**Michael Hirn: The Art of Making Sports Bigger Than the Score**
What separates someone who simply calls a game from someone who makes you feel like you're actually there?
Michael Hirn, aka Batman, joins Chris and Mike for a conversation about sports, broadcasting, storytelling, and the controlled chaos that comes with doing it all live.
Michael has spent years behind the microphone covering everything from high school and college sports to radio, television, and professional wrestling. And as he explains, being a great broadcaster isn't about having the loudest voice or rattling off statistics. It's about knowing the story, understanding the moment, and remembering exactly who you're talking to.
One of Michael's best philosophies is also one of the simplest: **“Grandma wants to hear Johnny's name.”**
That idea says a lot about the way Michael approaches broadcasting. Every player has a family. Every game has a story. And every person listening wants a reason to care about what they're hearing.
Michael takes us behind the scenes of preparing for basketball, football, baseball, and even one of his strangest assignments: water polo. He talks about using your voice as an instrument, handling the pressure of live broadcasts, conducting postgame interviews, and why asking an athlete “How does it feel?” might be one of the laziest questions in sports.
Then there's professional wrestling, where calling the action becomes an entirely different animal. The crowd can hear you. They can talk back. You're part broadcaster, part storyteller, part improviser, and sometimes part of the show itself.
Of course, you can't get three sports fans together without eventually starting a few arguments.
Jordan vs. LeBron. The state of Major League Baseball. Cleveland sports. Chicago. The Cubs. Sports history and the way fans sometimes conveniently rewrite it depending on which side of the argument they're on.
It's funny, opinionated, occasionally argumentative, and exactly the kind of sports conversation you'd expect when the microphones are on and nobody is afraid to disagree.
Whether you're an aspiring broadcaster, a lifelong sports fan, or someone fascinated by what happens behind the microphone, Michael Hirn gives us a look at something fans don't always think about:
The best broadcasters don't just tell you what happened.
**They make you care that it happened.**
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