Wolff’s father encouraged him to take up broadcasting, and both grandfather and father have critiqued and congratulated him as he’s become the voice of Harvard hockey. Wolff calls home between each period of every game to get the advice of his father.
“I can’t think of a better person than one who listens to Harvard hockey every Friday and Saturday night,” Wolff said. “He doesn’t even like hockey—he’s just trying to help me out.”
Experience has proven most helpful for the aspiring broadcaster. Limited by injury on the field for an entire season, Wolff has been steady in the booth for the nearly 200 games he has broadcasted in three years.
“I look forward to every game, and I still get butterflies before each of them,” he said. “Every broadcast I feel like I just started the game and, all of a sudden, it’s the end of the third period.”
He’s talking about hockey, not baseball. It may not be bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, but hockey broadcasting has given Wolff a way to stay involved with Harvard athletics when the only white line on O’Donnell Field is a mound of snow. As a member of the Harvard JV hockey team, Wolff’s found plenty do to do between early summer and opening day.
Once a diversion from a year without baseball, broadcasting has become a bona fide career option for Wolff.
Pro baseball remains the dream for the son of a major leaguer, but, like his father, Wolff finds the microphone comfortable. There’s no stress of a game-winning single on the line, there’s no squeeze play needed to save a one-run lead—there’s just the microphone, the ice and the net.
“Whereas baseball I take very seriously,” Wolff said, “with hockey I can relax a little bit and have fun.”
His speech is slow, deliberate—nothing gives away the voice that celebrates penalty shots or power play goals. There’s the stoicism of a switch hitter staring down a pitcher and the patience of a first baseman awaiting a throw from the shortstop.
Without a microphone and under the bright lights of O’Donnell Field, John Wolff remains silent.
In the booth at the Bright Hockey Center, he comes alive.
“It’s like this,” he says calmly. “Pass to the low spot to Welch, Welch to Cavanagh, Cavanagh on the crease, he shoots...”
And scores?
He doesn’t say, perhaps he doesn’t know—but he has until opening day to figure it out, and then to tell the world.