Another Big-League Debut for the Twins: Saints Broadcaster Sean Aronson to Call Upcoming Road Trip on Radio

[Theodore Tollefson]

The past week has seen two players in their early 20s reach the majors for the Twins. Next week, the team will see the debut of a person who has been working in baseball since before either was born.

Image courtesy of Theo Tollefson

ST PAUL—Several people have made the physically mundane but symbolically life-changing trip across the Twin Cities Metro lately, leaving the Saints to join the Twins. David Festa made his MLB debut against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Jun. 26, and Brooks Lee made his against the Detroit Tigers on Wednesday night.

However, the promotions to the big leagues are not limited to players. Longtime Saints play-by-play man and jack-of-all-trades Sean Aronson is getting his first opportunity to call Major League Baseball on the radio, as Kris Atteberry is taking the final week of the Twins' first half off.

“I got choked up,” said Aronson of the moment when he received the phone call about the opportunity. “I’ve been in this business for 24 years, the last 18 with the Saints, and you never think that you’re going to be given that opportunity—not given, earn it. The opportunity is earned. You never think you’re going to get that opportunity, the further along you go.”

Aronson was on a road trip calling games for the Saints in Louisville when he got the call from the Twins Senior Director of Broadcasting, Andrew Halverson. The two had had conversations about Aronson possibly filling in for Atteberry whenever he’d take a vacation. But as far as Aronson knew, Atteberry was still planning to try and call all 162 games on the radio in his first season as the Twins play-by-play man.

“It’s funny, I had the phone call first and then I heard other people have the conversation with him, so I have hindsight now,” said Halverson as he reflected on the phone call with Aronson. “I think hindsight of the first phone call was he was taken back, shocked a little bit, a lot of listening. And since then, I’ve heard a lot of people who’ve talked to him about it and he’s gotten pretty emotional about it.”

 

Atteberry made the push for one of the Twins’ minor-league broadcasters to be one of the first choices to fill in for him, whether it was Aronson from St. Paul or Tim Grubbs, who does play-by-play for the Twins’ Double-A affiliate, the Wichita Wind Surge. 

“Drew and I have known each other for 18 years now and he knows how much I value guys who work in the minor leagues,” Atteberry said. “I did it for eight years, and I have such a deep respect for the people who do that job. I’m especially cognizant of what it means to them to get to do a big-league game.”

After Aronson hung up his call with Halverson, the first person who came to mind was his father. Jeff Aronson died three months before Sean made his Triple-A debut in 2021, and knew how much it meant for his son to be returning to affiliated ball after 14 seasons, while remaining in the same broadcast booth. 

“He was excited; he was looking forward to it,” the younger Aronson said. “My dad was my biggest fan, tuned into pretty much every game, and is what I would hope every fan would be, because he’d call and talk to me about George [Tsamis], our manager, or the players, like he knew them. And that is the goal of any broadcaster, you want the listener to feel like you know these people, and every time I talked to my dad, that’s what I got.”

This is not the first time Aronson has come in to fill in the chair Atteberry sits in. When Atteberry joined the Minnesota Twins in 2007, he was coming off seven seasons with the Saints himself. At that time, Aronson felt some reluctance to take the job, as he was in affiliated ball with the Twins’ Ft. Myers Miracle, as their play-by-play man. He believed remaining in affiliated ball was the wiser choice.

“I was turning to a guy I looked up to [who] was getting the opportunity that I wanted and you seek guidance from those people,” he said. “I actually, not directly to Derek [Sharrer, Saints General Manager], I turned it down to my president in Ft. Myers when she brought the opportunity up to me.”

The Mircale’s president at the time was Linda McNabb, who spent 21 seasons in southwest Florida and has worked with the Marlins’ Triple-A affiliate the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp since 2015. Aronson said McNabb was a bit taken back by his rejection of the offer from the Saints.

“She said, ‘If you don’t take this job, I’m going to wonder if you really want to be a broadcaster.’ Because she knew that this was a better situation, a bigger market where I was going to get to do television, which I wasn’t going to do in Ft. Myers,” Aronson recalled. “Every game was on radio, and they drew exceptionally well, you’re in this great market where you can make a lot of connections, and talking to Kris, he echoed those sentiments.”

“I remember he asked me, we were both so much younger then, he said, ‘I don’t think I should take this job,’” Atteberry said. “I go, ‘Why not?’ And he goes, ‘Well, I’ll stay in affiliated ball and it’ll be a quicker path to the big leagues.’ And I said, ‘I wasn’t in affiliated ball and it worked out for me.’ I think market size matters, and I said, ‘Look, the people you’re going to work here for are amazing. You’re going to have TV, you’re going to be in this market, I think you should do it.” 

Seventeen years later, the relationship between Aronson and Atteberry—and the doors one keeps holding open for the other—is written like a poem that gracefully rhymes. 

“As I told Kris and as I told Drew, if these are the only six games I do, these are going to be the best six games of my life, because I’m going to cherish them,” said Aronson. “I’m freaked out about Monday. I feel I’ll be prepared, but I’m scared to death. And I think that’s good, because I’m comfortable here in this booth doing 150 games here. The lights are a lot brighter at the next level.”

Aronson has had many mentors in his career help him get to this moment, including Atteberry, but he owes a tremendous amount of thanks to his parents for their never-ending support to help him get to where he is now.

“My parents have been extremely supportive of the industry I got into, even when it was at its bleakest, when I was making next-to nothing, when I had to ask them for money,” Aronson said. “They were always there for me, and it’s a culmination of that hard work.

“I can only be who I am, and that’s what I’m going to do for six games. Atteberry is way smarter than I am, Stanford grad, brilliant. Provus is, I think, one of the best broadcasters out there. I’m a storyteller, I grew up in that mode, in Los Angeles, that’s what I’ve done.”

Fortunately for Aronson, he’s had a lot of opportunities to tell the stories of the majority of players on the Twins' active roster. Twenty-one of the current 26 have played with the Saints in the four seasons they’ve been the Twins’ Triple-A affiliate, providing many familiar names and faces for Aronson to share stories with to a new audience. 

No matter how those games play out for him, Atteberry has said no one can take away the great career Aronson has had up to this moment. He says no one can convince him Aronson isn’t a brilliant broadcaster with a great career, but the call-up to the majors provides extra validation.

“When I texted him, I said, ‘Just remember, you will always now be a big-league broadcaster,’” Atteberry said. “‘If you do the first game and then get hit by a bus on the way back from the ballpark, you’re still a Big-League broadcaster. You can’t go back. Once you’ve done one, you’re in.’ And I think it’s awesome.”

Aronson will have Dan Gladden alongside him for the Twins’ six-game road trip, to Chicago and San Francisco. In spirit, however, his father, the resting Atteberry, and a long line of colleagues and acquaintances scattered across a quarter-century will sit with him as he slips on the headset. Baseball can be a cruel game and a uniquely unforgiving career. Sometimes, though, for those who hang in there and never stop pushing for it, it pays you back.

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[Patzky]

This is beautiful and a great look at the minors from a different angle. 📻 

[CRF]

Best of luck to him. I'll listen and check him out. He doesn't have a very high bar to get over...ANYONE would be better than Atteberry.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

Awesome!

[Craig Arko]

 

[jud6312]

4 hours ago, CRF said:

Best of luck to him. I'll listen and check him out. He doesn't have a very high bar to get over...ANYONE would be better than Atteberry.

Glad I'm not alone in feeling this way. In lieu of not being able to watch games, I've tried listening, but him and Gladden are a brutal combination.

[tarheeltwinsfan]

Great story. You will do great Sean. Everyone in the Twins is pulling for you. 

[dcswede]

Atteberry is the worst play by play guy I've ever heard in major league sports, and I've heard Beth Mowins puking (announcing term not a medical diagnosis) through far too many C-level games. Atteberry is utterly incapable of describing the action in front of him in real time - and baseball is made for radio. He speaks in odd tenses. And he's weirdly distractable by minutiae around him unrelated to the game. I'm no big Gladden fan, but compared to Atteberry he sounds like Vin Scully. Time to DFA Atteberry and consider giving Aronson (or any of a number of competent pxp announcers) the job.