he New Guy doing Red Sox play-by-play in the NESN broadcast booth this season is a throwback to the days when kids fell asleep listening to ballgames on the radio from faraway cities.
He grew up in a house on a dirt road in Madison, N.H., a suburb of North Conway, and listened to the Red Sox on a Plymouth (N.H.) radio station because none of the three TV channels that reached his home carried the games.
He thought Ken Coleman had the greatest job in the world.
Now The New Guy - Don Orsillo - has the job.
That's the short version. But the long road between thinking about the job and actually landing it took 15 years to travel, with stops in Boston, Pittsfield, Binghamton, Springfield, and Pawtucket.
''People are going to like him,'' said analyst Jerry Remy, who has worked with a variety of partners in 14 years on the job. ''He has a nice pace. He's well-prepared and things went well in this spring's telecasts.''
His journey began in Boston, where Orsillo went to Northeastern University.
Then (as now), Joe Castiglione was doing the Red Sox on radio. Then (as now), Castiglione was teaching a course at Northeastern, ''Special Topics in Sports Broadcasting.''
Orsillo was in his class. Also in that year's group was a Harvard graduate student named Leslie Sterling, who was soon to be ordained an Episcopal minister. Both wound up at Fenway Park, Sterling as successor to the legendary Sherm Feller as public address announcer, and Orsillo as the stats man/factotum for Coleman and Castiglione.
During a two-year internship, Orsillo got to work with his idol, Coleman, and his teacher, Castiglione. He also began networking, building contacts. Coleman retired after the 1989 season. His replacement, Bob Starr, regularly kidded Orsillo on the air, dubbing one of Fenway's food stations ''The Donald Orsillo Concession Stand.'' A cheap shot, Orsillo says now.
''I'd been at school in classes all day,'' he said. ''When I got to the ballpark I ate a day's worth of food.''
Orsillo sent out 120 tapes after graduation and considered himself fortunate to land a job broadcasting for the Pittsfield Mets in 1991 and '92 (''He probably was lucky to make $1,000 a season,'' said Castiglione), then moved to the Double A Binghamton (N.Y.) Mets in 1993. During the winter, he'd come ''home'' to Springfield, where he called American Hockey League games (the Indians) from 1991-96, also doing a weekly talk show and calling the 1994 AHL All-Star Game.
In 1996, he landed a broadcasting job with the Pawtucket Red Sox, doing sales, public relations, and community relations work as well, but wondering whether he'd ever take the next step.
''There are only a few major league jobs, and they hardly ever open up,'' said Orsillo, 32. ''That last step is the toughest.''
Orsillo got to take a half-step last fall, calling three Red Sox games - a home game against the Orioles and two on the road in Tampa Bay - after NESN's Bob Kurtz went home to Minnesota and fill-in Bob Rodgers opted to stay in studio so he could continue his high school coaching career.
It was a taste of the big leagues. But would he get to stay for the entire meal?
''I was worried that they'd do the nationwide search to fill the job,'' said Orsillo. ''But NESN's Bob Whitelaw called on a Friday and we met at McCoy Stadium [in Pawtucket], and he offered me the job on the spot.''
Little did he know that Red Sox vice president James Healey already had signed off on the hiring.
''We like to hire from within,'' said Healey. ''Don had done a great job for Pawtucket, and we'd known him for 10 years, since he was one of Joe Castiglione's interns.''
For Orsillo, it was more than he could have hoped for.
''To get to the major leagues, you'd go anywhere,'' he said. ''But to be here, in what I consider the best job in the major leagues with my favorite team, is truly a dream.
''They say you make your friends in the minor leagues. The players are young, too, and you travel on the bus with the team. Often you're the only media person.''
Orsillo has traveled that route.
And that's how Pawtucket owners Ben Mondor and Mike Tamburro came to send another of their people up to the major leagues.
