Tony Caridi uses his unmistakable storytelling skills to tell the tale of Mountaineers on and off the court and field.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE August/September 2014 issue Morgantown magazine. Updated March 2022.
Written by Katie Griffith
He might be the eyes of Mountaineer fans across the state, but Tony Caridi is quick to correct you on any other assumed title. “I’m not the Voice of the Mountaineers,” he says.
Though many emcees and reporters are happy to label him as such, he won’t let us get away with it. “Jack Fleming was the Voice of the Mountaineers and held the position for well over 40 years. He was a legend,” Tony says. “They retired the ‘Voice of the Mountaineers’ title to him. I’m just a play-by-play announcer.”
But “just a play-by-play announcer” isn’t quite right either for this adopted West Virginian who’s taller than you’d think. He unfolds from his chair like a paper lantern to offer food and drink to guests at his office. He’s a tightly wound person; affable, all smiles and laughter, but still self-diagnosed ADHD. An award-winning broadcaster himself, Tony’s interest in sports and play-by-play announcing began as a child working at his family’s grocery store in western New York. His father emigrated from Italy in 1957 without knowing a word of English and bought the store where Tony and his siblings would work after school. “I played basketball, baseball, soccer a little bit. I was OK,” he says. “I just liked sports and would go to bed listening to play-by-play guys.” Buffalo teams created his early interest but, where most kids dream of playing themselves, Tony’s aspirations were different.
“I always knew I wanted to do play-by-play from a very early age. I would listen to those games and think, ‘That would be so awesome to do.’ And it actually happened.” With his parents’ encouragement he pursued communications in college, landing a number of internships that would eventually take him to West Virginia in 1984 to work for Hoppy Kercheval and WAJR at West Virginia Radio Corporation. Tony says he never planned to stay as long as he has. The West Virginia stint was just supposed to last a few months, but he always found a reason to stay. The network grew. He went from news guy to sports guy to sports director. Jack Fleming took him under wing.
Since transitioning in as the Mountaineer Sports Network play-by-play announcer in 1996, Tony has been recounting WVU football and basketball games to West Virginia’s radio listeners season after season, game after game, for almost 20 years. It may not be the 40-year career of the storied Jack Fleming, but Tony’s voice is now the one radio listeners tune in to every week in the car. His quote—It’s a great day to be a Mountaineer, wherever you may be—is repeated by fans statewide. “As you go along and mature as an announcer, you do become yourself,” he says. The lessons he learned from Jack form the basis of Tony’s play-by-play style, but the flair and the voice are all his. “I’m more about digging in and getting facts and storylines about players to incorporate into the broadcast,” he says. “Football is now played at a much faster speed than it used to be. It’s almost basketball on grass. You have less of a chance to get that information into a broadcast, but I still do not move away from my preparation and charts with all these little story angles in case it’s needed.”
Announcing, you might imagine, requires intense concentration. It needs the ability to lock on a game and let the words pour from your mouth. “I jump all over the place on a daily basis, but a game is the one thing I can totally fixate on,” Tony says. “It’s the ultimate challenge to have 22 football players colliding with one another, helmets on, while you’re way up in the air, and to describe exactly what’s happening to the point that you are someone’s eyes and ears.
For football he has a team assisting him. Statisticians, spotters, an analyst, a producer, and a sideline reporter regularly feed him information about the teams and plays that he spits back out as a coherent story. He has a couple of metaphors to describe the situation. “They’re my team. It’s an orchestra. You’re flying an airplane.” Despite the excitement innate to a bunch of dudes colliding with one another on a field, the flight crew remains calm. “When all heck is breaking loose on a field, the ball gets knocked away, or there are penalty flags, you take a breath and set the scene,” he says. “Sometimes it’s developing as you go. You literally describe. Officials are coming together and they’re at the 30-yard line. The coach is obviously very upset; he’s walked out. On the far side the coach has called two officials over. You’re painting a picture for a person driving down the road.”
When he’s not painting the scene of a WVU game, Tony’s telling stories of a different sort. In 2003, he added business executive and cofounder of the Morgantown-based Pikewood Creative to his resume. The digital marketing agency that is now called WVRC Media produces longform videos and commercials, full-scale animation, motion graphics, digital marketing, web development and design, and graphic design. “I’m an announcer, I’m a businessman, and an entrepreneur,” he says. In his off time, he’s also a family-man, a foodie, a dog-lover, and a banjo enthusiast. “I can’t limit myself to one thing. I like growing stuff. I’m doing everything I’ve always wanted to do.”
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