While it’s always good fall sport to mock the national baseball broadcasters, Ernie Johnson is almost always excluded from that. The reason: he’s actually pretty good and knows his stuff. I know he’s more notable for his basketball work, but he’s a good baseball broadcaster.
And he’s an even better man, as this profile by Dan Caesar of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch makes clear.
Back in 2011 Johnson missed his playoff assignments due to his son’s illness. Caesar tells the story behind all of that. Johnson’s son -- who he and his wife adopted from a Romanian orphanage in 1991 -- is on a ventilator and requires around-the-clock medical care. Care which Johnson and his family provide themselves at home. The story talks about their son and the challenges and rewards of the entire situation. Listening to Johnson talk you conclude that, in his mind, the rewards outweigh the challenges by orders of magnitude.
Hats off to Ernie Johnson and his family. They sound amazing.