SAY MY NAME
People should be called what they want to be called. Professionals have a responsibility to get it right.
Calling baseball games on radio is hard. I can imagine doing it, but I cannot imagine being very good.
When it comes to being bad, the Chicago White Sox know something.
In 2023, the White Sox won only 61 games and lost 101. Then, in 2024, they took a giant step backward from awful to historically inept. The White Sox lost 121 games, setting the modern record for baseball futility.
Then, last year, the South Siders lost 102 games.
Darrin Jackson, a one-time big leaguer for a dozen years on seven different teams and now the color guy on the White Sox broadcast, characterized the 2025 campaign as a 20-game swing to the good. He was opining on the outlook for the season during a spring training game against the Giants at Camelback Ranch earlier this month. He used this perspective to project another 20-game improvement to bring the ChiSox back to .500 ball. That seems ... optimistic. Though, as Jackson said, a trend is a trend.
His booth partner, Len Kasper, has been on White Sox radio since 2021 after a long career on Cubs TV. He says he prefers radio.
On March 2 Kasper was calling the Sox spring training game from Camelback Ranch when a Giants left-handed pitcher came in. Drafted by the Padres in the seventh round of the 2019 draft, traded to the Mariners the next year and he scuffed along with Seattle for three years. This year, Nick Margevicius was a non-roster invitee to Giants camp. He entered the game in the fifth inning with two on and two out.
Kasper said he had taken care to get the guy’s name right.
You pronounce it Mar-GAH-vih-chus, Kasper said. He knew because he’d asked. The broadcaster admitted he would have guessed another pronunciation if he had not asked.
Nick Margevicius
Say my name, say my name.
Margevicius pitched the sixth and seventh and gave up three hits, but not a run. He was awarded the win, in the idiosyncratic, subjective way these things are decided.
Broadcasters write out names phonetically. News TelePrompTers have names typed out that way. It is something of an art to render names as they are said out loud. It has got to be intuitive and unambiguous.
In Jim Bouton’s sensational 1970 book Ball Four, My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues he puts an About the Author at the back.
“James Alan Bouton (pronounced BOW-ton) was born in New Jersey and grew up in the suburbs of New York and Chicago.”
Thank you very much, that settled nothing. Is that a bow tie? Or a bow to the fans in the stands after striking out the side?
Margevicius isn’t on the Giants roster. He does not appear in the depth chart. There are still roster moves to be made.
At the end of the 2023 season, he became a free agent. He played for Tecos de los Dos Laredos. In 2025 the Detroit Tigers signed him to a minor league contract. He became a free agent again in November. He is still active and is set to appear Sunday against the Sacramento River Cats. Or maybe for the Sacramento River Cats.
The 29-year-old Cleveland native Margevicius has got to be hearing the footsteps of reality. As Satchel Paige said, “Don’t look back. They might be gaining on you.”
Whatever happens these next few days, they better say his name right.