DENVER — Jenny Cavnar was a high schooler, watching Monday Night Football on the couch with her dad, when she heard Melissa Stark on TV.
It was the first time Cavnar realized she could be a sports journalist.
“It was a face and voice that sounded like me,” she says. “For the first time, it clicked – she’s talking sports like I talk sports.”
Fast-forward about 20 years, and America just heard Cavnar do the Colorado Rockies-San Diego Padres play-by-play on Monday night.
Only a handful of women can say the same thing; the last woman to call an MLB game was Gayle Gardner, who did the play-by-play for the Rockies and Cincinnati Reds in 1993. Cavnar, from Aurora, Colo., may be the first ever to call a game for a regional broadcast.
Cavnar's love for baseball comes from her dad, a Colorado High School Baseball Hall of Fame coach. She thought back in the 90s that maybe she’d be a sideline reporter. She currently does pre-game and postgame coverage on Root Sports, and she called a spring training game last month.
Cavnar learned she’d step into the booth over the weekend, and then prepped at home.
“My husband said, ‘Well do you want me to put on MLB The Show? I’ll play the Padres and the Rockies, and we’ll turn down the sound and you can call it?’ So, I did. I called my husband’s video game,” she laughs.
Athletes, seasoned broadcasters, national media and fans have all celebrated Cavnar’s feat in the last 24 hours. She can hardly keep up with the messages on her phone. Her homerun call -- a “fire up the fountains!” for Nolan Arenado, which came to her while tweeting one day -- has seemingly become a trademark already.
However, while the number of critics is small, they can be mighty. The Rockies themselves clapped back at inappropriate comments online.
Cavnar isn't blindsided by the negative feedback but hopes to see it dwindle.
"Many men, because that’s what they’ve been in our industry, that do play-by-play, do it for a long time because they’re good at it, and fans get used to one thing," she says. "It’s hard to be a difference voice and a different face in that, but I’m grateful for the opportunity I’ve been given to show we can expand that."
Cavnar says that if one big name happened to be watching, she hopes it was longtime broadcaster Vin Scully.
But knowing young girls - at home on the couch - watched her make history is what feels most remarkable.
"It’s an honor. To get a text from the big names is cool, but to get a text from a friend that says, 'My daughter thinks your awesome...' I got videos from friends with little girls going, 'Go Jenny!' I want to tear up about it. It's really cool to be in that position," she says.
Cavnar hopes her next play-by-play opportunity happens this season.
WATCH Cavnar's full interview with Kyle Clark below:
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