All young boys playing baseball in the backyard with their buddies dream of playing major league baseball.
The odds against those young lads making it to the majors are staggering. Less than 1% of high school baseball players are drafted by one of the 30 major league teams. Those teams can have only 26 players at any time, and only 5% play college baseball.
Ben Ingram, one of the rare exceptions, made it to the majors, but on a different path. He quite literally talked his way into the game. The odds of him talking his way to the majors are so impossible that it would probably be less than 0.%. The Madison Central High School graduate defied those odds as he is one of only 30 lead broadcast announcers in the entire major league. This season he will begin his fourth year as the Atlanta Braves’ lead radio announcer and 15th year with the organization.
The journey for Ingram began in high school when local sportscaster Lee Adams gave him his first opportunity to do both high school and Hinds Community College football broadcasts. “Lee taught me all the basics, and I owe him so, so much,” said Ingram, a Mississippi College graduate.
Those early experiences with Adams sold Ingram on a career in sports announcing. He decided to attend Mississippi College after a weekend visit to the school in his senior year of high school. “I was not even considering MC, but I visited anyway. I knew after that weekend that MC would afford me more opportunities.”
“Mississippi College was such a great experience. It gave me a hands-on experience that I would have probably never experienced anywhere else. The entire communication faculty gave me so much support. Dr. Billy Lytal saw something in me and gave me the opportunity to do play-by-play for the Choctaws,” said the son of a preacher. Ingram did play-by-play football, basketball, and baseball on the campus radio station.
Those college days led to play-by-play baseball stops with the Jackson Senators and the San Diego Padres Single A team in Eugene, Oregon. “The Eugene team called me for a job interview after I visited with several organizations at the Major League Baseball Winter Meeting Job Fair in Los Angeles. I told the people in Eugene in a phone interview the next week, ‘I am your guy.’ About 30 minutes later they called me back with a job offer.”
Being named Broadcaster of the Year was the break I needed. That same year more doors seemed to open after I attended a game in Atlanta. That game was a blessing for me because it rained.
That one year in the northwest led him back home. He served as color commentator for the Mississippi Braves in 2007 before taking over the play-by-play duties in 2008. In only his second year, he was named the Southern League Radio Broadcaster of the Year. “Being named Broadcaster of the Year was the break I needed. That same year more doors seemed to open after I attended a game in Atlanta. That game was a blessing for me because it rained. The game had at least a two- to three-hour weather delay. It gave me an opportunity to meet the Braves’ announcers Joe Simpson and Don Sutton. I was able to have a nice long conversation with them during the halt in play. Sutton found out I attended Mississippi College just as he did, and after that he took me under his wings. In January 2011, I received a call to come for an interview, and that led to my first job in the majors.”
The Mississippi boy hosted the Braves’ pregame show from 2012 to 2020 and the postgame show from 2011 to 2019. He became the lead radio announcer in 2021. In his first year Ingram did something that many veteran play-by-play guys never do in their entire career: he called the final out of the World Series. “Is this happening? The Atlanta Braves are the 2021 World Series champions in six games over the Houston Astros. In the eighth inning, I started thinking about what I was going to say. I wanted to be factual because this was a historic moment in Braves baseball,” said Ingram.
“I am doing what I have wanted to do since I was a kid,” said Ingram.
Some kids’ dreams do come true.
