Yep — it’s the same sportscaster who once covered Beaver football
Stephen Nelson with Stan Verrett on the SportsCenter Los Angeles set (courtesy Stephen Nelson)
Astute mid-Willamette Valley sports fans may recognize a familiar face on national television these days.
For the past year, Stephen Nelson has filled the slot vacated by state-of-Oregon favorite Neil Everett on the late-night ESPN SportsCenter-Los Angeles flagship shows.
And Nelson, now working as backup play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles Dodgers television network, called play-by-play for the 2024 World Series on national radio.
It’s the same Stephen Nelson who worked as sports reporter and anchor at Eugene’s KEZI-TV station a decade ago. (Not to be confused with Steven Nelson, the Beavers cornerback in 2013 and ’14 who went on to play nine years in the NFL).
To say that Stephen Nelson has quickly made a giant leap to the pinnacle of sports broadcasting in this country is an understatement.
“The cliche is ‘a dream come true,’ ” Nelson, 35, told me in a recent conversation from his home in Los Angeles. “But I’ll be honest: My dreams didn’t really get that far.”
I got to know Stephen during his time working the Oregon State beat for KEZI from 2012 to ’14. Sports reporters working in Eugene are generally youngsters in their first or second job, looking to gain experience and position themselves for a move to a bigger market. Nelson was in that category, but it was clear the kid had something special. He just had that “it” factor for a reporter so young.
KEZI was Nelson’s second job out of Chapman University in Orange, Calif. He worked for a year for the Rockford (Ill.) IceHogs of the American Hockey League before moving to Eugene. He has fond memories of his time there.
“I lived in Eugene, but my professional home during that time was in Corvallis covering the Beavers,” he says. “It was such a fulfilling, enriching time in my life. Those roots didn’t have a long time to sink in, but gosh were they strong.”
Nelson’s time at KEZI coincided with the final two years of Mike Riley’s long reign as Oregon State’s head coach.
“I hold Mike in a dear place in my heart — how he is as a man, how he carried himself as a coach,” Nelson says. “He didn’t demand respect and adulation, but it naturally flows to him.”
In August 2014, Nelson left to take a job with Bleacher Report in New York City. On his last day at KEZI, he brought his father to Oregon State’s training-camp session.
“We are there on the field and everybody gathers around Mike for the (post-practice) scrum,” Nelson says. “He sees me and asks in front of everybody, ‘When is your last day?’ I say, ‘It’s today, Mike.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh gosh, are you going to serenade us with New York, New York?’
“I loved Mike, and really that whole staff. I still talk to (former OSU assistant and current Arizona coach) Brent Brennan. I will love them and the Willamette Valley forever. It was a special place and a special time in my life.”
The Huntington Beach, Calif., native worked for four years as a studio host for Bleacher Report before jumping over to the same type of work at the MLB and NHL networks in 2018. He did studio work there, too, but also began to game opportunities with play-by-play. He worked the World Junior Hockey Championships, the Arizona Fall Baseball League and the Japan All-Star baseball series.
“I never thought doing play-by-play was a real path forward for me,” he says. “I did a little of it in college and (with the IceHogs), and I did some high school football and basketball in Eugene, but my thinking was, ‘I don’t know that I’m built for this.’ I thought I would try to climb the ladder as a host or reporter.”
In 2022, Nelson became primary play-by-play announcer for Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+, produced by the MLB Network. He worked 25 games for the weekly national exclusive broadcast production. Quickly, Nelson was making a name for himself in the industry.
The next year he moved from New York to Los Angeles to join the Dodgers’ broadcast, basically to serve as the backup to regular TV play-by-play guy Joe Davis, another rising young star in the business.
Dodgers play-by-play announcers Stephen Nelson and Joe Davis (courtesy Stephen Nelson)
“Joe is awesome,” Nelson says. “He is the voice and face of MLB on Fox, and was tapped to replace Vin Scully, for a reason.”
In 2023, Nelson worked 53 Dodger games in the play-by-play booth along with eight more in studio handling pre- and post-game shows. This past season, the workload increased to 62 games overall doing TV play-by-play. Oral Hershiser has been Nelson’s primary analyst, with Eric Karros playing a secondary role.
This year, the Dodgers’ long-time radio voice, Charley Steiner, missed most of the season while dealing with multiple myeloma blood cancer. So Nelson also called 40 Dodger games on the radio.
“Hadn’t done baseball on radio since college,” he says. “I was very self-conscious about working audio only. It’s a totally different thing. There is being thrown into the fire, and learning in an inferno. That’s the way I felt this year.”
During this year’s playoffs, Nelson was the MLB Radio Network’s prime play-by-play man, calling the Dodgers all the way to their World Series win over the New York Yankees. For the Series, his analyst was Rick Monday, an outfielder on the Dodgers’ 1981 World Series champions.
Stephen Nelson, analyst Rick Monday and producer Duane McDonald on the night the Dodgers won the 2024 World Series (courtesy Stephen Nelson)
“Mo has been a broadcaster forever,” Nelson says. “Leaning on him was massive for me. He was encouraging and validating and gave input and advice when he saw fit. To have him and our producer, Duane McDonald, was very important. Without those guys, I would not have survived this foray into radio.”
Nelson considers the entire shebang like living out a Walter Mitty fantasy.
“I thought this would be cool to do on the side,” he says. “I never thought I would end up doing play-by-play as my primary job.
“To be working for the Dodgers, and on top of that, calling a World Series run is hard to fathom. It is sort of silly, to be quite honest. It has been a crazy ride to this point. Going from calling Chapman baseball at Hart Park to the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium is two wildly different worlds.”
Nelson’s mother, Flo, is Japanese. (His father, Scott, “is an Italian guy from outside of Chicago,” Stephen says with a laugh.) Nelson is the only Asian-American doing play-by-play for an MLB club.
“That is the most meaningful part of this whole thing for me,” he says. “I am not ever going to be mentioned in the same breath as Mr. Scully or Joe Davis. They are just in a different class. I am totally at peace with that. I am self-aware enough to admit that.
“Knowing that I am not going to Cooperstown, my biggest impact on the game is going to be through representation. I am very lucky I was born and raised in southern California, where there is such a large Asian-American population.”
As a youngster, Nelson remembers watching sportscasters Rob Fujisaki and David Ono working for L.A. TV stations.
“Now I am in a position where I am following in their footsteps by being one of the lone play-by-play voices in pro sports,” he says. “Carrying the flag for Asian-American broadcasters — or really, minority broadcasters as a whole — that’s where I feel like I can have an impact, can make a difference. I have to do a good job, because if I suck, it might make it tougher on the next wave.”
Last November, Nelson was hired as an anchor on SportsCenter, joining a rotation featuring Stan Verrett and Linda Cohn.
“Even though I am a millennial, I am of the generation that grew up on SportsCenter,” Nelson says. “For me to be working on a show that I grew up watching is … I don’t even know how to describe it. It has been the ultimate thrill.”
Nelson recalls his first night at the anchor desk, hearing “This is SportsCenter!”
“Then Stan kicks off the show with, ‘I’m Stan Verrett, and that’s Stephen Nelson,’ ” he says. “It felt like an ‘I made it’ moment.”
Nelson’s one regret is that he never got to work with Everett, who now serves as TV studio pre-game, halftime and post-game host for Trail Blazers’ road games.
“I am coming in behind him, but there is no replacing Neil Everett,” Nelson says. “He and Stan were an institution together.”
When Nelson was at Chapman, he hosted a college radio show. Everett, who had a connection with Nelson’s co-host, appeared as a guest on the show.
“I have never met him in person and been able to thank him for that,” Nelson says. “In a perfect world, it would have been great to work alongside him. I feel like I have been chasing him in this sports solar system but have been unable to track him down yet. Hopefully, that will happen.”
Nelson is busy on and off the air. He and wife, the former Cori Coffin, have sons aged three and one. Cori worked as a news anchor for NBC News at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York before the Nelsons moved to L.A.
From left, Flo Nelson, Stephen Nelson, Cori Nelson and Scott Nelson. Stephen and Cori hold their children. Stephen prefers not to have their photos shown in public (courtesy Stephen Nelson)
“We met when I was a sophomore in college in 2008 and have been together since, though we didn’t get married until 2018,” Stephen says. “When the Dodgers’ thing happened for me, she gave (newscasting) up and is now staying home with the kids.”
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