Legendary Canadian sports broadcaster Rod Black calls his son’s hit in his MLB debut

For anyone looking for a feel good story with all of the unrest in the world today, how about Canadian sports broadcasting legend Rod Black doing the guest play-by-play call for his son Tyler’s second hit in his MLB debut at home for Milwaukee last night against the Tampa Bay Rays?

Tyler, the 33rd overall pick in the 2021 MLB amateur draft, made his MLB debut last night as a pinch-runner in the first inning, replacing the injured Milwaukee designated hitter Gary Sánchez. He remained in the game as the DH, and proceeded to go 2-for-4 with a double and a run scored on Willy Adames‘ home run in the 5th inning of an eventual 8-2 Brewers win.

Born in Toronto, the 23-year-old, left-handed hitting infielder had a .281/.412/.472/.884 slash line across 238 games and 867 at-bats in the minors. He was called up after starting this year at the Brewers Triple-A affiliate, the Nashville Sounds, where he’d banged out 5 home runs with 18 RBI in 25 games and 99 at-bats, with a .303./393/.525/.918 slash line.

His dad, Winnipeg-born Rod Black, worked for CTV’s Toronto-based Sports division from 1990, where he anchored events including CTV's coverage of the1991 Canada Cup, the1992 Summer Olympics and 1994 Winter Olympics, as well as the CTV-led consortium's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics.

He also called events for CTV Sportsnet from its launch in 1999 until CTV's acquisition of TSN, and sale of Sportsnet to Rogers, in 2001. In terms of Blue Jays coverage, Black called Jays games for CTV Sportsnet from 1999 to 2000 alongside World Series legend Joe Carter, and on TSN from 2002 to 2009 with Pat Tabler. Black also co-hosted CTV's pregame coverage of the 1992 and 1993 World Series with Rob Faulds.

Like his son’s talent with the bat, Rod still has supreme skills in calling it like he sees it. In the bottom of the 5th, Tyler singled on a line drive to center fielder Jose Siri, and Black’s call was perfect: “There’s a base hit to right field for my boy, Tyler Black. There you go. Oh, there you go!”

His broadcasting fraternity colleagues were more than happy to congratulate both father and son on their job well done. Here’s Sportsnet Central host Tim Micallef:

And Sportsnet 590 The FAN radio talk-show host and baseball analyst Jeff Blair:

So congratulations to Tyler Black on his first two MLB hits, and also to his dad for a fantastic live broadcast call of his son’s second hit. This is the content we all needed!