Baseball as cinema: Director takes us inside Mets' broadcasts

The New York Mets' TV broadcasts on SNY are regarded as among the best in Major League Baseball. That status is tied to the personalities in the booth: play-by-play voice Gary Cohen, and analysts and former big leaguers Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez.

But there's another factor behind the scenes that allows the broadcast to stand out: director John DeMarsico.

DeMarsico's known for taking big chances in creating broadcasts that look different from the rest. It's a broadcast that engages viewers and amplifies tension through cinematic influences.

The telecast is different because of DeMarsico's unconventional background as a film-school graduate.

DeMarsico's first love is baseball, and he grew up in Belmont, North Carolina, watching Mets games as a kid because his parents were New York expats. He walked on with NC State's baseball team, where he served as bullpen catcher for three years. And it was in college where he was able to pair baseball with film, his other passion.

When he wasn't playing baseball as a kid, he watched movies. He wasn't sure what he wanted to study at NC State until he learned it had a small film school. He says it was there he learned to truly watch movies.

"(The film school) opened my eyes to what the cinematic world can bring."

DeMarsico now brings cinematic devices into baseball broadcasts.

It was enrolling in film school at NC State that led to him interning in the SNY truck. As he watched Mets games being produced as a college student, he realized he was watching film editing being done in real time. He was hooked.

He eventually advanced to lead the truck in 2020 and practice what he describes as "baseball as cinema." I recently spoke to DeMarsico about his approach to baseball broadcasting, and what he's trying to accomplish each night at SNY.

theScore: The quality of a telecast seems particularly important in baseball since there's such a volume of games, and since it's through the broadcast that most fans follow their teams. How do you view the importance of the broadcast? Where does production add value?

DeMarsico: There are a lot of options for people in the year 2025. Every streaming service is literally in their back pocket and their phone. There are thousands of things people can watch every night. They are choosing to tune into SNY not only to watch the Mets, but I feel it is to be entertained - whether it is by our great announcers in the booth, or stuff we are doing in the truck.

I'm taking all the stuff that's been in baseball for 125 years, that's always been there - the confrontation between the pitcher and the batter - I'm taking that and I'm elevating that. I'm trying to increase the drama. You aren't going to get the same final product if I just sit on the center-field camera and cover the game traditionally, and don't do those split screens, and don't elevate the tension with tight shots.

But people really are not tuning in to see a result. They think they're tuning in to see whether a team wins or loses, but what they're really tuning in for is the ride.

When you get on a roller coaster, you're not riding the roller coaster to say, 'Wow, that was a fun ride' at the end. You're there for the ups and downs and the upside-downs during the event. There are certain ways you can do that as a storyteller and director that are going to enhance the viewing experience for people at home. I don't consider myself in the sports business or baseball business. I'm in the entertainment business.

What are the key differences in producing a baseball broadcast compared to other sports?

DeMarsico: There's a language in editing and cinema that I think translates also to the way sports are telecast, and baseball specifically, because more so than other sports, the cut, the edit, is more important.

In other sports, you stick a camera in the center of the court or field, and you follow a ball left to right. In baseball, you can't do that.

In baseball, you cover the action from center field. The majority of the balls you're watching over the course of a game are moving away from the camera. Once the ball's put in play, I cut to a high home camera on the opposite end of the stadium to show the ball being put in play. In no other sport do you take a cut on action like that. In basketball, when a guy takes a shot from the 3-point line, you don't cut to a tight shot of a ball going into the basket. You stay on the same camera. A quarterback drops back to make a throw down field, you don't make a cut to a tight shot of the receiver catching the ball. You stay on the same camera. You can't do that (in baseball).

The action is driven by the production group, by the director, and the cut. If there's a runner scoring, I cut to a low camera to show the runner rounding third base or scoring. I cut back to the high home camera to show the throw. All the action is produced, so it's a much more produced product and less passive. In an action scene, it's going to be a lot of very fast cuts, a lot of shots in a very tight sequence. In a more tense scene, there's going to be more close-ups.

You are known for film homages in your broadcasts. You've said Western genre, particularly the spaghetti westerns, are a big influence. Why is that?

DeMarsico: Because the confrontation between pitcher and batter is so inherently cinematic. There are very few team sports where you have this mano-a-mano moment. The two gunslingers in the Old West. That's what it's always looked like to me because there is always the buildup to the shot being taken, the guys firing. The tight shot of the face. The wide shot showing the tumbleweed blowing past them. It's slow. The moments of stillness before the action. Baseball is the perfect sport for that. You need moments of stillness to elevate tension. In the other sports, you don't really have that. When things are moving quickly, it's hard to build tension.

You've expressed concerns about MLB losing the human element and what that means for what fans watch on their screens. Can you elaborate?

DeMarsico: When they implemented the pitch clock, they often called it dead time. I hated them calling it dead time. I was really nervous when the pitch clock was proposed and implemented. That extra 30 minutes every game was kind of where our broadcast shined. (It was) time for (our announcers) to have the conversations that weren't necessarily about baseball. A more leisurely, easy-going broadcast. There's a poetry about baseball. It's a game without a clock.

After a few years, I've come to appreciate the pitch clock a little more. It's made the overall product of baseball across 30 teams better. There's no doubt about it. It's a more watchable product when attention spans are shrinking and people can't go two seconds without looking at a device. But I think baseball must be careful about losing humanity in the game.

PitchCom's made it a more efficient system, but it's taken away the whole dialogue between pitcher and catcher, and that was a big part of the game. As a catcher, communication with signs and body language was the most fun part of the position, and you really lose that now with PitchCom. I used to love shooting it. That whole dialogue is very cinematic. In the movie "Bull Durham," the biggest confrontation isn't between the pitcher and the batter, it's between the pitcher and the catcher. It's Nuke LaLoosh and Crash Davis going back and forth; the young pitcher and the veteran catcher. That's the most compelling conflict in the movie. And quite frankly, it's the biggest argument against PitchCom - baseball as an entertainment product.

There's that episode from "Seinfeld" when George is captured on a telecast at the US Open with an ice cream sundae melting all over his face. How do you handle identifying a fan in the stands who you could potentially turn into a meme or worse?

DeMarsico: When you buy a ticket and sit in your seat, you're fair game. I'm not going to put anyone in a compromising position. I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble, or shoot something that's not meant to be seen. I'm not trying to be a creepy voyeur. But when you're eating an ice cream sundae on a summer day, and it's melting all over your hand, and it's dripping everywhere, I'm sorry, but that's just the price of admission.

Some of those moments are the best moments of the year. Last year, the Mets had all these viral fan moments that became sort of a rallying cry for the second half of the season when they were the best team in baseball. People in the stands became these totems of good luck and viral personalities. There was a stable of five or six fans that are now like mini celebrities when they come to Citi Field just because I take a shot of this guy in the stands wearing green fur, and he has long curly hair, and wears sunglasses at night, and the next pitch the guy hits a home run. Well, now that home run was hit because I took a shot of this crazy looking guy.

Those fans in the stands become characters in our movie that night as much as the players on the field.

You've created some viral TV, perhaps most notably the Edwin Diaz entrance. How did that come about?

DeMarsico: (During Diaz's first year as a Met) I noticed his entrance song over the PA because we can hear the PA. I go, "Whoa, that's an interesting song." The song immediately reminded me of an Ennio Morricone score from the spaghetti westerns. I thought it could really be something. I didn't get the directing job until the next season, and Diaz kinda stunk his first few years as a Met. It didn't make sense to do anything then. But it always stayed with me, that entrance song that was so cool. So, 2022 comes along, and he's the best closer in baseball.

So, we had a game in July, it was Jacob deGrom's first start at Citi Field in, like, two years, returning from injury. We had a rain delay (prior to the game). We had a ton of extra time to talk. I decided I wanted to capture the fans' ovation when deGrom took the field. I knew his song was "Simple Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Gary in the booth always references his song because it's such a good characterization for who deGrom is as a man and pitcher. I told the announcers, "Hey, let's stay out and capture the moment with 'Simple Man.'"

We did that, and it was a pretty magical moment, probably one of my favorite moments we ever had in the truck. It really was a perfect sequence. Perfect storm of events that led to that happening. That game we showed the "Simple Man" entrance was the first time we did the Edwin Diaz walk-in, too.

The Mets were up by a run or two (entering the ninth) against the Braves, and I go, "The moment is now. This is the moment." I sent the camera down to the bullpen. The shot's been done before, the Yankees with Mariano Rivera coming in with "(Enter) Sandman." It wasn't like I was inventing a shot.

But the moment, the fact that we showed deGrom doing "Simple Man," the fact that it was a big game, the fact that it was a perfect bookend to the way we start the broadcast, the fact that not everyone had heard this song that I had been listening to and admiring for years. And see a shot that, as a Mets fan, they'd probably never seen before, it was kind of a moment that transcended baseball and became a pop culture event. It was everywhere. After that, my whole life changed. I'm in The New York Times, Washington Post, people are following me on social media. It's viral.

How much of a plan does your team have in the truck before each game, and how much of it is reacting in the moment?

DeMarsico: Our broadcast is very good at reacting in the moment. Sometimes when you have too much of a plan in place, or do too much homework, or have too much of an outline, it kind of stunts your growth.

Every camera has an assignment given the situation but they are very loose assignments because you don't want to ever put a muzzle on a creative person. You don't want them to miss a shot that other broadcasts aren't getting because they have such strict assignments. Because they don't want to miss something. I'm not a afraid to isolate a fan in the stands and hope for a great reaction. I might leave the foul line open. I might not have that definitive shot of fair or foul because I'm isolating on a fan in the stands, because I'm trying to tell a compelling story

I will sometimes forfeit 100%, fail-safe game coverage in order to get that human emotion. That's an important part of what we do. Every one of us involved in the broadcast has the freedom to take the road not taken.

Travis Sawchik is theScore's senior baseball writer.