Wolff Finds His Voice Off the Diamond

The crack of a bat, the pop of a glove, the infield chatter—these are the sounds that define him. His voice registers only the number of outs in an inning, though he might encourage a teammate at the plate in a clutch situation. On the field, the voice is secondary; the glove and the bat speak for him.

It was always baseball for Harvard infielder John Wolff, whose father spent time with the Detroit Tigers after being drafted following his junior year at Harvard. The elder Wolff introduced his son to the game early, pitching balled-up socks to Wolff almost before he could hold a bat upright.

“Baseball defines my life,” Wolff said. “I wake up, go to class, go to lifting, go to practice. It describes the structure of my life, and it’s something that I love very much.”

Yes, it was always baseball.

And it was baseball that provided him the vocal outlet that the diamond never could.

In the fall of 2002, Wolf tore the interior labrum in his left shoulder while diving for a ball. The injury ended his freshman season before it ever started, leaving Wolff with idle hands and a useless non-throwing arm. Surgery would repair the tear, but a winter without baseball would be a long one.

That is until Wolff temporarily traded the batter’s box for the press box and became the voice of Harvard men’s hockey on WHRB 95.3 FM.

“It was the first time in my life I wasn’t playing sports, and I thought, ‘Well, what am I going to do?’” Wolff said. “I played a lot of hockey in high school, and there was a spot open on the hockey broadcast.”

Removed from the organized, slow-paced baseball world and thrust into the helter-skelter realm of college hockey, Wolff struggled. Like a Randy Johnson fastball, hockey never seemed to slow down.

“I started off really terribly. I was stuttering, and I was just terrible,” Wolff said. “You’re always fighting the temptation to speed your speech up to catch up to the hockey.”

Wolff began his broadcasting career as the color man—the broadcaster who analyzes the actual formations and playcalling on the ice—for women’s hockey, capping off his freshman year with a broadcast at the NCAA Women’s Hockey Championship Game in Duluth, Minnesota. The Crimson dropped the game, 4-3, to Minnesota-Duluth in double overtime, but even the loss wouldn’t sour Wolff’s experience in the press box.

He moved to men’s hockey his sophomore year and is now the play-by-play broadcaster for all of Harvard’s games. Every Friday and Saturday night, Wolff treks to either the Bright Center or to rinks all over New England and lends his voice to the Crimson faithful.

“You know that he’s skipping other things that other people might think are more important,” partner Rick Goldberg said. “He skipped the Owl’s initiation dinner to broadcast hockey.”

That’s quite the dedication for a seasonal hobby. But like baseball, broadcasting is a genealogical norm for the Wolff family.

Wolff’s grandfather Bob Wolff was the broadcaster for both the Washington Senators and the Minnesota Twins in the 1950s and ’60s. Recently elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Bob Wolff left radio to broadcast baseball games for NBC in the early 1960s and later went on to broadcast in Madison Square Garden. Rick Wolff, John’s father, moved on from pro baseball and has become a radio broadcaster in New York City for WFAN.

Wolff’s father encouraged him to take up broadcasting, and both grandfather and father have critiqued and congratulated him as he’s become the voice of Harvard hockey. Wolff calls home between each period of every game to get the advice of his father.

“I can’t think of a better person than one who listens to Harvard hockey every Friday and Saturday night,” Wolff said. “He doesn’t even like hockey—he’s just trying to help me out.”

Experience has proven most helpful for the aspiring broadcaster. Limited by injury on the field for an entire season, Wolff has been steady in the booth for the nearly 200 games he has broadcasted in three years.

“I look forward to every game, and I still get butterflies before each of them,” he said. “Every broadcast I feel like I just started the game and, all of a sudden, it’s the end of the third period.”

He’s talking about hockey, not baseball. It may not be bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, but hockey broadcasting has given Wolff a way to stay involved with Harvard athletics when the only white line on O’Donnell Field is a mound of snow. As a member of the Harvard JV hockey team, Wolff’s found plenty do to do between early summer and opening day.

Once a diversion from a year without baseball, broadcasting has become a bona fide career option for Wolff.

Pro baseball remains the dream for the son of a major leaguer, but, like his father, Wolff finds the microphone comfortable. There’s no stress of a game-winning single on the line, there’s no squeeze play needed to save a one-run lead—there’s just the microphone, the ice and the net.

“Whereas baseball I take very seriously,” Wolff said, “with hockey I can relax a little bit and have fun.”

His speech is slow, deliberate—nothing gives away the voice that celebrates penalty shots or power play goals. There’s the stoicism of a switch hitter staring down a pitcher and the patience of a first baseman awaiting a throw from the shortstop.

Without a microphone and under the bright lights of O’Donnell Field, John Wolff remains silent.

In the booth at the Bright Hockey Center, he comes alive.

“It’s like this,” he says calmly. “Pass to the low spot to Welch, Welch to Cavanagh, Cavanagh on the crease, he shoots...”

And scores?

He doesn’t say, perhaps he doesn’t know—but he has until opening day to figure it out, and then to tell the world.