhaps McDonough's most famous call is his emotional description of the Atlanta Braves' Francisco Cabrera (who had only 10 at-bats at the major league level that season) getting a dramatic, game-winning base hit in Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates:

Line-drive and a base-hit!

Justice has scored the tying run, Bream to the plate...and he is SAFE!

Safe at the plate!

The Braves go to the World Series!

The unlikeliest of heroes wins the National League Championship Series for the Atlanta Braves.

Francisco Cabrera, who had only ten at-bats in the major leagues during the regular season, singled through the left side, scoring Sid Bream from second base with the winning run.

Bream, who's had five knee operations in his lifetime, just beat the tag from his ex-mate Mike LaValliere and Atlanta pulls out Game 7 with three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning.

This place is bedlam.

There will be no second nightmare for Bobby Cox.

Final score in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series: the Braves 3 and the Pirates 2.

He also called the final play of the subsequent 1992 World Series, in which the Toronto Blue Jays became the first non-American based team to win the Major League Baseball's world championship: Nixon bunts!

Timlin on it!

Throws to first.

. . For the first time in history, the world championship banner will fly north of the border!

The Toronto Blue Jays are baseball's best in 1992!

A year later, McDonough called Joe Carter's dramatic 1993 World Series ending home run off Mitch Williams of the Philadelphia Phillies: Well-hit down the left-field line!

Way back and GONE!

Joe Carter with a three-run homer!

In 1996, he was teamed with Jerry Remy.

In December 1999, CBS Sports President Sean McManus informed McDonough that his contract would not be renewed.

Once Dick Enberg, late of NBC was available, McDonough became the odd man out.

Outside of New England, he is probably best remembered for his time as CBS's lead baseball announcer, a role in which he was teamed with Tim McCarver.

McDonough continued announcing broadcast Red Sox games through the 2004 season, moving over the years to various local stations, including WFXT (Channel 25), WABU (Channel 68), and WLVI (Channel 56).

He worked with Remy for nine seasons, ultimately only Friday night games, before being replaced in 2005 by NESN announcer Don Orsillo.

McDonough attributed his firing to his salary and disputed talk that his "candor" was to blame.

He turned down an offer to become the New York Mets play-by-play man on television in 2005 before the Red Sox notified him that they would not pick up his option for 2005.

In 2019, McDonough returned to Red Sox broadcasts as a part-time play-by-play announcer on the team's radio network, announcing 30-32 games that season and becoming a permanent part-time announcer alongside Joe Castiglione, Will Flemming, and Lou Merloni in 2020.