A New and Familiar Voice Joins the Twins Radio Crew

Fort Myers – The Minnesota Twins radio crew has some changes heading into the 2025 season. Producer and pre- and postgame host Lexi Schweinert and long-time engineer Kyle Hammer left the crew this off-season for new career opportunities. Mark Genosky and John Vittas will now combine their roles and operate the radio crew.

If Twins fans feel like they’ve heard Vittas’ voice before while attending spring training, they wouldn’t be mistaken. Vittas has spent the last nine years calling games in the minor leagues, the last four with the Ft. Myers Mighty Mussels, Minnesota’s Low-A affiliate.

“I’m glad it was just a call between two people because it was hard for me to put sentences together during that call,” said Vittas about his phone call when he got the job. “It just means a lot to know that my work has been appreciated by people at the highest level and to keep me in mind all the way down here in Single-A.”

Vittas has done a bit of everything in the Mighty Mussels front office alongside his play-by-play role. He sold advertisements at Hammond Stadium and did community work and volunteering following the impacts of Hurricane Ian in 2022 and Hurricane Milton last fall.

Twins Senior Director of Broadcasting Andrew Halverson has seen Vittas grow in his role each spring training. Before the 2024 season, Low-A Ft. Myers didn't stream home games. However, with the help of the Mighty Mussels ownership and the Twins, Vittas could run a crew to stream every Mussels home game.

“Every time I checked in with John, he was finding new opportunities to improve his craft or better the Mighty Mussels organization,” said Halverson. “I watched him take a Single-A broadcast and add a very in-depth pre-game show. He found ways for his team’s stories to be featured on social media in an engaging way. We worked with him to build a television broadcast before the Mussels’ 2024 season.”

Vittas's work ethic was just one part of what made him stand out. He helped improve the Mighty Mussels broadcast and community outreach every season over the last four years. However, Vittas' dedication to these daily tasks in the minor leagues led Halverson to hire him as the newest member of the Twins radio crew.

“The other thing that stood out about John was his passion,” said Halverson. “It’s contagious. You can see it in any endeavor that he takes on and hear it through his work, which is an incredible gift.”

[caption id=attachment_183152" align="aligncenter" width="2560] John Vittas and his wife, Emily, at Target Field during TwinsFest 2025[/caption]

Vittas' contagious passion for his craft as a broadcaster and the game of baseball can be traced back to his college days.

Vittas attended the University of Maryland from 2011 to 2015. In the spring and summer before his senior year, he called baseball games on WMUC Sports, the student radio station on campus. Unlike other Division I schools, the University of Maryland didn’t have a dedicated broadcast network for its baseball team. Vittas wanted to change that when his school joined the Big 10.

In the fall of 2014, he teamed up with fellow broadcasting majors Matt Present and Jake Eisenberg to create the Maryland Baseball Network. In February 2015, Vittas and Present worked hard to get every game on the airwaves, with the support of Maryland’s baseball coaches and funding primarily from the players’ family members.

“I’m super grateful that those opportunities came about in college,” said Vittas. “I just tried to run with it the best I could meet people, and the Maryland coaching staff gave me such a great opportunity to be able to travel with them my junior and senior year. Which really just took my passion and reps up a whole big notch.”

“His ability to come up with a vision for what Maryland Baseball Network could be, for it not to just be a baseball broadcast but to be this multimedia platform looking back it’s really incredible,” said Present. “It was just this vision to take every aspect of media and combine it into one.”

All three Terps were following behind Scott Kornberg, another alumnus of their program who graduated in 2013 and is the play-by-play man for the Miami Marlins’ Triple-A team in Jacksonville. Kornberg worked with Present and Vittas in their minor-league broadcasting careers. Present was with Kornberg in 2021 at Jacksonville, and Vittas was with Kornberg in Myrtle Beach Pelicans, the Chicago Cubs’ High-A affiliate.

After five years in the minors, Eisenberg is entering his third season as a play-by-play announcer for the Kansas City Royals radio and TV broadcasts. Present* called Minor League Baseball games for five seasons before landing his current role at Appalachian State in Boone, N.C., where he calls multiple sports for the Mountaineers.

“I don't know that we would have really been able to fathom that as a possibility, but it's not just a possibility -- it's a reality,” said Eisenberg on both he and Vittas being in the majors a decade after their first year working together. “And that's really special. And I've told John this many times, but I really owe him everything without Maryland Baseball Network. I don't start calling baseball without John.”

[caption id=attachment_183154" align="aligncenter" width="1080] Vittas and Jake Eisenberg at the 2017 Winter Meetings in Orlando, FL. Courtesy, John Vittas[/caption]

Present and Eisenberg saw Vittas's passion for baseball grow from a former high school player into a dedicated broadcaster who always finds solutions to make the game more accessible to more people. Now that their friend and former classmate is getting his flowers a decade later, they couldn’t be more thrilled for Vittas and the dedication he will bring to each radio broadcast for Twins Territory.

“This has been a long time coming for John,” said Eisenberg. “He's going to know what he's talking about in an intimate way but also care about it to such a degree that he's going to go out and do his own preparation to bring those reports to Twins fans.”

“I think John will provide people with knowledge that they did not have before tuning into him that day,” added Present. “I think he’s going to bring something new, something fresh, something interesting every single day because he pours his passion into finding those things.”

“I’m glad that they can see that passion because it’s definitely there,” Vittas said. “I’ve realized that after nine years in the minors if anything, it’s only gotten stronger than what it was when I first started.”

Vittas is more than excited to work alongside Genosky, Halverson, Kris Atteberry, and the many other Twins employees he’s met at spring training over the last five years.

Of course, having an upfront seat to players such as Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa, and Royce Lewis will be a treat for Vittas. So will players who have since blossomed from their days in Fort Myers like David Festa, Edouard Julien, and Louie Varland, among others.

While some may experience jitters their first time calling or working a Major League Baseball game, Vittas isn’t expecting that to be the case for him. After nearly a decade working in the Minors, he feels more than prepared to take on this new role and to continue to find more ways to make the game he loves dearly accessible to more fans.

“Just to know that all of the last nine years was well worth it,” said Vittas. “I did my best to take advantage of each day in the minor leagues because there’s so much you learn and are able to do hands-on in the minor leagues. And to know that I was able to take advantage of those nine years and turn it into exactly what I’ve always been wanting was so rewarding.”

*Ed note: This sentence was updated to clarify Present's background.