Blue Jays voice Ben Wagner built his career in Buffalo but can't return for MLB games

Wagner got that in 2018 and is in his third season as the voice of the Toronto Blue Jays. It's a year like no other, of course, and his worlds are coming full circle with 27 Blue Jays games slated to be played in Sahlen Field starting Tuesday.

And therein lies the rub: Wagner can't come back to Buffalo.

The Blue Jays' broadcasts are being done remotely at the Sportsnet 590 the Fan studios in Toronto. Most MLB announcers are doing home games at the ballpark live and road games from their stadium booth as well because they've been banned from traveling in deference to the coronavirus pandemic.

But there's no way for Wagner and partner Mike Wilner to be in Buffalo without missing road games. Remember: You travel back into Canada from the United States and you've got to go through a 14-day quarantine.

"I'm thrilled to be doing Major League Baseball, and I would love nothing more than to go back to a booth that got me to Major League Baseball. That would be a really emotional moment for me," Wagner said. "I made a lot of major-league demo reels out of that booth, fell short of a couple major-league gigs out of that booth.

"It's the place, the place I took the final step in this journey. So there's a void to not being there, no doubt. A lot of mixed emotions."

The reality of Covid-19 and the business world, of course, come into play. The Blue Jays radio/TV broadcasts are being done in studios. So are the Raptors' games from Orlando. And even the Maple Leafs games — which are being played downtown in Scotiabank Arena — are being done the same way.

"The company has really made sure to take care of its employees, and there was really absolutely no chance at cross-border travel because of the quarantine," Wagner said. "I don't think going to Buffalo ever got very far. The company really wanted no business of sending anybody to the United States."

Wagner, who now lives near the Blue Jays' spring base in Dunedin, Fla., flew to Canada for the Jays' Summer Camp and first did his 14-day quarantine in a corporate apartment. His wife, Megan, has left the Florida hot spot and is holed up with her parents in Indiana for the summer.

The Jays had a busy media schedule in camp, and Wagner had lots of early preparation to do for the broadcast season, so he said he got through the quarantine better than expected.

"I am forever indebted to the Blue Jays media and public relations staff. They helped get me through it," he said with a laugh. "I did a lot of work. I could have gone stir-crazy being trapped in those walls, but I was really focused and did a lot of work. It was the best-case scenario for me. Got locked in and ready."

Wagner said the Blue Jays' two exhibition games in Fenway Park were important for him and Wilner — who sit socially distanced in the studio in front of banks of monitors — to learn nuances to call the game off the screen.

"It's definitely been a large adjustment; I'm not going to lie," he said. "There's been some growing pains but I think we've covered them tremendously well. Every first game of a series is a new experience. The camera angles in each ballpark will be a little different and so are the cameras in the flow that are available."

How GAME DAY looks from our end today! On the air at 3p ET. https://t.co/zqUpxXdvIk

— Ben Wagner (@benwag247) July 25, 2020

One thing he's learned is not to anticipate his calls or make them too early. Wait to make sure your eyes see what's actually happening. When Vladimir Guerrero Jr. homered last week in Washington, there was a collision of Nationals outfielders at the fence and the ball dropped out of a glove and over the wall. Both Wagner on radio and veteran Dan Shulman on TV simply had to play wait and see.

"You have to have a lag. It's one thing we noticed out of Boston right away," Wagner said. "Some plays you're just unable to call accurately otherwise. The Vladdy play is an example.

"In a booth, I might turn to a monitor. I would look at the screen in the booth, go back quick to a live view with my eyes and you'd see the ball bounce in the bullpen. We never got that on the camera, except for a split-second I noticed on one replay."

The broadcast camera has to follow the ball at all times, of course. A broadcaster doesn't. Wagner has other camera views at his disposal to monitor things like defensive positioning but the main feed is what you're seeing at home.

"You're stuck on the play and you miss the natural vantage points," he said. "Shots down the line you have to watch and you don't get the benefit of an umpire. You're at the ballpark, you might say, 'Oh, he called it foul,' but you can't ever see the umpire on fair calls on the monitor to ever say that.

"And we're finding anything hit hard on the diamond is pretty much impossible to call on the spot. Short hops, line drives, whatever it is. Human instinct is watching it live, and I'm learning to appreciate the monitor more. You still see some intricacies of players remarkably well."

The Blue Jays and MLB are undertaking sweeping renovations to get Sahlen Field ready, many of which won't be seen by fans on television. Wagner has read about many of them and is curious to view the final product on the field.

"I"m really interested to see how much the ballpark looks like the ballpark I left," he said. "You can do a lot of cosmetic things in this scenario. They really could change the way it looks dramatically. Change the wall color, put tarp ads on seats, you expand the dugouts and all of a sudden, it's quite a bit different than what I left in 2017."

And while it might look a little different, Wagner is confident he'll have the inside scoop on how the actual baseball will be played once the big leaguers come to town.

"I can promise you this: Listeners are going to have an intimate knowledge of that place from me," Wagner said. "That high left-field screen, Oak Street, balls rolling to the parking ramp, all of it. I'm fortunate I can do that. I think the ballpark plays really fair in August. We'll find out about September.

"And I've told people here this is about as good a scenario for the Blue Jays and Bisons as we can get. The weather is just splendid this time of year in Buffalo so it's going to be interesting to see what happens."