A Major League Opportunity in Minor League Baseball: Meet Brad Tunney
Brad Tunney, General Manager - Sports Radio 100.9 The Mitt & Play-by-Play Voice of the Great Lakes Loons
(Photo by Kevin LaDuke, Max Loves Midland)
You know what’s exciting? You'll learn a lot more about Brad Tunney on the next episode of the Max Loves Midland Show (7/24/24)! It should be easy to watch because you've already gone to YouTube and subscribed to our channel, right?!
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In His Own Words:
I'm the General Manager of Sports Radio 100.9 The Mitt & the Play-by-Play Voice of the Great Lake Loons. Working for 100.9 and the Great Lakes Loons is very emotional for me because it has allowed me to start a family, buy a home, and become financially stable. The goal is often just to be content, especially in a job. People always say if you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life, but that's not entirely true. You can love your job, but it's still a job, and you're still clocking in and out. However, I'm always content with what I do daily at work. Most nights, I go to bed anxious before work the next day because I want to be there, which is a massive win. Thanks to the Great Lakes Loons, Midland, Sports Radio 100.9 The Mitt, and the Michigan Baseball Foundation, I don't need side work, and I'm content not only in my role but also in life. I never have to question waking up every day, and I will never take that for granted. This wasn't a possibility for me ten years ago, but now it is. In 10 years, my role has evolved from a goal of just broadcasting games and getting to the next level, to becoming a significant part of the community, and growing what is needed in the region.
Growing up, I always wanted to be an astronaut. For some reason, I was determined to go to Vanderbilt and become an astronaut because I loved space and wanted to explore it. Although I don't have as strong an interest in space anymore, I still love adventure and exploring. For instance, I would love to scuba dive, but I can't due to medical reasons. I want to explore every inch of the world.
As a bad student, I quickly realized that becoming an astronaut wasn't realistic for me. By seventh grade, around age 12, I knew I wanted to be a broadcaster. Being an only child, I spent a lot of time talking to myself, broadcasting imaginary games in the driveway, like Chauncey Billups against Reggie Miller or Ben Wallace against Jermaine O'Neal. The Pistons and Pacers rivalry was relevant to me. I was around eight or nine when the Detroit Pistons won the 2004 championship. One of my earliest memories is the 2004 Pistons title. My parents got us season tickets the following year, so we would go to about ten games a year. I grew up with basketball, had a hoop in the driveway, and it became something I loved, even though neither of my parents liked the sport or played it.
Growing up, soccer was my sport. I was the captain of my high school team and played for statewide club teams. I never played basketball seriously because, when I got to high school, I chose to focus on broadcasting instead. Maybe I could have made the JV basketball team as a freshman and had a similar trajectory as my soccer career, but I wanted to call games. My dad nudged me in the right direction. He suggested that I skip playing basketball and focus on broadcasting. At first, I resisted because I loved basketball, but his advice was spot on. Without his foresight, I don't know where I'd be today.
I was lucky enough to have access to a closed-circuit television station at L'Anse Creuse High School in Metro Detroit. They really put me to work. I was the voice of our Basketball Game of the Week in high school. I worked with a local radio station in Metro Detroit as a senior. At 18, I was calling some of the biggest games featuring schools like Eisenhower and Dakota, two of the biggest schools in the state, during the MHSAA playoffs. Post high school, I only applied to one school—Central Michigan University (CMU), and it made sense to go there. I wanted to be a broadcaster, and CMU has a great broadcasting and journalism program. Driving to Central's campus for the first time, we drove past Dow Diamond. I had no idea what it even was. Little did I know, it would be one of the only places I could plug into locally to broadcast while in college.
In 2014, I first went on the air with 100.9, calling high school basketball games. For the 2015 season, they hired Chris Vosters as their lead broadcaster, and the Loons assigned me and two other students as his assistants in February. The organization told him. I had no business being on the air for professional baseball because only so many of these positions are available. I was 19 and had just recently called my first baseball game.
In Minor League Baseball, at that time, out of the 160 teams, a little more than half had assistants. So, there were about 250 highly coveted broadcast positions across the country. Here I was, a 19-year-old kid who had never called a baseball game, let alone scored one. I had no idea how to look at a scorecard or write a fielder's choice. My education on the sport was sitting next to Chris daily and watching pro baseball. Within a month, I went from not knowing what a 6-4 fielder's choice was and struggling to use a pencil to having a scorebook filled with notes on every pitch, mound visit, and throw-off, using pens in 15 colors.
I started working part-time with Chris in 2015. In December 2016, I graduated from CMU, and 2017 was my first full-time year with the station. I took over as program manager during Chris's final year in 2018. I became the Director of Business Operations from 2020 to 2022 and General Manager in the summer of 2023, just before the rebrand from ESPN to 100.9 The Mitt.
My wife, Haley, and I are both proud Midlanders now, but it took a journey to get here. We had a class in high school together senior year and started to know each other a little bit. Our names are really close in the alphabet, and we were only like four lockers apart from each other almost our entire high school career and really had no idea who each other was. We had just gone on our first date a few days before we left for Senior Spring Break. There's no better way to get to know someone than to spend an entire week with them side by side, but we ended up going to separate colleges. She went to Grand Valley State University, and we drifted apart a bit.
I officially moved to a local apartment complex in Midland in 2017, and at the end of the 2018 baseball season, I took a trip to Asia. That was my first overseas trip. I went over there and came back with clarity - I asked Haley to move here. She was like, 'Why the heck would I move to Midland?' We weren't even dating then but had been on and off for so long. She was reluctant, as she should have been, to move from Grand Rapids to Midland. She was able to find employment at MyMichigan Health, and now, years later, we've been in Midland together for a while. We're married. We have two dogs. We own a house.
Midland is great for us because of its proximity to family and other major cities. We have family in Grand Rapids and Detroit. In the offseason, I've worked for the Grand Rapids Gold, a professional basketball team, and I can get there in two hours. My wife and I attend around 20 games yearly in Detroit, including the Pistons, Tigers, Red Wings, and Lions. We also visit Traverse City two or three times a year. Being in Midland allows us to enjoy what Midland offers while also taking advantage of the great amenities in the rest of the state, which is one of the best places to live in the country.
Looking forward to Midland's future, I'd love to see more activity in the Circle. The lack of development in the Circle has been a pain point for me. Boomerang is great, and we go there all the time, but it still feels like just a drive-in and drive-out experience. I'd love to be able to walk to the Circle and spend some quality time there. Having a secondary city center when the infrastructure exists would be vital to moving Midland in an even more trending direction.
I love that Dow Diamond is a destination people walk to and gather at. When Bill Stavropoulos and the Michigan Baseball Foundation positioned themselves here, they decided to buy a radio station. Even 15 years ago, that might not have seemed like the best proposition. Last year, they backed us, believing in our vision. They trusted a 28-year-old (me) to lead the project and allowed us to empower a 21-year-old to be a significant face of our region and station. I don't take that for granted. This opportunity is rare anywhere else in the country. Our whole station has four full-time roles, and all of us are under 30 years old. We're a local station helping develop local business and listenership, where all the money stays local, which is really cool. I grew up in Metro Detroit, listening to the best sports station in the country outside of New York and Chicago - 97.1 The Ticket. That's where my love for sports radio came from, and I hope one day someone else who enters this field can say their love of sports radio came from 100.9 The Mitt.
Brad and Kevin LaDuke, the Max Loves Midland Tour Guide, on the set of The Max Loves Midland Show, recorded at J&C Media.
Do you have a Midland County story you would like to tell that aligns with our vision?