PawSox Broadcast Team "Calls Up" Mike Antonellis from Double-A Portland
PAWTUCKET, RI -- The Pawtucket Red Sox Radio Network, one of the largest in all of Minor League Baseball, will this year welcome longtime Portland Sea Dogs (Double-A) broadcaster Mike Antonellis, who will join Josh Maurer and Jim Cain, as iHeart Radio for the 14th straight year presents PawSox Baseball
PAWTUCKET, RI -- The Pawtucket Red Sox Radio Network, one of the largest in all of Minor League Baseball, will this year welcome longtime Portland Sea Dogs (Double-A) broadcaster Mike Antonellis, who will join Josh Maurer and Jim Cain, as iHeart Radio for the 14th straight year presents PawSox Baseball on the radio.
WHJJ NewsRadio 920 AM and 104.7 FM, whose signals cover all of Rhode Island and much of Southeastern Massachusetts, will broadcast all 140 regular-season games, potential playoff games, as well as the July 15 Triple-A All-Star Game and the September 22 Triple-A National Championship Game. They headline a list of at least 9 stations on the PawSox Radio Network.
Mike Antonellis joins the PawSox after spending 15 years as the voice of Boston’s Double-A affiliate, the Portland Sea Dogs. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he replaces Mike Monaco,who, after three years with the PawSox, is doing play-by-play of Boston Red Sox Spring Training games on NESN while also working full-time on ESPN’s ACC Network. Monaco is the 9th former Pawtucket announcer currently in the Major Leagues.
The 2020 season is Antonellis’s 24th in professional baseball after making stops with the Erie SeaWolves (2004), Kane County Cougars (2002-03), Syracuse Chiefs & Utica Blue Sox (2001), and the Potomac Cannons (1997-2000). During his time with the Sea Dogs, Mike called three games at Fenway Park, two All-Star games, and one Eastern League Championship.
Over the years, Mike has filled in on Red Sox broadcasts from Spring Training and joined Tom Caron on the NESN telecast of the 2015 Eastern League All-Star game from Hadlock Field in Portland.
A veteran of over 3,000 minor league games, Antonellis has called college and high school sports around the Northeast. In addition, his podcast “Behind the Mike” features guests from the sports world and takes you behind the scenes of the broadcasting world.
The native of Ashland, MA attended Dean Junior College and Framingham State College. Mike now resides in nearby Grafton, MA. He got his start in radio calling Milford, MA Legion Baseball on WMRC which is an affiliate station on the PawSox Radio Network.
Antonellis will call most road games together with Josh Maurer, while both will also work with Cain to handle PawSox home radio and television duties.
Josh Maurer, who returns for his seventh season, is among the longest-tenured broadcasters in the illustrious history of PawSox radio voices. Josh was hired in February of 2014, in essence to replace Bob Socci who left the PawSox in July of 2013 to become the radio play-by-play broadcaster of the (now) 6-time Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots.
Maurer, 39, made his Major League debut with the Boston Red Sox in July of 2015 when he did play-by-play on NESN for six Red Sox games during their West Coast trip. During the baseball off-season, Josh is the radio voice for the Boston College men’s basketball team after holding a similar position with the University of Massachusetts – both basketball and football - from 2008-2018.
Maurer broke into Minor League Baseball in 2005 and spent four seasons as the radio play-by-play broadcaster of the Charleston RiverDogs, the Single-A affiliate of the New York Yankees in the South Atlantic League. He spent the 2012 and 2013 seasons with the Yankees’ Double-A affiliate, the Trenton Thunder, in Trenton, NJ.
Josh received his degree in Broadcast Journalism with a Minor in Sports Marketing from the University of Maryland in 2003. A native of Lower Merion, PA (just outside of Philadelphia), he currently lives in Providence.
Jim Cain, who returns for his fourth season, has also been a full-time member of the PawSox Front Office staff as Corporate Events Manager since 2017. The play-by-play voice of the Bradenton Marauders (Single A-Pirates) before joining the PawSox, he spends part of his off-season broadcasting games for UMass, Holy Cross, Merrimack, and Harvard. A native of Wakefield, Massachusetts, Cain graduated with a degree in Broadcast Journalism from Emerson College, where he played baseball all four years.
Rounding out the PawSox broadcast team is Rhode Island radio icon Steve McDonald, who will be a color analyst for PawSox telecasts on YurView on COX. Steve is a regular morning show host on iHeart stations WHJY and Newsradio 920/104.7 FM. He is also the long-time voice of URI football and basketball. Other local personalities will appear on the PawSox airwaves as well.
All 140 PawSox games will be broadcast live online and archived on the internet. Those online broadcasts can be accessed on pawsox.com.
More members of the PawSox Radio Network will be announced in the coming days. The Starting Lineup of 9 radio stations follows.
** PawSox Radio Network**
- 920 AM WHJJ* Providence, RI
- 104.7 FM WHJJ* Providence, RI
- 1380 AM WNRI Woonsocket, RI
- 1230 AM WBLQ# Westerly, RI
- 95.1 FM WWRI# Kent County, RI
- 101.3 FM WMRC# Milford, MA
- 1530 AM WVBF# Taunton, MA
- 1280 AM WPKZ# Fitchburg/Leominster, MA
- 96.3 FM WEEI# Cape Cod
* Flagship # Limited Basis