TCNJ

34 The College of New Jersey Magazine Leading off Tom grew up in Brick, New Jersey, the middle of three boys and an avid New York Mets fan. He went to Trenton State in 1986 not having any sense of what he wanted to do, other than play baseball. "If someone had said 'You should really make cheeseburgers for a living,' I'd have made cheeseburgers," says Tom, who started college as a biology major. He was cut from the TSC baseball team during his freshman year. But his Alpha Chi Rho fraternity contacts led him to sports writing jobs at Hopewell Valley News and the Trenton Times. Tom, who didn't take a journalism class until his senior year of college, says he "had no idea how to write a story," but learned on the job. Tom's advisor, biology professor Gary Lipton, saw how well Tom was doing in writing and broadcasting and had questions: "What are you doing? Why are you a biology major?" Tom switched to communications, and a feature-writing trip to Charleston, South Carolina, for the Times was a turning point. He got a broadcasting opportunity there and made a demo tape. It helped him land a broadcasting and public relations job with the minor league Trenton Thunder in their inaugural season in 1994. (1) Extra innings: Tom's first story as a sportswriter for the Hopewell Valley News was about a high school baseball player, Mark Gola. The home am Pat grew up in Allentown, New Jersey, the oldest of four children born to Tom and his wife, Meg '90. Not surprisingly, baseball was central to Pat's childhood. As a kid, he learned the rules of the game (and his love for it) as he sat on his dad's lap in the announcer's booth. And on the flip side, his dad was in the stands to watch Pat develop into a star player. In fact, Tom caught Pat's first Little League home run and can still recite from memory key moments from Pat's athletic career, which included two years of pitching at TCNJ after transferring from Syracuse University. It was at TCNJ where Pat blossomed into a broadcaster in his own right, calling field hockey, soccer, football, and basketball games. Having had a feel for what to do on the air from listening to his dad (and, admittedly, the voices on the baseball video games that he played), Pat was quick to pick up the trade. "He was a natural and was exceptional with his preparation," says then-TCNJ sports information director Mark Gola. (1) "We might have had 22 viewers on the livestream, but Pat was treating it like it was a huge game with a huge audience." Pat's professional career started as a fill-in on a Thunder radio broadcast while still a student at TCNJ. His cousin Mary had worked for the Thunder and tipped him off that the team needed an announcer for a day. A minor league broadcasting internship with the Reading Fightin' Phils followed. "I HAD THE GREATEST OPPORTUNITY TO BE PART OF THE FABRIC OF AN AMAZING SPORTS TOWN." — Tom McCarthy 2Nd INNING 1ST INNING "THEY MAKE LIFE EASY WHEN YOU DO GAMES WITH THEM." — John Kruk, Major League Baseball announcer and former Phillies first baseman

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