David Kelly (baseball announcer)
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David Scott Kelly (born October 5, 1967 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American sportscaster. He currently does radio and TV play-by-play for the Memphis Redbirds of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League.
Kelly is the son of NFL Hall of Fame running back Leroy Kelly, who starred with the Cleveland Browns from 1964-1973. His late uncle Pat Kelly played Major League Baseball for 15 seasons (1968-1981) with the Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals, Chicago White Sox, Baltimore Orioles and Cleveland Indians.
Kelly began his career in August of 1991 as Sports Director at KTIP-AM 1450 in Porterville, CA. The station at the time was owned by legendary Oakland A's announcer Monte Moore.
His first professional baseball experience came broadcasting games for the Class-A Visalia Oaks during the 1991 and 1992 seasons. He later moved to KGEO-AM 1230 in Bakersfield where he became the voice of the Bakersfield Dodgers.
Kelly advanced to Double-A baseball in 1995 where he broadcast games for the Port City Roosters (Wilmington, NC) for two seasons.
He was a mainstay at 50000-watt clear channel powerhouse WTAM-AM 1100 in Cleveland from 1997-2005. He started in the news department as an overnight anchor/morning drive reporter. Eventually moving to sports as an update anchor, beat reporter for the Cleveland Browns and talk show host.
He has won five Associated Press first place awards for his work in radio including being named Ohio's Best Sports Broadcaster in 2005.
Kelly's baseball style is a mixture of old school and new school. He loves to interweave stories about players around his play-by-play call.
His home run salute (list of home run calls in baseball) is Goodnight Irene and when the bases are loaded it's a Graaaand Slaaaamma. If a Redbird has a big RBI night, or drives in a lot of RIBS (ribs (food)) as Kelly refers to them, he's been known to offer that player a wet nap for his performance.
Kelly attended University High School (Normal), Illinois (1986) and graduated from the University of Southern California in 1990.
