Sid Iyer realized this early on, in the first stages of his baseball play-by-play career: At its heart, what he now does in front of a live microphone, as one of the voices of the Class-A Ontario Tower Buzzers, is to tell stories.
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That is, to be sure, not much different from what we do in this space. We inform, we describe, we try to make it interesting or entertaining, and a lot of the time we’re tell stories about people, or communities, or institutions.
Maybe Iyer first realized that calling a game took away some of the sting of not being able to play the game, after getting offers to pitch on the Division I college level, accepting one from UC Davis, but then suffering an arm injury that took that opportunity away.
“Obviously a hard decision” to change ambitions, he said in a recent conversation. “But as a pitcher that’s something you’re wary of, making sure you stay healthy and keep the arm as OK as possible.
“It was such an important part of my life. It was, and still is, the most important sport to me. I think you learn so much by playing baseball, being around the game. You learn about failure. You learn about how to bounce back. And then even if you go 0 for 4, give up two home runs or whatever, you’ve always got another game coming up.”
So instead of being a student-athlete, he was simply a student. And during that process, he started doing standup comedy.
“I did it for five years, went on tour, got to tour all the local L.A. comedy clubs, got to work with people who were on Netflix, America’s Got Talent, all those shows, and it was such a cool experience,” he said.
At some point, another light bulb came on.
“I had been doing comedy for a while,” he said. “Obviously, baseball has been something that I’m constantly watching, right? And it’s my main sport by far. And at some point, I just realized, ‘Wait – baseball and comedy, the middle ground of the two is just commentary.’
“It’s more than even just telling the play-by-play of a game. You’re telling the story of players. You’re telling the story of a team, the connection to a community. Obviously, with Ontario being within like a stone’s throw from where the Dodgers are, I think there’s that really beautiful connection.
“I was like, ‘Well, it just makes so much sense. And it clicked for me that that was something that I wanted to do.”
Iyer, 28, who shares the Buzzers’ play-by-play duties with Jeff Woolson, launched that career with broadcast work on UCLA sports and with the Big Ten Network while working toward his MBA at UCLA. In the 2025 season, he followed the Bruins all the way to the College World Series in Omaha.
Along that path, he recalled, he was doing a midweek Bruins game and was approached by the mother of Roch Cholowsky, a star that year as a junior and the first pick in the MLB draft this year by the White Sox following his junior season.
“She (said), ‘By the way, are you Indian?’ ” he said. “And she’s like, ‘Roch is a quarter Indian.’”
That’s Indian as in the South Asian country that is the most populous in the world, with nearly 1.48 billion residents. Imagine someone surprising you with that fact – not just a guy but a potential star who shared your ancestry, when you’d grown accustomed to not seeing a lot of people who did.
“Growing up I barely saw anybody that looked like me,” he said. “Off the top of my head, I can think of really only three or four people of my complexion that I ever really saw. And we all kind of knew each other because it was like, you know, small world.
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“That was like incredibly fulfilling and cool to hear. There’s that connection, but (it’s) also just the way we can expand the game, too.”
Kumar Rocker, who now pitches for the Texas Rangers, was the first Indian American in the big leagues when he got there in 2024. Cholowsky is currently playing with Winston-Salem in the High-A South Atlantic League. Shortstop prospect Arjun Nimmala’s parents emigrated from India, and he spent summers there visiting relatives and playing cricket, but baseball won out. He was drafted in the first round by Toronto in 2023 and acquired by the Angels this month in the José Soriano trade.
“I think it’s so cool,” he said. “Like kids can watch TV or listen to a broadcast and they can see someone like me or hear someone like me, but also … see players like that who maybe they haven’t seen before.”
Iyer is, as far as he knows, the only broadcaster of Indian descent calling baseball. And he has someone higher up in the Dodger organization to identify with. Stephen Nelson, in his fourth season of calling Dodgers’ games on radio and TV, is the game’s only Asian-American broadcaster.
The fact that “we’re in the same (organization) is such a cool parallel,” said Iyer, who met Nelson recently at Dodger Stadium before a game and told him exactly that.
“He went in for the bro hug and he was just like, ‘That is so cool to hear. I love that,’” Iyer said. “Just his words of advice were, essentially, ‘Just keep aiming higher. … You’re not only representing yourself.’”
In the meantime, there are plenty of stories to tell, of a first-year Low-A franchise in a brand new ballpark with the big club’s stamp all over it. It’s a team that played .500 ball in the first half but as of Wednesday had a four-game lead in its division in the second half and appeared bound for the postseason.
And the 132-game minor league season is so similar to the 162-game major league grind in this way:
“If there’s a bad day, there’s always another day coming up,” Iyer said. “That’s just a life lesson, which is beautiful.”
Another enticing aspect of the game that goes along with its everyday nature? For the fan who truly follows his team and keeps track of who’s hurt, who’s getting a day off, who’s on a hot streak, who’s available out of the bullpen tonight – or, maybe, which major leaguer is in town on a rehab stint – it’s a summer-long drama, one that enables you to forget everything else and lock in for a few hours.
“There’s so many games and sometimes the travel isn’t as fun, but at the same time you get to the stadium and it’s like this escape.” Iyer said.
And there are all those stories. Iyer remembered an early-season conversation with shortstop prospect Emil Morales, before the Dodgers promoted him to High-A Great Lakes.
“We went down and we were just chatting with him and, you just realize that these are … kids,” he said. “You ask them a question as simple as, ‘Why’d you pick that jersey number?’ And there’s a really sweet, endearing, innocent story behind it.”
Those stories, the personalities that come with them and that daily drama help keep fans coming back.
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