Change is a constant in minor league baseball, from the continuous churn of players and managers to the rebrandings and affiliation switches many clubs go through in their history.
In Toledo, however, a few things have stayed the same:
The Mud Hens name dates back to 1896, the current club has been affiliated with the Detroit Tigers since 1987, and for 49 years, International League Hall of Famer Jim Weber was the voice of the team’s local TV and radio broadcasts.
That run was broken last August when Weber died at age 78, creating an abrupt opening for a position that had been his alone for more than 6,000 consecutive games.
In January, the Hens announced Matt Melzak, the longtime voice of the Walleye and Storm hockey teams who has been involved in Mud Hens home game broadcasts since 2010, would take over the permanent lead role. Beginning with Friday’s Opening Day game against the Columbus Clippers, Melzak, a Toledo native and University of Toledo graduate, will call the action for both of his hometown teams.
“I'm always excited this time of the year,” Melzak said. “But yeah, I got a little extra motivation this year knowing that I'm about to embark on doing all of the games. Taking over for the legend in Jim Weber is going to be hard, but it's a challenge that I'm looking forward to.”
Melzak called games for the Toledo Storm hockey team from 2003 to 2007, has been the voice of the Walleye since the franchise began in 2009, and first began to add Mud Hens work in 2010. Since 2012, he has been a fixture alongside Weber for most home games at Fifth Third Field, and he took the mic for the final weeks of the 2024 season after Weber’s death.
When the time came to name a new full-time announcer, Melzak was the obvious choice.
“Through our discussions and Matt’s interest and sitting down with Matt, he really sold us on the unique opportunity for him to broadcast for both teams, and he’s done such an excellent job for us over the years,” Mud Hens executive vice president and general manager Erik Ibsen said. “... We felt like Matt had earned the opportunity, and you put along his experience with us and all the intangibles and his relationship with Jim, it just felt like the right decision to hand it over.”
It was a decision that had to be made sooner than anyone hoped. The 2025 season would have been Weber’s 50th, a milestone the organization was looking forward to celebrating.
Spring and summer in Toledo won’t feel quite the same without Weber in the booth.
“We would hang out in the offseason, we would make sure we saw each other a good amount even when the games weren't going on,” Melzak said. “When he passed away, it was like a little part of me died, too.”
As any fan of both sports will know, hockey and baseball broadcasts are polar opposites in terms of the pace of the game and the skills required for an announcer to guide the audience through the action. With the Walleye gearing up for another playoff run and the Hens beginning their grind of a schedule, Melzak has a busy few months ahead of him.
“Every day is just going to be, ‘What side of my brain do I use?’ You know, is it the hockey brain or is it the baseball brain?’” Melzak said. “... I'll be doing hockey one night, then a couple games of baseball, then back to hockey, then back to baseball.”
Despite the different feels of the two sports, Melzak approaches every broadcast the same way.
“I prep very similar for both,” he said. “I always have way more than I end up using for hockey because of the fact that the play carries a good amount of the time. But in baseball, it's all about prep work … How do you fill that time when a guy breaks a bat and he's got to walk back to the dugout, get a new bat, come back, you know, those kinds of times are a little bit different.”
Melzak said he will be joined in the Mud Hens booth by some former players for broadcasts throughout the season. Brad Woznicki will return for pregame coverage as well as filling in for full games when Melzak is busy with hockey. Radio broadcasts for home and away games will air on 1230 AM, with home game TV broadcasts available on BCSN.
“It still hasn’t totally sunk in that Jim is gone with another season about to start,” Ibsen said. “... He’s obviously missed, and we will continue to honor him, and just felt that Matt really brought everything to the table for the next era of Mud Hens broadcasting.”
For Melzak, the next chapter of an accomplished career behind the microphone begins now.
“I look at it as just a wonderful thing that I can say that I've gotten a chance to do and to be the voice of my hometown,” he said. “As far as professional sports goes, there's nothing better.”
First Published March 25, 2025, 3:24 p.m.
