LOS ANGELES — Every game of the Dodgers postseason, from the National League Division series to — should they advance — the National League Championship Series and World Series, will be televised by Fox Sports. But on radio, Charley Steiner will call Dodgers home playoff games at Dodger Stadium for AM 570 and the team’s radio network, with Stephen Nelson on radio play-by-play when the Dodgers are on the road.
For Steiner, Saturday will be first playoff action in three years, with a long journey in between
that included a debilitating back injury and battling cancer. Now, he’s feeling well, and ready to call his first postseason game since the 2023 NLDS.
Steiner called 35 Dodgers games on radio this season, and he gradually increased his workload as the season progressed. He called the first three innings of two games on the very first homestand, then gradually added innings over the next few months, before handing off the play-by-play reins to Nelson or Tim Neverett in each game.
“The whole issue was a question of physical strength,” Steiner said via phone. “When I first started way back at the beginning of the season, three innings was a lot.”
Steiner called the first game of nine of the Dodgers’ first 10 home series this season, before calling the first five innings of the last two games of the Dodgers’ series against the Tampa Bay Rays (June 15-16) and Baltimore Orioles (June 19-20).
On the Dodgers’ 10-game homestand heading into the All-Star break, Steiner called every other game, going five innings for three games, then six innings for two games.
On August 13, Steiner called the first six innings of the Dodgers’ series opener against the Milwaukee Brewers before handing off to Nelson for the rest of the game.
“I was leaving and I said to Duane [McDonald, radio producer and engineer for the last decade], ‘I’ll see you Saturday, we’ll go for seven,’” Steiner recalled. “And Duane said, ‘Fuck it, let’s just do nine,‘ and you know that was the kick in the ass that I needed.”
Two days later Steiner called all nine innings of the Dodgers loss to Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski, completing Steiner’s first time calling a full game since Game 3 of the 2023 NLDS.
“That was such a big deal to me, because it’d been such a long time. I didn’t know if I’d be physically able to do it, and then I did,” Steiner said. “It was for me the most significant broadcast that I had done, because I had to do so much to get to that point.”
Steiner has seen it all during his career, including 14 years at ESPN before broadcasting baseball games for the last quarter-century, three years for the Yankees before the last 22 years with the Dodgers, his favorite team growing up in New York. He’s called three different World Baseball Classics and called baseball games in seven different countries. But that August 15 game against the Brewers stood out to Steiner given all he endured physically over the previous two years.
“To me it was getting back in the saddle, I knew I could ride the horse to the finish line. And when the game ended, I did,” Steiner added. “I don’t know how many thousands of games I’ve done and how many years I’ve been doing it, but all of that was encapsulated into the first pitch of that game. The long journey took another step forward.”
September saw Steiner increase his workload even more. He called all nine innings of September 1 against the St. Louis Cardinals, then called the first six innings the next day, and all nine innings on September 4 against the Washington Nationals. Steiner called back-to-back full games on September 8-9 against the Cincinnati Reds, September 18-19 against the San Francisco Giants, and September 22-23 against the San Diego Padres. In all, Steiner called 10 full games, all over the final six weeks of the regular season.
He’ll call Games 1-2 of the NLDS on Saturday and Sunday.
“I can’t thank so many folks enough who’ve been so kind and supportive during this journey, especially within the booth. And then the reaction I’ve gotten from listeners and fans, it’s been overwhelming,” Steiner said. “So now, yeah, to the postseason, and I sure would like to call the third World Series championship in a row.”
