Tom McCarthy’s son, Tommy, is starting his baseball broadcasting career in the same booth his dad did

Tommy McCarthy turned down a broadcasting gig last winter, opting instead to give his baseball career one last swing. He played professional baseball for four seasons after graduating from the College of New Jersey. Reaching the majors remained his dream.

McCarthy latched on with another independent ball team, had a strong spring training, and felt like he made the right choice. And then he was released.

“I didn’t know what to do,” said McCarthy, whose father, Tom, is the Phillies TV broadcaster. “For the first time in my life, I was speechless.”

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McCarthy didn’t call home to tell his family that his childhood dream likely was extinguished. He instead packed up his car in Massachusetts and drove back to New Jersey. McCarthy spent five hours wondering what was next.

“I was really blindsided,” he said. “It threw me for a whirl. I was like, ‘What do I do now? How do I stay in the game?’”

McCarthy, 27, lifted off his headset last week in the Trenton radio booth that is named for his dad. Tom McCarthy got his start there in 1994, joining the Trenton Thunder just before their first season.

The older McCarthy spent seven years calling minor-league baseball before moving to the Phillies. His son is now trying to follow that path. And that meant he had to raise the roof.

His headset removed, Tommy McCarthy and his broadcast partner danced in the booth while a camera operator flashed them onto the outfield scoreboard.

Welcome to the minor leagues, where the broadcasting gig includes a late-inning dance sponsored by a local roofing company.

“It’s the one thing you have to do,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy started calling games last month in his dad’s old booth after asking the Thunder if he could use their batting cages like he does each winter. McCarthy wasn’t sure yet if he was done playing — he still hasn’t officially retired — and wanted to take some swings. They said sure. But they also asked him if he wanted to call some games.

If playing in the majors was his first dream, becoming a broadcaster was his second. He always considered broadcasting his backup plan, the dream he would chase once his first dream stopped.

McCarthy took media classes in high school, hosted talk shows, worked as a public address announcer, and called various sports in college with his brother, Patrick. The McCarthy boys sat on their dad’s lap as infants as he called games and regularly hung around whatever ballpark their dad was working in.

“I have this vision in my head of Tommy in my office in Trenton in this green onesie and he’s banging around a bat,” Tom McCarthy said. “All of a sudden, he’s gone, and he’s in the clubhouse. He was 2 or 3 and always had a ball in his hand.”

McCarthy’s broadcast partner, Mike Warren, told him before their first game to call the action as if he’s at home watching on his couch. That made sense, McCarthy said. McCarthy’s girlfriend often teases him when they’re watching baseball and McCarthy says something at the screen only to hear the color commentator soon say the same thing.

Now he’s talking on the couch with Warren. The pair sound like professionals. McCarthy, who uses the same score book that his father uses to call Phillies games, does his homework. He knew last week that the visiting pitcher’s fastball touched 95.6 mph and that the Thunder catcher was hitting .400 at home. He talked about the game like a former player but didn’t sound like a jock.

Tommy McCarthy called football and basketball in college but never had a chance to call baseball games because he was always playing. So it seemed fitting that his first baseball game happened in the booth with his father’s name on the door.

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“Once I started doing the broadcasting, I said, ‘This is definitely a way I can stay in the game,’” McCarthy said. “There’s just something about being in the booth and turning the microphone on.”

McCarthy was told he had a two-bedroom apartment in Indiana when he started his professional career in 2019 with the Gary (Ind.) SouthShore RailCats. But the address led McCarthy and his roommates to a hospital.

“We get there and we’re like, ‘Huh? I don’t know if we’re in the right spot,” McCarthy said.

Their “apartment” actually was inside a nursing home.

“When you got into the apartment, it looked like a normal two-bedroom apartment,” McCarthy said. “But then you look on the walls and there’s a help button on every wall.”

The summer at the nursing home was perfect. He played professional baseball in the independent American Association and continued to chase that childhood dream. He took 15-hour bus rides, traveled to places he never would have gone, and played ball every night.

McCarthy was willing to go wherever — and live wherever — to make his dream come true. And now he has that same approach with broadcasting.

McCarthy watched his brother, Patrick, spend a few seasons broadcasting minor-league games before being hired last season by the Mets. His dream is to one day call a major-league game with his brother, who regularly sends him feedback about his calls in Trenton.

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Tom McCarthy is a big-time broadcaster, but the McCarthys still have to climb the ladder the way their dad did years ago. There are no shortcuts. That’s how they want it to be. It will make the destination even more special, Tommy McCarthy said.

“I think it’s really important for all broadcasters to go to the minor leagues,” Tom McCarthy said. “I don’t care how long. I think you have to go. You need the reps of a long season. I think you need to understand what it’s like to run a business and understand what it’s like to interact with people on the grassroots level. All of the skills that I was fortunate to learn when I was in Trenton have continued to pay dividends here in the big leagues.”

Tom McCarthy was planning to go to baseball’s winter meetings in December 1993 in search of a job when he learned that the Detroit Tigers were moving a minor-league team from Canada to Trenton. McCarthy had worked as a sportswriter but wanted to get into broadcasting. He applied for the job and got it.

He was hired by the Phillies in 2001, spent two seasons with the Mets, and returned to Philly in 2008. It never was McCarthy’s intention to drive his sons into broadcasting. He wanted them to find their own path and decide what they wanted to do.

“They see that I go to work every day happy and I come home happy,” Tom McCarthy said. “I don’t think there’s a lot of people that feel that way. They know that it’s a really good life. You keep baseball in your life, and I think that’s really important for both boys.”

He regularly brought his kids to the ballpark, having them assist him with research and other tasks that aren’t as exciting as calling a home run. Those days at the ballpark gave the McCarthy boys a taste of what went into a career they would one day pursue.

“Whenever we were at the stadium, I would say ‘Hey, can we go down to batting practice?’ He would always say ‘Wait until I got my score book done,’” Tommy McCarthy said. “I would always say, ‘It’s just the lineup. What are you doing?’ Now I realize all the prep work that’s involved in it. It feels like hours and hours before a game, I’m just staring at my computer and trying to find some small notes about guys.”

The Trenton Thunder were the Tigers’ double-A affiliate when Tom McCarthy was calling their games on AM radio. They later became a farm team for the Red Sox and Yankees before losing their affiliation in 2020.

The Thunder play now in the MLB Draft League, and the games are web streamed. The team hosts college players hoping to be drafted and players who are trying to latch onto affiliated baseball. A lot of the players — like Chester County’s Luke Rettig, who sat in the back of the radio booth last week and operated the pitch clock a day before he started — are like McCarthy once was.

They’re chasing a dream, hoping to climb their way to the majors. The broadcaster knows how they feel.

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Tommy McCarthy can still feel the sting he felt in May as he drove home from Massachusetts. It’s never easy for a dream to end, but this was tough to process. He had been released before, which he thought would allow him to be ready to be released again. He wasn’t.

He drove home, finally told his family what happened, and wondered what door would open after his baseball career’s was slammed shut. It happened to be the one with his dad’s name on it.

“The first time I did the intros and said, ‘Here in the Tom McCarthy Radio Booth,’ I got goose bumps all over my body,” Tommy McCarthy said. “It was pretty wild and a full-circle moment. It’s pretty special knowing that this is where he got his start at and hopefully this is where my career is starting.”