Dan D'Uva: From Syracuse Crunch to Syracuse Chiefs

Dan D'Uva calling the Chiefs game vs. the Buffalo Bisons. 

Story and photos by Brianna Adams

SYRACUSE, N.Y.—The voice of the Syracuse Crunch took his talents from the ice rink to the baseball field this past week. Dan D'Uva filled in for Kevin Brown as the radio play-by-play commentator for the Syracuse Chiefs during the series against the Buffalo Bisons. 

D'Uva has been the lead play-by-play commentator for the Crunch for the past four years. Calling the ball game itself was not a foreign task for the hockey commentator. In preparation for Wednesday night's game, D'Uva was cool and collected, talking to fellow Chiefs workers in the booth and raving about Bruce Springsteen. 

D'Uva's start in sports broadcasting began in 1999 at his New Jersey high school, Ridgewood High School. D'Uva and high school classmate Guy Benson covered all Ridgewood sports for the North Jersey community.

"It started with a VHS camera and a couple of microphones from Radio Shack," D'Uva said in an interview after Wednesday night's game. "But it quickly grew into six cameras with a telestrator and replay and we were on TV in 280,000 homes in three counties by the time we graduated."

After they graduated, Benson went to Northwestern and D'Uva went to Syracuse. They launched the broadcast network for the Cape Cod Baseball League as a way to continue working together during the college years. D'Uva is still regularly involved with the baseball league by selecting and mentoring broadcast interns.

Now more than a decade after broadcasting for Cape Cod, D'Uva is fully transitioned into AHL hockey. That is until he gets called upon to call baseball once again. The transition from calling hockey to calling baseball did challenge D'Uva in adjusting to the different pace of the game.

"Hockey is fast," D'Uva said. "Keeping up with the play is challenging, what to choose, you have to edit on the fly and be economical in your words. Baseball there's a lot that's happening to keep track of but there's more downtime. But then if you are lacking an anecdote, a theme or a point of discussion then it becomes less interesting. So they are different challenges."

D'Uva has faced this challenge before covering the Chiefs on television for Time Warner Sports but never has he led the radio play-by-play for the Washington Nationals' minor league team. D'Uva began his role Tuesday night during the doubleheader against the Bisons. 

"The first innings of the first game were rusty," D'Uva said. "Not only to get back in the flow of calling games...but then to get out the baseball rust and into the rhythm of the game, rhythm is such a big deal."

D'Uva joined by lead play-by-play commentator Kevin Brown
for the remainder of the game. The Chiefs would win 6-1
against the Buffalo Bisons.

By the third game of the series, D'Uva was completely rid of the baseball rust. In the final game D'Uva would call for the series, lead play-by-play commentator Kevin Brown returned from a trip  in time to drop in and join him.

"I thought who could fill in and Dan, you were our first choice," Brown said while on the air. "So I'm really thrilled you were here and I think the folks have been in for a treat the last couple hours."