The Chicago White Sox’ first playoff appearance in 12 years this season was a long time coming for the South Siders.
Hopeful seasons with talented rosters didn’t come to fruition, and the franchise spiraled into a perennial contender for the bottom of the AL Central before deciding to completely rebuild. Following years of losing, the patience paid off this year with an exciting young roster and a playoff spot.
There was a similar story to be told in the Guaranteed Rate Field press box.
After six years without a permanent play-by-play job in an MLB booth, Bradley alumnus Andy Masur called all 63 White Sox games on WGN Radio this season.
“There’s a lot of young talent on this club from Tim Anderson to Eloy Jimenez to Luis Robert,” Masur said. “When games are good, when the team is good and the brand of baseball is good, it makes our job that much easier.”
While many of the faces on the field were fresh, Chicago sports fans are familiar with Masur’s voice.
The Glenview native spent the last two seasons as a pre-and postgame host for the White Sox and previously worked at WGN from 1999 until 2007, with the later years spent as the host for Chicago Cubs radio presentations.
“In order to be taken seriously upon return, I had to leave.”
– Andy Masur on the choice to leave Chicago for San Diego in 2007.
In between stints in Chicago, Masur took a job in San Diego to join the Padres broadcast booth in 2007. It was the first time he had lived outside of Illinois.
“After a while, you get labeled,” Masur said. “I knew that I was more than – in my mind, at least – a pre-game host and a post-game host and that I could do some play-by-play and do it well. So, in order to be taken seriously upon return, I had to leave.”
The next seven years of Masur’s career were spent in sunny Southern California, working play-by-play for the Padres’ radio team. Masur also served as TV backup for broadcasting legend Dick Enberg and called basketball games for the University of San Diego men’s basketball team.
But following the 2013 season, San Diego restructured their booth arrangement and Masur’s contract was not renewed. He returned to Chicago without a gig.
“It wasn’t easy; there were a lot of twists and turns in the plot,” Masur said. “It took me a while to get over that, though, because it’s a situation where you work really hard to get to where you go … There’s a whole lot of disappointment, there’s a whole lot of anger, there’s a lot of reconciling, if you will.”
A newfound free agent, Masur worked at some other passions while on the job search. Most notably, he spent time as an instructor at the Illinois Media School and worked for a photography company, but Masur still had his sights set on the booth.
“I enjoyed those, but they were just a means to an end at that point,” Masur said.
Through the years, Masur’s connections at WGN remained solid, and as a result, he was able to get back on the air with the station.
In early 2018, an unexpected shakeup in the Chicago radio scene played out in WGN’s and Masur’s favor.
WLS, who held the Sox broadcasting rights at the time, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, leaving Sox games up for grabs. After being the flagship station for the Cubs until 2014, WGN picked up the contract for the South Siders.
“I was in my boss’s office saying, ‘Listen, you know I have to be a part of this,’” Masur said.
A part of it he was, serving in the host role and as a fill-in for Ed Farmer, who had started to miss an increasing number of games due to health problems.
In April, Farmer passed away at age 70 due to complications from kidney disease. The loss left a large void in the Sox community, as Farmer grew up coming to Comiskey Park, played for the team and was a member of their broadcast crew since 2000.
While Masur was named Farmer’s successor, he made his return to a full-time play-by-play position on a somber note.
“It was a bittersweet thing,” Masur said. “Obviously, I wanted to get back into a major league booth, it had been a while, and that was something that I had accomplished. Again, I don’t like the way that it happened; I don’t like the circumstances around it because we’d all rather have had Ed there.”
It was difficult to listen to a broadcast and not hear Masur and color analyst Darrin Jackson discuss Farmer and his multitude of baseball stories. Masur even included a tribute to the lifelong Southsider in his first home run call.
“There’s certain people you don’t replace,” Masur said. “You just kind of slide into the chair and hope to keep the broadcast at the level that it was.”
Masur started elevating his level of broadcasting in the mid-80s at Bradley, working multiple radio and television jobs. The broadcaster’s time in Peoria coincided with a golden age of Bradley men’s basketball: the Hersey Hawkins era. The Braves made the NCAA Tournament during Masur’s freshman and junior years, 1986 and 1988.
Masur was fully immersed, going to games as a fan and covering the team, including working as a producer and director of a weekly television show featuring Hawkins.
One particularly fond memory stemmed from a snowy January night in 1986. Bradley defeated archrival Illinois State in overtime to maintain their perfect conference record thanks to a Jim Les buzzer-beating layup to send the game to an extra period, sending Masur and friends into a frenzy.
“We decided, stupidly, to run home back to campus from downtown,” Masur said. “It was not a smart route to take, but we survived and we’re here and we started a big snowball fight at one of the dorms. But that’s what it was all about, everybody was into it.”
Masur remains invested in his alma mater’s basketball team by watching games. His work life involves him with another Missouri Valley team: Loyola-Chicago.
Prior to leaving for San Diego, Masur was the radio play-by-play voice of the Ramblers when they were in the Summit League. Now, he occasionally does some work involving Bradley’s conference rival.
“I love being a part of that [Missouri] Valley Conference because it’s run so well,” Masur said.
All told, it’s been a winding path for Masur, with stops in multiple MLB booths before setting in with the White Sox for this season. But just like a few other major voices, it started by playing in Peoria.
“Without guys like [Charley Steiner] paving the way, I wouldn’t have had what I had,” Masur said. “And now us paving the way for you [current students], it’s just kind of the natural progression of the whole thing.”
