It’s two hours from first pitch on Pride Night at Virginia Credit Union Stadium, and the concourse is already festooned with multi-color streamers and flags in every shade of the LGBTQ+ rainbow.
At the moment, however, Eric Bach is far more interested in discussing the green soundwaves on his laptop screen.
They contain a snippet of audio from the previous night’s Fredericksburg Nationals broadcast. Bach, currently in his third full season as the team’s play-by-play announcer, has gotten in the habit of clipping his work on a daily basis.
He’s a gay man in baseball, a fact that he doesn’t shy away from. But that story’s already been written. It ran in the New York Times in 2023, during a particularly tumultuous moment in baseball’s intersection with cultural norms and sexual identity.
“You know, the response was overwhelmingly positive, and it connected me with a lot of people I otherwise would not have been connected with,” he says looking back. “It taught me that there’s more people out there than you’d ever think.”
But for Bach, 27, true acceptance means no longer being a novelty.
It means being taken seriously for his craft. It means bottling lightning in a crowded booth where he spends six nights a week during the dog days of summer.
Those audio files archived on his Mac? In the right hands, they could be a ticket to the big leagues.
“The thing that’s going to get me where I want to go ultimately is the quality of the broadcast,” he says.
A winding path to the booth
Bach’s high school graduating class in Coldwater, Mich., numbered fewer than 200, but there were always enough kids around to throw and catch a variety of balls.
“It was always like, it was just kind of like one big block of us that would just play every sport together,” he says.
His budding baseball fandom coincided with the Jim-Leyland-managed Detroit Tigers teams of the early aughts, most memorably ace right-hander Justin Verlander’s rookie year in 2006.
But baseball wasn’t the main draw at Michigan State, where Bach studied journalism with a minor in sports journalism. He primarily called men’s basketball and football games and admits he wasn’t first on the volunteer list when it came to signing up for baseball play-by-play.
Similarly, he had no interest in becoming a sportswriter or TV personality.
“Doing the games and the adrenaline rush and the challenge of trying to do it differently and better every single day is the thing that I think most piqued my interest once I really got into it,” he says.
Bach’s resistance to calling baseball waned after he took an internship with a summer collegiate league and then landed his first job upon graduating, in sports information at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C. Working for a Division II program offered broadcasting opportunities in virtually every sport.
“And then I realized that this baseball thing is really cool,” he says. “And it’s probably the best way to do play-by-play full-time, which is what I wanted to do.”
More than a broadcaster
During an away game in Delmarva earlier this season, the FredNats surrendered an extra-base hit that was initially ruled a triple.
That mattered, explains Fredericksburg pitching coach Justin Lord, because the runner ultimately scored, and it would’ve counted as an earned run against the pitcher. Lord and the players on the field, however, noticed that the outfielder had misplayed the ball while fielding it off the wall.
So, they asked their liaison in the press box to make the case for a revision to a double and a one-base error. With no direct line to the official scorer, the task fell to Bach.
“He kind of gets put in that spot as a lot of radio guys do,” Lord recalls. “They kind of get put in that spot, but Eric’s been really good about going to the scorers in a diplomatic way and, and then actually ask them just to take an honest look at it, you know? And so he’s, he’s, he’s, he’s done that really well for us.”
Scoring-dispute liaison is just one of a multitude of hats Bach wears with the FredNats. Besides serving as lead announcer, he’s the media relations guy and one of the team’s content creators responsible for original programming.
Eric Bach is in his third season as the FredNats lead broadcaster. (Photo by Jeff Kearney)
“It’s like a lot of jobs in the minor leagues,” says Lord. “You don’t have the full staff that you might have for a major league club,” And so you have to do a lot of things.”
One feature that’s proved popular among fans is “Walk and Talk Wednesday,” in which Bach and a FredNats player trot leisurely along the warning track at Virginia Credit Union Stadium, delving into their backstories, baseball trivia and everything in between.
“I don’t have like a flashcard or anything. It’s just, I’m going off the dome and just kind of following the conversation wherever it goes,” he says.
One topic that never comes up? His identity.
“My relationship with [the players], while I like it to be personal and I want to know about their personal lives, it is through a professional lens, you know?” he says. “I don’t think anybody’s sexuality is relevant in that type of relationship.”
A ballplayer walks out of a bar
Within the Washington Nationals organization, there are a number of what are known as Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Eddie Longosz, Washington’s vice president and assistant general manager in charge of player development, is a member of the organization’s Pride ERG.
When Longosz was looking for someone to speak at one of the group’s gatherings, he immediately thought of Bach, whom he met several years ago in Fredericksburg while serving as the team’s director of scouting operations.
Bach spoke about his experience being profiled by The New York Times and the outpouring of support that followed. Then, he told another story.
The FredNats had just clinched a Carolina League playoff spot and were out on the town celebrating. On the way out of a bar, a player made a homophobic comment in passing. It wasn’t directed at Bach, and he didn’t feel a need to respond.
“Instead,” recounts Longosz, “the player that was next to this other player immediately said, ‘Hey, absolutely not. You can’t say that.’ And kind of, you know, went right at him. You don’t treat people that way.”
For Bach, it was a short exchange with a wide-ranging implication: The guys had his back.
“It was just a seemingly small thing that went miles for me, pretty much,” he says.
Another night, another call
Back in the booth on Pride Night, Bach’s scorebook is a veritable rainbow.
“Everything,” he explains, “is color-coded.”
The series is highlighted in purple, the month in red. Outs are black and base hits are blue.
Then, there’s the color he offers broadcast listeners during downtime.
Bases-loaded jams aren’t necessarily the best time for a monologue, but that dead air in the seventh inning of a blowout? Might as well talk about the Kannapolis Cannonballer who was adopted from Russia as an infant.
The king of the walk-off 👑 pic.twitter.com/PAgSJnGH8D
— Fredericksburg Nationals (@FXBGNats) July 27, 2025
“Even if you’re watching on a feed doing something in the kitchen, you feel like you’re there,” Longosz said of listening to Bach’s broadcasts, which are available to stream on Bally Sports Live. “And that’s the goal.”
The margins of Bach’s notebook spill out with tricky spellings and statistical minutiae.
Bach cuts snippets of audio from each broadcast to bolster his resume and receive feedback from mentors in the broadcasting business. (Photo by Jeff Kearney)
“You just got to have a good feel for the situation,” he says. “And also kind of have a plan about how you want to attack those things. I definitely use less than 50% of what I have.”
Like a prospect trying to impress scouts, Bach knows he has to showcase his wares in front of the right people. When the FredNats wrapped up their 2024 season with a Carolina League championship, Bach took a job calling games in the Arizona Fall League, a gig that was about exposure as much as compensation.
But each night is another call, another three hours and 10 minutes of baseball interpreted through the microphone and distilled into three-minute clips in Adobe Audition.
Thirteen-run seventh innings, walk-off balks, championships: Bach gets the last word.
“That’s where it really feels like, you know, living this sometimes-crappy minor league life feels kind of worth it,” he says.
