Jason Benetti didn’t leave the White Sox’ TV booth on the best of terms. But you would never know it these days.
He has been back to Rate Field many times since becoming the Tigers’ TV voice in late 2023, including last weekend. He enjoys his visits, Sox fans have been good to him and those he butted heads with at the end of his eight-year run have been, too.
“I have a lot of friends there still,” Benetti told the Sun-Times. “Even some people that folks would think I’m not friends with, I’m friends with. It ended up being a very good, amicable departure.
“I’ll get a text from Brooks Boyer every once in a while. We communicate. It’s actually been better than I think most people think, and maybe it was initially, as well.”
Boyer, a Sox executive vice president and the chief revenue and marketing officer, played a part in Benetti’s departure, making an inappropriate remark that left Benetti seething.
In November 2023, Benetti told the “Sports Media with Richard Deitsch” podcast, “I had somebody say to me when I asked for more respect — and basically demanded more respect just in the way I was being treated — they said, ‘Respect according to normal human beings, or respect according to Jason Benetti?’ That is one of those things that I say, that’s disqualifying and will be for a long time.”
The Sun-Times later reported that the ‘‘somebody’’ was Boyer. But the men quickly let bygones be bygones, and when Benetti returned to Rate Field with the Tigers on Opening Day in 2024 — “You talk about ripping the Band-Aid off,” he said — the Sox saluted him on the video board. Boyer didn’t reply to a request for comment.
“They didn’t have to do a ‘Hello, welcome back,’ ” Benetti said. “It was really generous. So it’s actually been better than maybe anybody thought it would be after how it ended.”
On Sunday, Benetti will be back in town, but on the North Side as the voice of NBC’s “Sunday Night Baseball,” which will carry the Giants-Cubs game at 7:30. He’ll be joined by Cubs analyst Jim Deshaies and Giants analyst Hunter Pence. Bob Costas will host the pregame show with Cubs great Anthony Rizzo, who also will add game commentary during NBC’s “Inside the Pitch” segments.
Hearing Benetti call a Cubs game might sound strange to fans, who probably remember his “Thanks, Cubs!” remark after Eloy Jimenez’s tiebreaking homer in the ninth inning of a Sox victory on June 18, 2019. The Sox had acquired Jimenez from the Cubs, along with Dylan Cease, almost two years before for Jose Quintana.
But that has no bearing on Benetti’s feelings for Deshaies, with whom he worked on the Cubs-Cardinals game last Sunday. (The game averaged 2.5 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, making it the most-watched “Sunday Night Baseball” game this season.)
“He has become a good friend. He’s a really good human,” Benetti said. “I revere him and his ability to be a partner and his ability to be curious. He has such an understated but full-of-daggers sense of humor.
“He’s always funny. He’s great situationally. He is everything you’d want in an analyst, to me. If you were building a Madden create-a-player for an analyst, it would be Jim Deshaies.”
And to many, if you were to do the same for a play-by-play voice, it would be Benetti, whose knowledge, candor and wit are exemplary. Tigers fans fell for him quickly, and he meshed with his new crew just as fast. On “Sunday Night Baseball,” he enjoys working with different analysts each week. And by all accounts, they enjoy working with him.
Benetti also is fond of NBC, for which he left Fox with a couple of months still on his contract. He’s grateful that Fox let him out early so he could take the job.
“I would’ve said this when I was with any network, but I think NBC’s level of care for TV sports is obvious at every turn,” said Benetti, who was the voice of the initial “Sunday Leadoff” package that aired on Peacock in 2022.
Benetti will call a game at Wrigley Field for the first time since August 2024. After baseball season, though, he isn’t sure what he’ll call for NBC. He signed to work year-round, also calling football and basketball, but what that entails is still being determined.
What he does know is that he always will be part of White Sox history wherever he’s working.
“No matter what, I grew up a White Sox fan,” said Benetti, who was raised in south suburban Homewood. “Wherever you go in life, whatever you grew up with is always going to be a part of you. But the Tigers have been amazing to me, and they’re always going to be a part of me, too.”
Remote patrol
ABC 7 sports anchor Ryan Chiaverini won’t be in the studio in June. He’ll be traveling Route 66 to celebrate 100 years of the famed road, driving with a production crew from Navy Pier to Santa Monica Pier and filing reports along the way.
• ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania gave the alumni commencement speech for New Trier’s graduation Sunday at the NOW Arena. Charania, a North Shore native, graduated from New Trier in 2012.
• Apple TV picked up the White Sox’ game July 17 in Toronto for its “Friday Night Baseball” package. The broadcast will begin at 6 p.m.