Souhan: Despite leaving broadcast booth, Dick Bremer still gets plenty of baseball

After all those years of speaking for a living, Dick Bremer thinks of himself as a listener.

On summer evenings, he will tune in to hear a familiar voice amid familiar sounds. He never tires of the crack of the bat and the hum of the crowd, nor can he avoid reveling in the art of baseball announcing, the weaving of anecdotes and insights into the gentle flow of the game.

Bremer spent 40 years broadcasting Twins games and will be inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame this summer. The home television booth at Target Field is named after him.

What does someone who made baseball his life do when baseball is no longer his job?

“I listen to my son,” Bremer said.

Erik Bremer is the manager of broadcasting and media relations for the Pensacola (Fla.) Blue Wahoos, the Miami Marlins’ Class AA team. Dick Bremer still catches a Twins game now and then, but he spends most of his time tuning into Erik’s calls or watching townball.

“I was intimately connected to that team for 40 years,” Bremer said of the Twins. “In all honesty, there’s a distance that exists, which is predictable when you’re not there every day. I have spent most of my baseball time watching and listening to my son.

Later in a long conversation, Bremer would choke up, thinking about the amount of family time he missed while traveling with the Twins.

No matter how easy baseball jobs might seem, the baseball life is hard on families. Former Twins President Dave St. Peter has said his job cost him his marriage. In 1995, I spent 180 days on the road in one year, covering spring training, Twins road games, the postseason and winter meetings.

Now Bremer gets his baseball fix without trekking to Target Field or the airport.

“If I can split my attention, I will watch or listen to a Blue Wahoos game while watching the Twins,” Bremer said. “I may have gone to more town team games last year than Twins games. That’s no reflection on the Twins or the season they had — I just love watching the game at whatever level.

“I remember one game in particular last year, my wife and I went to a game in Fort Ripley, and there were maybe 40 people there, but I just enjoyed the heck out of it. That’s how I was introduced to baseball, even before the Twins showed up in 1961. I fell in love with the game when I saw the Dumont team play 50 steps from my backdoor. That’s a town of 235 people, and they’d have twice that many people at the games.

Dick wrote a book, “Game Used: My Life in Stitches with the Minnesota Twins.”

Hannah Bremer, Dick’s daughter, is the Twins’ manager of community impact.

Erik Bremer is entering his fifth season in Pensacola and ninth overall in the minor leagues. His résumé sounds like a certain Johnny Cash song — he’s worked in Cape Cod, Biloxi, Colorado Springs, Potomac, Fredericksburg and Brisbane, Australia.

Surely he has benefited from his father’s tips?

“No,” Dick Bremer said. “I have never given him any, and he has never asked. He gets asked the question, ‘Do you want to follow in your father’s footsteps?’ He and I bristle at that. He’s made it very clear he’s going to make it on his own.

Now Dick Bremer is a happy homebody.

“Of course, I’m happy about my Hall of Fame induction,” Bremer said. “But I’m happier for my family, because they were the ones who did without when I was traveling.

“Rod Carew called over the holidays, and I was able to put him on the speaker phone and we all experienced that conversation together. Rod, speaking of the Hall honor, said, `Welcome to the club.’