From Ellicott City to the Major Leagues

Andy Freed will not forget Aug. 9, 1979.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Freed, who grew up in Ellicott City and graduated from Mt. Hebron High School in 1989.

On that day, Freed, then 8 years old, went to his first Major League Baseball game with his uncle, David Gordon. “When I was growing up, baseball was not a part of my life. I had no concept of sports,” said Freed, now the radio play-by-play announcer for the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball.

But on that summer day in 1979, as the Baltimore Orioles were headed to the American League pennant, Freed went to old Memorial Stadium with Gordon to see the Orioles.

Pitcher Mike Flanagan, who , was the winning pitcher; future Hall of Famer Eddie Murray hit a home run; and O’s manager Earl Weaver was ejected as Baltimore won, 3-2, over Milwaukee. But it was what happened off the field that changed Freed’s life. “We got a chance to walk around the stadium,” recalled Freed.

And what the young boy heard coming out of the speakers inside of Memorial Stadium were Chuck Thompson and Bill O’Donnell, the radio voices of the Orioles.

“It was my first competition, sports-wise, that day. You use all five of your senses, for goodness sakes,” Freed said. “It was like a light switch turning on in my head. Things seemed larger than life. It was the most powerful thing. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”

Freed, as a teenager, would take a tape recorder to Memorial Stadium and "announce" games as the Orioles played in front of him. Sometimes his brother, Mt. Hebron grad Stefan Freed, a librarian in Rosedale who now lives in Columbia, would go along and pretend to be an Oriole player that Andy would "interview" after the game.

Andy Freed enrolled at what is now Towson University in order to work at the radio station, and he began doing play-by-play for minor league baseball teams after he graduated in 1994. His big break came prior to the 2005 season when he joined the Tampa Bay crew after covering the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox of the International League for four years.

Before that he did play-by-play for the Double-A Trenton Thunder in the Eastern League and he began doing minor league baseball in the Single-A Florida State League in 1994.

Freed’s parents, after 34 years in Ellicott City, recently moved to Florida to be close to Freed, his wife Amy and their three young grandchildren.

Freed was with the Rays when they made the World Series in 2008, and this month he has watched as Tampa Bay battled back an effort to catch the Boston Red Sox for the wildcard spot in the American League.

"It's not a good feeling," Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia told reporters on Sunday in New York.

In games through Sunday, Tampa Bay was one game back of the Red Sox, who open a three-game series tonight in Baltimore against the Orioles to end the regular-season schedule at Camden Yards. Boston was nine games ahead on Sept. 3 for the wildcard spot but has seen the lead shrink.

“As exciting as last year was, expectations are tempered. We lost a lot of players last year. It has been an amazing, exhilarating ride. I gave up on this team several weeks ago,” Freed said last week, before heading to Yankee Stadium to call a game. “It makes me proud to be part of it.”

Freed said working 162 games a year can be a challenge. “At the end of the night I am borderline exhausted. But I like to give my best effort,” he said.

Before he went to that first game in 1979 with his uncle, Freed got some advice from his mother. "You may want to take a book," she said.

But once he arrived at Memorial Stadium, Freed had no reason to fill any free time. And more than 30 years later he is now getting paid to do what he loves.

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