Longtime Palmer principal a voice for a new audience

PALMER — Wolfgang Winter has long been a voice for Palmer High School. But for the last few summers, the longtime Palmer High principal has been the voice for a new audience.

Winter is wrapping up his third season as the public address announcer for the Mat-Su Miners. For three years, Winter has spent about two-dozen evenings a season at Hermon Brothers Field providing a link between the fans and the action.

With a strong, almost baritone vocals, Winter belts out the starting lineups and introduces players before every at bat. Winter mixes in music over the loud speakers, popular ballpark favorites such as Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” or John Fogerty’s “Centerfield.”

Winter will call raffle numbers, recognized sponsors and signal the seventh inning stretch. Throughout he’ll mix in a bit of humor, things like saying “ouch” if a foul ball comes back and hits the press box where he sits.

“It’s fun. I want them to have fun,” Winter said of the fans. “I think me having fun is important, too. If I have fun, they sense it’s fun to be here.”

A high school principal, Winter spends countless evenings attending high school sporting events and extracurricular activities. He could take his summers off. But there are a few things that draw him to Hermon Brothers Field, the Miners’ home park, at least 25 nights a summer.

“First of all, you can’t beat the view,” Winter said before Tuesday’s game against the Peninsula Oilers, as he sat in his chair in the center of the Miners’ press box overlooking home plate. “If the game ends up getting out of hand one way or another, the view is fantastic.”

But Winter is also a fan.

“I love sports, almost all sports,” Winter said. “This is a way to stay involved and be more involved than just being a fan.”

Three years ago, Winter read in the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman that the Miners were looking for a new public address announcer. He said he debated calling Mat-Su general manager Pete Christopher, but after seeing it listed in the paper again and again, he decided to give it a shot.

Three years later, he still enjoys providing the voice for the home crowd fans.

Winter has served as a public address announcer for many high school events. He did some radio broadcasting for high school sports while working in rural Alaska, and was even asked to help broadcast the 1-2-3A state volleyball championships about 12 years ago.

“I had the opportunity to do tag team radio with Brad Lauwers at the 1-2-3A volleyball championships at West (Anchorage High),” Winter said. “I was the principal at Nome, and he said, ‘I heard you enjoy broadcasting.’ I was able to do it, and it was kind of fun.

“They kind of put me on the spot, which was kind of nerve-wracking, they had me do interviews, which I hadn’t done before. I came up with questions I thought were appropriate and I’d heard sportscasters ask.”

Winter said he enjoys calling games, as a radio broadcaster or public address announcer, and sees himself getting more involved in the future.

“They tell me I have a pretty good voice for announcing, public address announcing, radio, I guess,” Winter said. “If I am good at it, and it’s something I enjoy doing, I could see myself doing it after retirement.”

Winter has long been a baseball fan, dating back to his childhood growing up in a German household in Northern California. Winter said his father couldn’t find a similar love for the game, but he and his two older brothers were captivated.

“My father is the stereotypical German autocratic. He called baseball the lazy man’s game. I understand the perspective. In any given play, when you’re on defense, there could be as few as one person or two (involved in the play),” Winter said. “Eight people doing nothing, seven or six. I understand the perspective he had, but it’s the first sport I remember enjoying as a kid.

“My two older brothers got into it, in terms of being fans. We’d listen to all of the (Oakland Athletics) and (San Francisco) Giants games on the radio all the time. So that’s the first sport I remember getting into, knowing the rules and the players, and all of the other sports sort of followed.”

Since Winter has been with the Miners, he’s had the chance to witness a number of memorable moments from his seat in the press box. He lists the games that clinched the Miners an Alaska Baseball League title in 2009 and 2010 near the top of the list. Winter also won’t forget former Miners catcher Casey Coyle proposing to his girlfriend before a game earlier this season.

“That was one of the more fun things.” Winter said. “That was kind of cool.”

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/matsu_sports.