Editor’s note: This feature story on Reno Aces play-by-play broadcaster Nash Walker was written by UNR student journalist Chase Dulude.

The Reno Aces were established in 2009 when the Tucson Sidewinders moved to a new ballpark in the heart of their new city. Since that time, the franchise has had four men serve as its play-by-play commentator.

First, there was Ryan Radtke, the voice of the Aces from 2009-2019 and who followed the team Tucson to Reno before becoming a lead broadcaster at Westwood One Sports, where he remains to this day.

Radtke’s successor was Zack Bayrouty, who served in the role for two seasons from 2021-22 before taking the same position with his current team, the Sacramento River Cats.

Bayrouty was replaced by Kevin DiDomenico, a Virginia Tech product who served in the role for the 2023 season and now broadcasts for the PGA Tour.

Entering 2024, the Aces found themselves in need of a new voice, their fourth in a five-season period. They not totally lost on what to do next. Sensing DiDomenico’s inevitable departure, Aces communications manager, Adam Nichols, hired a seasonal communications coordinator to call most home games alongside DiDomenico in 2023.

This coordinator made a fantastic pairing with DiDomenico during his short time as the No. 2 announcer. He made enough of an impression on Nichols for the latter to “strongly urge” the Aces to consider his for the full-time job.

“Early on, he showed he had a grasp of the lifestyle and the speed that professional sports has, especially in the communication side,” Nichols said. “You never know what an individual is really made of until you sort of throw them into a season, and a baseball season is longer than any others. And once that hurdle was sort of basically crossed, I knew regardless of whether it was with the Aces or another organization, he was going to do something pretty special in baseball.”

That coordinator was a man from Plymouth, Minn., named Nash Walker, who was hired into the full-time job at just 23 years old, making him the youngest play-by-play announcer in affiliated minor-league baseball history.

While such a risk would be difficult for a professional organization to take, the Aces took comfort in the fact that Walker already had a dearth of experience that made him over-qualified.

Walker began his journey as a kid in a sport-loving Minnesota family. His dad, Jeff, played sports regularly for most of his life, and the entire Walker family caught the competitive bug from him.

“All of our kids played sports,” said Sue Walker, Nash’s mother. “Nash was my third child, so it was just easy for us to say, ‘What are you interested in? What would you like to do?’ All of the little kids, like his best friend who lived across the street from us, all of them went into hockey, all of them went into baseball. That was just kind of what they did. So he started doing that when he was in kindergarten.”

In Minnesota, hockey is as much of a religion as football in Texas. Hockey was Nash’s first love but he also played baseball and football through his childhood. Over time, he found himself getting pulled in by America’s Pastime, baseball.

“Whatever season it was, I was fully invested in that season,” Walker said. “I love baseball because spring and summer is baseball. So I always look forward to good weather. In Minnesota, it’s so cold. When it started to get warm, I knew baseball was coming. So, I always had those two things linked together — good weather and baseball, which is why I love baseball.”

Despite his love of the competitive aspect of sports, most of Walker’s greatest sports memories come from attending pro games with his dad.

Jeff bonded with Nash over simply attending sporting events in Minnesota and made it a priority to attend important games at every opportunity. As a result, a young Nash was in attendance for multiple notable moments in Minnesota sports, such as Adrian Peterson’s NFL record 296 rushing yards against the Chargers in 2007 and the Twins’ famous Game 163 tiebreaker against the Tigers in 2009. Walker, in perhaps an indicator of what was to come, found the most value in the ordinary, mundane moments of simply being at the ballpark.

“I think my favorite memories of sports growing up is being there on a Sunday, the sun is out, and I’m sitting with my dad,” he said. “We’re at the Twins game, and we’re just laughing, eating a burger. That’s my favorite memory, talking ball, talking Twins baseball and him teaching me about the game and teaching me about players that he really likes. But it’s not anything really specific. I think it’s just being there with him on a Sunday afternoon. I always looked forward to doing that.”

With an affinity for simply talking about sports, Walker began his career by doing a daily news report over his high school’s PA system. The wheels had been turning since middle school as the increasingly popular 12-year-old was thrust into playing Barack Obama in a mock presidential debate against his best friend. While Walker lost the debate, it was then he realized how comfortable he was speaking in front of the world.

“I never thought of that as something that advanced my broadcasting career, but it really made me feel like I liked being in the spotlight,” Walker said. “And you have to be in the spotlight in this job. It just comes with it. Some people are uncomfortable with that. Sometimes I am, too, and I prefer being more private. But I think I learned through that that I’m totally comfortable with being in the limelight.”

A large part of this immediate transition is what Nash’s mother describes as his greatest trait — his dedication.

“Nash is very dedicated,” Sue Walker said. “When he makes a decision that he’s going to take something on, he thinks thoroughly about it. He’s very conscious about the whole thing. He is locked in to what he’s doing, and the commitment that he makes.”

As Nash grew older, he found himself continually plagued by injuries, a combination of concussions and his family’s congenital knee issues. This led him to giving up his pursuit of playing sports, as the risk outgrew the reward.

As is the case with many young athletes who have to give up their careers due to injuries, Walker did not want to leave the sports world behind. He began pursuing a career in sports media at the University of Missouri, which has one of the top journalism programs in the country. It was close enough to Walker’s home in Minnesota in case he needed to get home in a hurry. It wasn’t until his freshman year in Columbia that Walker truly fell in love with broadcasting.

“I went into the student radio station my freshman year, and it was like chills from that moment on,” Walker said. “I was 18 showing up on campus, but I was among all those people talking about sports, and they were on the air, and I just thought to myself, ‘I know my purpose, what my calling is.’ I had an idea previously, but I didn’t know until this moment, and I will never look back from that moment.”

Walker immediately dedicated himself to his craft, calling numerous Mizzou football, softball and volleyball games, both in house and remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, during his time in Columbia. It was also during this time that Walker found out about the Locked On podcast company, where he would get his first big break as the host of Locked On Twins (LOT).

“My sophomore year of college, the Twins were really good,” Walker said. “I started to get back into it, watching every single day, then I thought to myself, ‘I feel like I’ve learned enough about this team where I can talk about them in a smart way.’ I was on Twitter and it said, ‘Oh, there’s this daily podcast you can do named Locked On Twins.’ So I put in my name, and they said, ‘All right, give us a couple samples.’ I did that, and they said, ‘You can do it the first month.’”

Despite only making $17 a month at the start, and the Twins’ losing record during his time as the host of LOT, Walker still dutifully recorded an episode every day, regardless of where he was, or what he was doing. This included the time when he got his first break in true sports broadcasting with the Palm Springs Power of the California Collegiate League.

“We were taking him to Palm Springs to be the broadcaster for the Palm Springs Power, and we had to stop on the side of the road so he could do his Locked On Twins,” Sue Walker said. “I mean, we literally had to. We sat there in silence. My mom was even in the car, who was a bit gibberish, and I’m, like, ‘We have to have complete silence.’ We found the right Wi-Fi in the area, and he did his Locked On Twins.”

Walker continued to record LOT every day during his time with the Power, which he described as crucial to the development of his broadcasting skills. Over time, LOT became popular as Walker’s consistent production of content gained a large audience of Twins fans.

“I was getting close to 1,000 episodes,” Walker said. “I was making, like, $3,500 a month doing it, and it had grown into this much bigger thing. I had built an audience of Twins fans who were listening every single day, and I was able to grow the following because I was so consistent with it. I just did it every single day. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I’m doing the exact same thing here. I’m talking about baseball by myself for an extended period of time. Locked On Twins, I would say above anything else, has helped me grow in my work ethic and my ability on air.”

With the Power, Walker began to develop his storytelling skills despite the notable setback of not quite knowing the starting lineups before each game, or really much of anything about the players themselves. He did so by developing friendships with the players to gain information, a practice which he has continued to this day.

Once his careers in Palm Springs and Columbia were finished, Walker promptly moved on to his next challenge — getting a job in minor-league baseball. Unlike Palm Springs, an unpaid job which Walker was able to take due to his income from Locked On Twins, Walker had no leg up on other broadcasters entering the announcing pool. This led to an offseason of rejection, a difficult experience for the young broadcaster.

“That offseason was so bad,” Walker said. “I made a whole spreadsheet of all 30 clubs, all their affiliates, and reached out to all the affiliates for any job. I had interviews, but it was ‘Denied, denied, denied, denied, denied, denied.’ I could not get a job anywhere.”

Walker was granted a reprieve from his pain when he received a call from the Aces who were looking for a seasonal communications coordinator that would serve as the No. 2 announcer alongside DiDomenico. Two candidates had already turned down the job, but Nichols, who was leading the search, said Walker wasn’t an option the Aces settled on.

“Nash really was a passionate individual, somebody that had a very keen baseball mind and an overall friendly persona,” Nichols said. “But, selfishly, I think the biggest thing about the tape was ‘Who would I want to listen to? Does the voice have the right tone resonance? Are they able to enunciate correctly, give the right amount of excitement, or the tone of what the situation is, and then also be able to be entertaining enough to keep things flowing throughout a game?’ The combination of his voice, and then also his knowledge and sense of humor was something that while he was still raw and still very young there were pieces there that I picked up on that I thought were building blocks that are things that you just can’t teach.”

Walker hit it off with Nichols, and the latter offered the former a position with the Aces. The Walkers had been to Reno once before Nash was alive and had a negative perception of the city. However, once Nash was officially offered the position with the Aces, all negative feelings about Reno gave way to tears of joy.

“I was in the gym with my mom, and my mom was bawling because I got offered this job,” Walker said. “I’m, like, ‘Mom, this is a communications job. This is not a big deal.’ But I think she knew. Her intuition is special. She knew that this was going to be a big deal for me. I didn’t see it at the time, but your mom will tell you something like that, and she was crying, and that told me she had seen it as something so much bigger than I did, and it became that. She was right.”

After being rejected by multiple Low-A teams, Walker immediately knew how big an opportunity a Triple-A broadcasting job was. Despite not initially knowing anything about Reno, or even where it was, Walker couldn’t turn down the opportunity, but it was a difficult decision as the exclusivity agreement he would need to sign to be on air with the Aces meant the end of the line for Locked On Twins.

“I was upset I had to give that up,” Walker said. “I had to give it up because of the Bally contracts we have here, and I’m on air here. I would have kept doing it. I would have done it all summer and probably for an extended time.”

With the help of his parents, Walker moved to Reno, taking up residence at the new Ballpark Apartments across the street from Greater Nevada Field. While more expensive than other options in the area, the forward-thinking Walker wanted to be as close to the park as possible. During Walker’s first weekend calling games for the Aces, it finally hit him just special an opportunity he had been blessed with.

“I remember there was a moment, opening weekend,” Walker said. “I had the headset on, I was 22 my first year with Kevin, and I was looking at the field, like, ‘There’s no way that this is real. What is going on? I cannot believe that I’m here.’ It really felt like a blessing from the very beginning. I couldn’t believe it. I knew that I’d worked hard. I knew I had a good résumé, a good tape. I had that trust. But to actually be here, that’s a whole nother thing.

Walker quickly developed chemistry with DiDomenico. The two developed a brotherly bond to the point where Walker occasionally had to step out of the booth because he was laughing too hard. DiDomenico departed the Aces prior to the 2024 season, taking a job with ESPN covering the PGA Tour. That left a hole in the Aces’ announcing booth, although Walker was an obvious in-house candidate.

While not part of the decision-making process this time around, Nichols gave as much feedback about Walker’s qualifications as he could, focusing on how he embodied the Aces’ HOME values — honesty, opportunity, memories and energy.

“A lot of broadcasters out there that try to project an image, or project what they think the audience wants to hear,” Nichols said. “But there’s an authenticity that Nash brings to a broadcast that when you hear him talk about the game that’s the same way that you would talk to you in person, in private, at the bar, anywhere. So, there’s not that that was the biggest thing when it comes to this broadcasting. He’s extremely bright when it comes to baseball knowledge, but unless you have that authenticity to you as a broadcaster where people can believe it, there’s no way to get that type of buy-in.”

Nichols also referred back to Walker’s dedication as a reason for his eventual promotion to the full-time job.

“He’s a very dedicated individual, honing his craft and trying to get better,” Nichols said. “And that’s that drive. It’s one of the other things that was sort of a factor when hiring him initially because that’s one of the things that I look for when hiring people: things that I can’t teach. You can’t teach drive, and that’s one of the separating factors when I initially pushed to get him hired in a seasonal role.”

Walker planned on looking for jobs elsewhere and was surprised by the Aces approaching him with the opportunity of a lifetime.

“At the end of the year, they brought me in,” Walker said. “They said, ‘We don’t want to lose you. What do you think about being the No. 1?’ That’s when I first heard that was a possibility. I was ready to pack up my stuff and go somewhere else.”

Naturally, Walker accepted the job, and immediately began preparing for his first season as the solo play-by-play broadcaster of a Triple-A club.

“It was an adjustment, for sure,” Walker said. “I think leading up to last season, I was scared. I had confidence. I knew I could do it. But I was scared leading up to the season. I shut down my life. I was, like, ‘I’m going to bed at 10, I’m up at eight, I’m going to prep all day.’ I was so focused on succeeding in year one, I felt like I had more experience than a lot of 23-year-olds in what I had done, but I was 23 years old, and this was my first time calling pro ball by myself. I think looking back now, I’m proud of the work that I did. I’m proud of how hard I worked going into that season. But I was scared. I would only say it to my parents, but I was scared leading up to that season.”

Fast-forward to today and Walker has fully settled into his role as the Aces’ lead commentator in his second season. While it initially took some time to truly get settled in, he has hit his stride as a broadcaster, attributing that fact to his previous experience as the broadcaster for the Power.

“Calling 40 games was big,” Walker said. “I wouldn’t have gotten this job if I didn’t do that. So, I’m very thankful for that. It was so hot. There was a moment I was sitting in the booth and I’m thinking, ‘It’s 120 (degrees) and I’m calling this game for basically nothing, no pay, but I still want to be here, and I still want to do this.’ That was another thing, another confidence booster — this is your life, this is your career, you love it even in the sweltering heat. You’re willing to do it. But if I didn’t call those 40 games, I think I would have sounded a lot worse when I got here, and I think I wouldn’t have gotten a job.”

While he was working through some nerves and hiccups early on, Walker described just how supportive the Aces were of him and how crucial that was in his broadcasting development.

“The trust I felt from everybody in that building, that made me feel it wasn’t solely trusting me as a broadcaster,” Walker said. “It was trusting me as a person and trusting my work ethic and my organization. When people trust you like that, it makes it a lot easier to just go out there and perform.”

Nash’s parents still listen to every game their son calls. Whether it’s while doing dishes, exercising or watching on TV, they have only missed a handful of games in the 2.5 years Walker has been in Reno. Occasionally, they make trips out to Reno where they have been pleasantly surprised by the changes the city has gone through. Walker expressed gratitude for the fact his parents are so supportive of him and his dreams.

“My mom will text me and she’s excited, and my dad will text me stuff throughout the game,” Walker said. “Honestly, if I didn’t have them I would not even be close to where I am, mentally, emotionally, like anywhere in my career, if I didn’t have my family. My family is my No. 1 value, it’s not even close to anything else. I love this. I love what I do. I love to call games. I love baseball. Baseball is the love of my life. But my family is everything to me. I talk to them every single day, my brother and sister. I try to talk to them every single day. We’re all busy, but if I didn’t have them, their support and knowing that I can go to them if there’s a bad day or a good day or anything, I would not be anywhere close to where I am.”

While Walker’s skill is undoubtedly, he also credits luck for some of his success at a young age. He’s thankful for his time in Reno and plans on staying with the Aces as he, like the team’s players, wait for the call to the major-league level. Until then, he will continue to develop knowledge of the city that’s become his home while dutifully studying, interviewing and commentating 150 games a year. That’s just part of Nash Walker.

“I’m so happy here, man,” Walker said. “I’m not complacent at Triple-A, but I’m content. I’m very happy here. I’ve never looked elsewhere since I’ve been here. I wanted to stay from the beginning, and it’s only gotten stronger as I’ve built relationships in the community. I’m a Reno kid now, which I never thought I would say. But it’s special.”