BHS student provides radio broadcasts for Spartan baseball games

Published 1:30 am Thursday, April 23, 2026

Joah Blair, a 16-year-old Bainbridge High School student, has been doing radio broadcasts for the Spartans baseball team since the beginning of the 2025-26 season.

Blair’s dream later on in life is to become a Major League Baseball broadcaster, hopefully for the Mariners.

“Yeah, I probably want to do the Mariners,” Blair said. “But of course, if the Astros called me up and said, ‘Hey, we have this spot open,’ I would go there and broadcast. I would broadcast really anywhere, you know, because I would just want the experience.”

Blair found his love for broadcasting baseball after the Mariners’ playoff run in 2022, citing the moment when shortstop J.P. Crawford delivered a base-clearing hit to help Seattle come back against the Toronto Blue Jays in the Wild Card round. He recently had a job shadow with Mariners radio broadcasters Gary Hill Jr. and Rick Rizzs Aprill 11 when the Mariners beat the Houston Astros 8-7 at T-Mobile Park.

“It was just so exciting, being able to see (them) in person. I had…imagined what it would be like to meet them,” Blair said.

Blair got to T-Mobile Park four hours before the first pitch, sitting in the broadcast booth with Hill Jr. and Rizzs and observed them as they got ready to call the game. Mariners lead TV announcer Aaron Goldsmith came into the booth with Blair, Hill Jr., and Rizzs and would joke around about the “team’s uniform combo” or what the Mariners were doing with the City Connect uniforms, citing a “camaraderie” about them.

Currently, Blair is doing broadcasts for the reigning 2A state baseball champion Bainbridge Spartans, a gig that he was granted access to pursue after talking with BHS athletic director Luke Ande. Blair has since started Bainbridge Spartans Baseball Radio and additionally has a sports podcast he does on the side called Seattle Sound Sports, focusing mainly on baseball but bringing guests on like Mike Salk, co-host of “Brock & Salk” on Seattle Sports.

In preparation for a baseball game, Blair will print out the roster for any team the Spartans are playing, gather as many stats as he can, and then prepare to call the game. He will go to the Bainbridge baseball field, set up a table and chairs for broadcasting, and then set up headsets and “attach the crowd mic,” which usually takes him 20-30 minutes to do.

Blair will then go talk with the opposing coach to get their thoughts on the upcoming game, and then get ready to do a pregame show with Kenner French, parent of Spartan second-baseman Braden French. Blair does more of the main play-by-play while Kenner serves as the color commentator, incorporating his own home run call, “Duck and take cover! Bombs away! ” whenever anyone hits a home run.

“Yeah, so if there’s a home run or a good play or something that I found I did really good play-by-play with it, I’ll go home [and] look through the recording,” Blair said. “I’ll look through and see if there’s any good calls, and then I’ll get the video from GameChanger, then I’ll put them together and post it if it’s good.”