Anthony Passarelli brings his A-game to every game and every day, a radio and broadcasting career of persistence and commitment to excellence.
If the name does not ring a bell, his voice will. Anthony Passarelli has built a successful career in broadcasting that has transcended three different sports through years of passion. His commitment from a young age of listening to radio broadcasts whenever he could to flexibly covering other jobs and assignments is a telling story of how preparation meets opportunity.
San Jose, Calif. — Anthony Passarelli is a San Jose native whose career in sports broadcasting humbly began when he was 7 years old when he would sneakily listen to baseball, basketball, and soccer games on the radio before bed. His parents were not supposed to know.
From a young age, Passarelli liked listening and reading about sports. He also played baseball, basketball, and some soccer, but his talents were more plentiful inside audio rooms. His passion became a compass for his life that’s gone on to take him to great heights — broadcasting for the San Jose Earthquakes along with men’s basketball games for Santa Clara University.
Following high school, he set his sights on Chico State University where they had a student radio station and a strong Communications program. His first glimpse of broadcasting came from his time as an undergraduate there where he worked at the student radio station. While in the Chico State dorms, he met who would eventually be his wife.
During an internship at the local, commercial radio station, he had been given the opportunity to run commercials, air news stories, and conduct interviews. Although it provided Passarelli the field experience to lay the foundation, it came with the caveats of little to no wages.
With that in mind, he set his eyes on landing a radio position for a minor league baseball team. He started in Salinas, CA, where he would work for a year after the tense introduction of handing over his cassette tapes to his would-be employer. While he landed the job in Salinas, it was possible that he would have gone to work with a minor league baseball team in Burlington, Iowa. That was until he found out it snowed there.
During his year with the Salinas Peppers Baseball Club, as was the custom in the sports broadcasting industry, Passarelli had other duties with the team including selling ads to local businesses and selling group tickets to local schools in order to hold on to his sports focus.
He later spent two years in Sacramento as a sports anchor and reporter with KFBK radio. While there he had aimed his sights on getting more basketball play-by-play experience. He landed a sports position with KCBS radio in San Francisco as a fill-in sports anchor in 1998 and also reported on San Jose Sharks, Oakland Athletics, and San Francisco Giants games until 2016 when he left to focus on his Earthquakes and Santa Clara University men’s basketball jobs.
While it is likely that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are familiar with Anthony Passarelli and his signature voice; a huge landmark in his career is his hometown of San Jose. In 2012, he joined the San Jose Earthquakes radio broadcast team on their Supporter’s Shield road to victory and has been broadcasting there ever since alongside Chris Dangerfield.
Having dedicated decades to recording his voice into a tape recorder, the play-by-play announcer’s homecoming began with San Jose State University, the alma mater of his older siblings, joining the men’s basketball radio team in 2000. He would then move to Santa Clara University a year later where he became the play-by-play broadcaster for Santa Clara’s NCAA women’s basketball team.
With the advice of a colleague while at Santa Clara University, Anthony Passarelli was pushed into broadcasting soccer. There, he was out of his comfort zone and while he understood the game, broadcasting soccer was a learning experience. Uncomfortable, he was determined to persevere.
“I did make the choice, I’m going to do this and I am going to get as good as I can,” Passarelli said.
Starting in 2014, Passarelli and Dangerfield moved from radio to the Quakes TV broadcasts. It was Passarelli’s first time working as a television broadcaster so the first year proved to be challenging. In radio, no one is communicating in your ear unlike the case with television broadcasting, where someone is directing, producing the show, and giving you directions sometimes while you’re talking to the audience. While it was uncomfortable to have cameras on him, he stuck through and committed himself to learn about the global game.
“The first year was really hard, because not only was I learning our team and a full league’s worth of players from around the world but I also was trying to keep up with what’s going on with Leicester, what’s going on with Juventus, what’s going on in Spain… I don’t think you can ever really fully know everything,” Passarelli said.
As games passed, the rough edges were smoothed. His interest in sports stories that extend beyond courts and fields are what he gives special priority to when he is in the zone. He believes in bringing the full story to matchday broadcasts. This element of storytelling does better to connect with audiences as it allows engagement with the personas of an athlete.
“I’m looking for (a player’s) motivation, I’m looking for their background,” Passarelli said. “Maybe I can bring some of that connection that I’ve been able to gain. I’m looking for a story that brings something that is different from what I normally expect to see.”
To be able to work in sports, Passarelli had to form a plan and execute it. While in college he worked one summer cleaning classrooms for San Jose Unified School District, took breaks from school as a busboy, interned at radio stations, worked overnight shifts, and dabbled in news reporting in order to forge his path in sports. He cites the unwavering support of his parents and his wife of 21 years as key contributors to his success.
While there is no one clear path to achieving one’s dreams and goals, Anthony Passarelli exemplifies an important message: if you have a deep passion for a certain career path, then you will have the strength and diligence to put in the work and overcome any obstacle in order to succeed.
