Jason Benetti (born September 9, 1983) acts as a play-by-play broadcaster for ESPN, Fox Sports, Westwood One, and Time Warner covering football, baseball, lacrosse, hockey, and basketball. Beginning in 2016, he will also be the television play-by-play announcer for Chicago White Sox home games.
Benetti is a unique individual in the sports broadcasting world as he happens to be born with cerebral palsy. Benetti was born 10 weeks prematurely and hospitalized for three months. During the three months in the hospital, Benetti had a respiratory illness while in intensive care that deprived his blood of oxygen. It is believed that caused his cerebral palsy, which was diagnosed when Benetti was a toddler. He underwent years of physical therapy and two surgeries to improve his ability to walk.
Neither the wheelchair he needed for a time in elementary school nor the braces he once wore on his legs kept Benetti from developing a passion for sports. He played catch with his father and basketball in the driveway. He studied statistics, memorized team nicknames and pretended to call the action while playing Nintendo games or watching sports on TV when he was 8 and 9 years old. In Junior High, Benetti ran his school's NCAA tournament pool, and in High School he joined the radio broadcasters.
While the cerebral palsy didn't prevent him from playing tuba in High School, it did prevent him from playing tuba during marching band season. Not wanting to exclude Benetti, the band director asked him to serve as the Halftime broadcast for their marching events.
In the mid-2000s Benetti became a student at Syracuse University where he called lacrosse and women's basketball. After graduating Benetti enrolled at Wake Forest University where he attended for three years. Benetti would graduate Wake Forest with a law degree, but most nights would be spent calling sports instead of studying. While at Wake Forest, Benetti acted as the voice of High Point Panthers basketball games, Syracuse Chiefs baseball games, and high school football for Time Warner Cable Sports Channel.
In 2011, Benetti would join the ranks of ESPN, and his broadcasting career would move onto television, a medium he wanted to avoid when he was a kid. Benetti would call select college basketball games for ESPN3 and then move onto ESPN2 and ESPNU. In 2013, Benetti called his first football game for AAC Network.
While Benetti continues to grow in his sports broadcast career, he finds a higher purpose in serving with CHAT, also known as the Communication Hope through Assistive Technology, camp at Syracuse University. Today most people are shocked to learn that Benetti has cerebral palsy; Benetti continues to be grateful and thankful to all who allow him to grow and learn.
It is a tough act to follow for Benetti in replacing Ken “Hawk” Harrelson as the television play-by-play announcer for Chicago White Sox home games. Harrelson said he was going to cut back on broadcasts of Chicago White Sox games after 31 years. He is a two-time finalist for the Ford C. Frick Award, given to broadcasters for major contributions to baseball. Ken was famous for his “hawkisms” like: You can put it on the board...Yes!, Sacks packed with Sox, You can cancel the post-game show, or You can book it, Dan-O. All his sayings would inform the fans the fate of his beloved White Sox if they just tuned in to the broadcast.
Paul Murphy
Follow me on Twitter at @_prmurphy
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