After eight seasons, beloved broadcaster Jason Benetti is leaving the Chicago White Sox and heading to Detroit as the Tigers’ play-by-play announcer. Here’s what you need to know:
- Benetti, 40, signed a multiyear contract with the Tigers, the team said Thursday. The club did not disclose the terms of the deal.
- He will appear on Tigers broadcasts on Bally Sports Detroit and call at least 127 games each season.
- Benetti will continue his national broadcast duties with Fox, and if they conflict with a Tigers game, longtime radio play-by-play voice Dan Dickerson will fill in for Benetti in the television booth.
One of the top voices in sports is coming to the 313!
Renowned broadcaster @jasonbenetti has inked a multi-year contract to be our television play-by-play announcer.
🔗: https://t.co/lqtPaadLPw pic.twitter.com/anVDU1x8wO
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) November 9, 2023
Why is Benetti leaving Chicago?
The White Sox’s year from hell just got worse.
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It’s no secret that the relationship between the White Sox and Benetti, a lifelong Sox fan who got the call to ease Hall of Fame broadcaster Ken “Hawk” Harrelson into retirement before the 2016 season, got a little awkward in recent years.
The team, starting at the top, didn’t like that Benetti was always balancing his Sox schedule with national work covering college football and baseball, among other pursuits. So when he signed a two-year deal before last season, after negotiations Benetti described as “kind of a pain,” it clarified how many Sox games he could miss.
“That was the problem, it was all ad hoc in 2021,” he told me in an interview at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago last spring. “And then the situation with my games missed was very vague. It’s not vague anymore. So we’re good. That’s done. For me, I thought the work getting better and better and better and better and better might make the level of fairness and respect grow with that. And for some people, it doesn’t. For some people it does.”
Benetti’s relationship with White Sox chief revenue and marketing officer Brooks Boyer suffered as a result of the conflict. It was the Sox, not the Tigers or Benetti himself, that broke the news on X (formerly known as Twitter) with a news release.
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) November 9, 2023
Benetti didn’t always feel like he was getting the proper respect from some people in the organization for the work he did on the air, from selling the rebuild during the lean years, making countless appearances for the organization, to giving the Sox’s brief period of prosperity the emotional heft it deserved. He worked hard on the broadcast and rejuvenated Steve Stone’s broadcasting career after his disjointed partnership with Harrelson.
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Benetti, as people who know him are aware, isn’t shy about voicing his displeasure either.
But while the relationship with the organization was mixed (certainly a lot of people loved him there and vice versa) and his national profile increased, Benetti was still connected to his boyhood team. And if you’re on Sox Twitter, you know how well-liked he was by the majority.
“I don’t know if you meant to do it, but the reason I’m still here is like the Mold-A-Rama,” he told me in March. “There’s an allure (to the White Sox) that is undeniable. You said it, I’ve been frustrated. But I’m still here and I’m not looking around, saying, ‘Why am I still doing this?’ I could have not done it. And they could have moved on. We didn’t because it’s kind of like a sense memory. It’s stupid, but it’s true.”
From our trip to the museum last spring, I didn’t think Benetti was going to last much longer in this job, but I am surprised he left now. And the Sox are worse off for it. — Jon Greenberg, Chicago senior columnist
Benetti ushers in new Tigers TV era
The Tigers TV booth has struggled for a feeling of legitimacy since the departures of Mario Impemba and Rod Allen in 2018. That just changed.
Shortly after the 2023 season concluded, the Tigers announced Matt Shepard — who was the play-by-play voice from 2019 to 2023 — would not return. Shepard never caught on with the Tigers’ fan base, and polls often rated the Tigers’ broadcast as among the worst in the league. It was no secret something needed to change.
As the Tigers’ hope signs of a brighter on-field future are becoming apparent, Benetti ushers in a new era to the TV booth. Benetti has a national presence and has long been regarded as one of the top broadcasters in the game. The Tigers needed a big hire, and this is it. — Cody Stavenhagen, Tigers staff writer
Required reading
(Photo of Benetti (left) and Steve Stone (right): Ron Vesely / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
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