Jeff Brantley still remembers the game like it was yesterday.
Long before his name was set to be enshrined in the pantheon of college baseball, Brantley and his teammates sat in the first base dugout at Dudy Noble Field, faces in their hands and tears in their eyes. It was May 27, 1984, the Bulldogs’ season had just come to an end, and Brantley said he was to blame.
State was playing New Orleans in a Regional Final for a trip to the College World Series. Brantley started, and was in his sixth inning with a 2-0 deficit, bases loaded. Stuart Weidie, a Mississippi native, stood in the box.
In an 0-2 count, Brantley served Weidie a fastball “shoelace high off the ground.” Weidie capitalized, sending the ball over the right center wall.
It was a grand slam, and a decisive blow in State’s 6-3 loss to the Privateers. When he and the rest of MSU’s roster got back to campus in the fall, Brantley said the loss had instilled something they hadn’t had before: killer instinct.
“A lot of us just decided, this is it, we’re not taking ‘No’ for an answer anymore,” Brantley said. “We tried to murder teams… on days when we were tired, we’re playing in the middle of the week, we’re playing in the middle of nowhere sometimes, but when the bell rang and we stepped onto that field it was time to crush somebody.”
And murder teams they did.
The 1985 Bulldogs had a record of 50-15, were SEC Champions, and finished the year with a trip to the College World Series. Brantley, who had elite numbers the season before, became virtually unhittable.
He finished the year with an 18-2 record, a 2.29 ERA and 136 total strikeouts. His 18 wins is still the SEC record for most wins in a season. He is tied for the conference record in career wins with 45, and is top-10 in the conference in innings pitched in a season (145.2 in 1985) and in a career (427).
“He was the epitome of a bulldog on the mound,” Will Clark, Brantley’s teammate at State and with the San Francisco Giants, said. “I mean, he went out there and absolutely dominated.”
Clark, who was one half of MSU’s “Thunder and Lightning” duo with Rafael Palmeiro that made for a potent Bulldog offense in 1985, said Brantley took a lot of pressure off the lineup.
“Jeff also gave us the ability of hey, look, all we gotta do is scratch out a few and he’s going to take it from there,” Clark said.
Brantley’s career earned him spots in the Mississippi State Hall of Fame, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, and in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, his home state. But perhaps the biggest accolade of Brantley’s career was delivered via a phone call in early June.
He was sitting in a hotel room in San Diego when his phone rang. On the other end was Mark Chapman, a member of the board of trustees for the College Baseball Hall of Fame. After a long conversation, Chapman told Brantley that he was going to be part of the Hall of Fame’s next class.
“To be involved in something like this, and be recognized for something you did 40-something years ago, that’s really cool,” Brantley said. “It’s fun to be able to represent Mississippi State, it’s fun to be able to represent my family… the most important thing for me is to be able to represent God.”
Brantley is part of the 19th induction class for the College Baseball Hall of Fame. He’ll be inducted alongside Giants and Florida State great Buster Posey, Arizona State’s Barry Bonds and 13 other former players.
He’ll become the fourth Bulldog to be inducted, all who were a part of the 1985 team: Clark, Palmerio, and MSU’s legendary coach, Ron Polk. Brantley said that the 1985 team is “part of the fabric” for MSU baseball.
“When you start looking at all of this, it’s not just about one or two people, or three or four,” Brantley said. “It’s about the team element, and that’s what gets you there.”
Brantley’s baseball career extended far beyond Starkville. He spent 14 years in the majors with the Giants, Reds, Cardinals, Phillies and Texans. He was an All-Star in 1990, and was the reliever of the year in 1996, leading the National League with 44 saves.
However, after his playing career ended, Brantley fulfilled his true lifelong goal – becoming a broadcaster
Brantley’s broadcasting dreams
From the time he was 8 years old, up to when playing baseball took up too much of his time, Brantley had a routine.
Every night, Brantley walked out of his house in Hoover, Alabama, sat in the car and turned on the radio. He’d turn the dial to a Cuban station, because at 6 p.m., the Spanish-speaking hosts would turn into Marty Brennaman, the voice of the Cincinnati Reds.
Brantley fell in love with the voices of Brennaman, Mel Allen and Keith Jackson. He loved the voices first, and then started to pick up the game.
In his basement, while learning how to pitch, Brantley became those voices. He’d throw a tennis ball against a cinder block wall, and pretend to call his games against lineups made of the baseball cards he owned.
“The reason I was throwing the ball is because I was announcing the game,” Brantley said.
All that practice built up Brantley’s arm, and put him in position to live out his second dream – playing professional baseball – before accomplishing his first.
For more than 20 years, Brantley has lived his lifelong dream of broadcasting baseball. He started with ESPN in 2001, and has been the color commentator for the Reds radio broadcast since 2006, getting to share a call with Brennaman, the man whose voice he’d fallen in love with growing up.
Brennaman was the source of some early lessons for Brantley. He gave Brantley the honor of taking play-by-play duties in the third inning of a game early in his career with the Reds. He went in confident, telling Brennaman he could “do this in my sleep.”
Brennaman announced Brantley as the play-by-play broadcaster, and walked out of the room, leaving Brantley by his lonesome. With runners on, the batter knocked one into right center field. Brantley ignored the flow of the game, and jumped into analysis of the swing.
“He’s (Brennaman) standing right behind me, and he opens up my little ear muff on my microphone, and he goes, ‘Where’s the ball? Tell them where the ball is, tell them what’s going on!’” Brantley said, recalling an off-mic berating he got from Brennaman. “And so I immediately broke in, and I was like ‘Oh wow, there’s a little more to this than I thought.”
Now, Brantley’s ability as a color commentator has earned high praise from those around him.
“You can count on him every day to be ready to go,” Tommy Thrall, Reds radio play-by-play broadcaster and Brantley’s partner in the booth, said. “He sees the game so well, he doesn’t miss anything, and you can always bounce something off of him.”
Thrall, who, like Brantley, also wanted to broadcast baseball from a young age, said he is constantly “in awe” of Brantley’s dedication to the craft. Thrall said Brantley is always trying to get better “day in and day out.”
Thrall said Brantley is no different off the mic than he is one. He called Brantley, who officiated Thrall’s wedding during the offseason, one of his best friends.
“He’s a lot of fun to be around, he’s just a great, caring individual and he’s just a really good person,” Thrall said.
Brantley’s hall of fame induction ceremony is scheduled for Feb. 11 in Overland Park, Kansas, at the College Baseball Hall of Fame. He said what he wants the most is for his family to be there with him to celebrate.
“I’m excited, my wife’s excited, like all my kids are excited, my grandkids are excited,” Brantley said. “I mean, that’s really what it’s about. I mean, you just want to celebrate it with your family and your friends and enjoy it, and that’s what I plan on doing.”
Jake is the Mississippi State athletics reporter for The Dispatch.
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