CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Tennessee baseball is no stranger to the spotlight and the drama that comes with postseason baseball. One of the prominent voices that has bore witness to and called some of those memorable moments has been ESPN play-by-play announcer Mike Monaco.
The young broadcaster has announced various sports for “The World Wide Leader,” and he started the month of May calling the Stanley Cup Playoffs before shifting gears toward collegiate baseball. He was named part of the announcer team that broadcast the Chapel Hill regional alongside color analyst Ben McDonald, but it was not the first time he took the mic for Tennessee regional action.
Monaco was on play-by-play duty for the Knoxville Regional final in 2022 between the Vols and Georgia Tech. While he was not at the stadium for the call, he said he still felt the energy.
“I mean, Georgia Tech played great that weekend,” Monaco told The Daily Beacon. “They made it really interesting. But yeah, Tennessee, like that team in some ways, team of destiny. I know they didn’t get as far as they wanted to, but man, it was a special season and you could really feel it from the ballpark that weekend, just where we were calling it from afar.”
The Vols defeated Georgia Tech in that game 9-6, powered by a six-run rally in the ninth inning. Despite broadcasting the game remotely, Monaco said the atmosphere of Lindsey Nelson was “supercharged.”
He was back in the booth for the 2025 Knoxville regional, and the Notre Dame grad was on-hand for the regional final between Tennessee and Wake Forest. One of the key moments of that game was Andrew Fischer’s fourth-inning two-run homer, which led to the first baseman pounding his chest rounding the bases. While Monaco has been on hand for some loud playoff environments, he said something fascinating.
“That was up there for as loud as I’ve heard a sporting event,” Monaco said. “He totally totally crushed that. That was pretty cool.”
While the Lindsey Nelson Stadium crowd got loud for the Fischer homer, they adopted the psychotic energy of Liam Doyle when the lefty came out of the bullpen in the seventh inning on short rest. Given the uncertainty of the game’s outcome and the possibility of Doyle’s career coming to an end, Monaco said during the broadcast, the top prospect did a “Jordan Belfort, he’s not leaving” while the lefty faced his first hitter. Doyle promptly struck out Kaden Lewis on a 99-mph fastball to escape the seventh inning unscathed.
“Liam Doyle was pitching his tail off, and I think I said at one point, ‘Liam Doyle’s a madman.’ He was just going nuts,” Monaco said.
Monaco did, in fact, say that, and Doyle was certainly that as he bounced into the Tennessee dugout following his inning-ending strikeout in the eighth. The Vols went on to win the game 11-5 to advance, with Doyle earning a save in the victory.
“That Wake team was super talented,” Monaco said. “The Wake program has been. But yeah, between Andrew Fischer, Liam Doyle, a couple leaders on that team, they weren’t gonna be stopped.”
This weekend, Monaco again found himself in the midst of a nail-biting Tennessee baseball game, as the Vols opened their regionals with a tightly contested game versus East Carolina.
After Davin Whitaker put the Pirates out front 2-1 with a ninth-inning homer, the Vols found themselves an out away from defeat. Then Henry Ford stepped to the plate and hammered a jaw-dropping solo home run to tie the game.
“You could tell off the bat that he got it,” Monaco said. “It was crushed. But man, after Whitaker had homered in the top of the ninth, for Ford to then homer in the bottom of the ninth — those were big swings, especially in such a low-scoring game. He got that one, and I don’t think at that point I was thinking it was gonna go 14 innings but, man, what a game.”
While the result didn’t go in the Vols’ favor, it was yet another drama-filled game that demonstrates why collegiate baseball, especially come postseason, can be so compelling.
“There’s so much energy to the sport, the talent’s so good, the talent keeps getting better,” Monaco said. “And then like, anything can happen. It sounds so cliche, but like, you can get a lot of upsets in this game, and I think it’s just a great sport.”
Regardless of where he has broadcast Tennessee baseball or who’s been in charge, Monaco said it’s been “really cool seeing how that fan base turns out” and the quality of the program under both former head coach Tony Vitello and current head coach Josh Elander.
Given the stability of the Tennessee baseball program and the budding career of Monaco, it stands to reason he will have many more opportunities to call the Vols in the postseason.
“College baseball keeps getting bigger and better, and we love being a part of it,” Monaco said.
