Sonoma’s community TV covers all Stompers home games, and that’s not all

By the time the first pitch is thrown, Bob Taylor has already run a full nine innings: multiple trips unloading his van, up and down ladders, out to center field and back, checking on cabling high up the backstop and reviewing inputs and display in the announcer’s booth above the grandstands.

He’s been setting up the seven cameras – only two of them manned, the others on remote – that KSVY uses to catch the action of every Sonoma Stompers home game this season, all 39 of them. Though the Sonoma Valley Community Communications (SVCC) nonprofit has been broadcasting high school baseball and other sports games for 12 years, this is the first time they’ve committed to a full season of Stompers baseball.

The new Stompers broadcasts come thanks to a sponsorship from Sonoma Clean Power, along with smaller monthly sponsorships from Sonoma Fit and North Bay Credit Union. Sponsorship is the model that supports SVCC – it’s an independent community radio station, funded completely through support from the Sonoma community.

It is not, as Taylor emphasizes, public radio – like KQED or KRCB, stations which receive government funding and have lengthy fundraising “membership drives” that underwrite national or international news programming (mostly from NPR). Their news, as well as entertainment, business and interview shows, cast a wide net for a wider audience.

But for a community broadcast station to give such extensive coverage to an independent baseball team is unusual, if not unknown.

“I have not seen it in this volume anywhere,” said Taylor. “Then again, I rarely leave the island,” he added, referring to the hermetic nature of life for some in Sonoma Valley.

He lists the events and meetings the station covers – every city council meeting, every planning commission meeting, special town halls – “we do 60 or 80 a year, which is normal for community radio.” Then he lists the high school sports the station covers: home league games of volleyball, football, both boys and girls basketball, baseball and, occasionally, softball.

“I don’t know anybody who’s doing that – maybe some college stations,” Taylor said. As SVCC’s executive director and the only full-time employee, Taylor goes to almost every shoot, often bouncing between game and meeting on the same night.

All their broadcasts of games and meetings are carried live on Comcast channel 27, as well as the radio station KSVY-FM (91.3). The radio schedule is mostly packed with informal, loosely-formatted programming: Chats with the neighbors, tarot readings, real estate, health, food and restaurant goings-on, organic gardening and, of course, wine – just about anybody who has something to say (and who can find a sponsor) can take over the microphones at the West Napa Street studio for a half hour, an hour or longer.

But television is a bit different. The technical bar is higher, the resources more expensive, the skillset more demanding. And when it comes to following sports, the camera and crew has to be fully dialed in to the action – not just ready to follow the ball and keep the game in the viewfinder, but to tell the story.

This year, that means Stompers communications director Forrest Hunt is calling the game. Last year, he did the same for the San Rafael Pacifics, but when former communications manager Nick Badders landed a job with the Minnesota Twins organization in May, Hunt was the first person Taylor called.

“This feels more like home to me,” said Hunt, who just turned 21. He has family in Sonoma and it’s close to his home in Santa Rosa – where he played baseball for four years at Montgomery High School. Over the past three years he’s learned broadcasting at Dominican College which, ironically, doesn’t have a baseball program.

Next to him, field announcer Trey Dunia makes the game entertaining as all get-out for the fans in the stands, mixing player announcements with sound effects from old TV or radio shows, commercials, familiar song clips, and the sounds of sirens or breaking glass (when a foul ball disappears over the backstop and lands in the parking lot).

Many fans think that’s the best part of attending a Stompers game – as well as the occasional monster home run disappearing over the big green scoreboard in left field, the snappy infield action of a double play, or the close play at home with a sliding runner and a cloud of dust. There’s no instant replay in a real game, folks.

All home games are broadcast live from Arnold Field - dubbed “Palooza Park” during the games in honor of Stompers food vendor Palooza pub - nearly every play miraculously covered by that two-man field team, Hunt and the booth crew, and those five pre-focused, unmovable HD cameras.

Four infield cameras are focused on one base each – with the fifth way out in center field zoomed in to catch the pitcher and the batter, catcher and ump (and an occasional infielder or baserunner) for every pitch. A “bug” on the video screen shows the score, balls and strikes, outs and innings, the basic statistics that every fan needs to know at any given moment.

It seems like a lot of work, but it might be worth it: since the first season, 2014, the Stompers attendance has grown yearly. They usually come in second in attendance in the Pacific Association independent baseball league behind the San Rafael Pacifics, though they have been closing the gap – and this year the Stompers are running ahead, averaging 387 customers per game, far ahead of San Rafael’s 303.

Taylor is not much of a sports fan, though he does like baseball. ”I like a good live baseball game. I like to sit at a game and watch it, but I wouldn’t sit down and turn on the TV. I don’t have time.”

With all the time and effort that goes into broadcasting games – or any of the other events that SVCC delivers to the Sonoma Valley – there’s surprisingly little feedback, especially from the high school students whose games Taylor and KSVY have been covering for a dozen years. But do they appreciate it?

“I believe they do. Although it’s hard to say because none of them come up to you and say, ‘Hey, bro, that’s cool.’”

The coaches, however, are more forthright. “The last time I saw coach Don Lyons, he said he really appreciated,” said Taylor, of the late baseball coach for the Sonoma Valley Dragons. “He gave me a very thorough understanding of how much he appreciated it.”

And so does Sonoma, the Stompers, the Dragons and their fans.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.