About

Mick Gillispie, the “voice” of Smokies baseball will again anchor this year’s radio broadcast joined by Cody Chrusciel, Roger Hoover, and interns Jonathan Guess and Adam King. The team will bring all 140 games to the East Tennessee airwaves.

Gillispie enters his eighth season in the Southern League after spending the first two with division rival Chattanooga. Chrusciel and Hoover will co-host the Pilot-Oscar Meyer Pregame Show live 15-minutes prior to the scheduled first-pitch.

Mick Gillispie is in his sixth season as Director of Broadcasting and play-by-play voice for the Smokies Radio Network. Gillispie also directs and manages the SRN broadcast staff and over sees the entire on air product from the intro song to the closing billboard and everything in between. Prior to the 2011 and 2012 seasons, Gillispie handled the play-by-play for 20 Chicago Cubs spring training games on Cubs.com, teaming up with Cubs television voice Len Kasper. In 2010, Gillispie was named the Southern League Broadcaster of the Year Award, voted on by his peers and colleagues. Prior to joining Tennessee he spent 2005 & 2006 on the Chattanooga Lookouts broadcast team. In 2004 Gillispie called games for the Salem Avalanche (Class A Carolina League) and began his career doing play-by-play for the Wilson Tobs (Coastal Plains League) in 2003.

Cody Chrusciel joins the Smokies in 2012 for his fifth season broadcasting professional baseball. Prior to coming to Tennessee, he spent the past four seasons as Director of Broadcasting and Media Relations for the New Jersey Jackals of the independent Can-Am League.

In the offseason, Chrusciel works at the University of Massachusetts, calling play-by-play for UMass women’s basketball, handling sideline reporting duties for Minutemen football, and producing features for the athletic department’s weekly television show. He has previously worked in broadcasting and multimedia at Army (the United States Military Academy at West Point), the video services department with the Philadelphia Phillies, and the public relations and broadcasting department of the ECHL’s Trenton Devils.

A Wayne, N.J., native, Chrusciel studied broadcast journalism and radio/television/film at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., before earning his master’s degree in sport management from UMass.

Roger Hoover enters his fifth season of professional baseball broadcasting and the 2012 season marks his return to the Smokies. Hoover spent the 2011 season as the Radio Broadcaster for the Jacksonville Suns of the Southern League.

Hoover, a native of Kingsport, Tenn., began working with the Smokies in 2009 as a broadcasting assistant, and has provided play-by-play for Tennessee in each of the past three Southern League playoffs. Before working with the Smokies, Hoover served as the Director of Broadcasting for the Kingsport Mets, the Appalachian League affiliate of the New York Mets in 2008.

Hoover currently is the color analyst for University of Tennessee baseball on the Vol Network and the play-by-play announcer for Maryville College Athletics on knoxivi.com. A University of Tennessee alumnus, Hoover began his broadcasting career in 2006 with the Vol Network.

Jonathan Guess joins the Smokies for his first season as a broadcast intern. Guess is a senior Journalism and Electronic Media major at the University of Tennessee. He spent time as a DJ at the UT campus radio station 90.3 The Rock. Guess, a Kingsland, Ga., native, spent the first three years of his college career playing golf at Thomas University. He transferred to UT in 2009 and will graduate in May.

Adam King will be graduating this May from the University of Tennessee and will assist in the production of the Smokies Radio Network for the 2012 season.

King, a native of Marietta, Ga., experienced collegiate baseball firsthand, splitting time at the catcher position for Young Harris College in north Georgia in Spring 2009. King received a scholarship to play for the University of Tennessee in Fall 2009, but hung the spikes up in the fall of 2011 to further his career in sports broadcasting.

King currently serves as the color analyst for University of Tennessee Baseball video webcasts on UTsports.com with Roger Hoover. He is also currently shadowing John Wilkerson, the play-by-play announcer for Tennessee Baseball on the Sports Animal Radio Network. In addition, King is also an Assistant Producer and Anchor for Sports Mecca, the student-run TV station on campus.

The Smokies Radio Network has the largest coverage reach in the Southern League. This four-signal network is anchored by flagship station WNML 99.1, a 6,000-watt FM transmitter located in Lenoir City just outside of West Knoxville and covers Maryville, Sevierville, Dayton and Crossviile. The east side of Knoxville into Gatlinburg, Newport and Morristown and even Smokies Park tunes to WNRX 99.3. The Thousand-Watt transmitter sits in nearby Jefferson City. The most powerful signal of the network can be heard in parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, North and South Carolina, WNML-AM 990 boasts a massive 10,000–Watt, flame-throwing transmitter that is located in downtown Knoxville.

All weekday day games and selective night and weekend contests maybe subject to conflict with other Citadel station programs. Some of those games will now be heard on WPFT 106.3. Operated by East Tennessee Radio Group this 500-Watt FM station sits in Pigeon Forge and comes in clear all across Sevierville into parts of Knox County. In addition every Smokies broadcast will be streamed live and free, via the Internet, at www. smokiesbaseball.com, as well as available on the Smokies mobile app.