Q&A: Husky softball star Angie Mentink talks broadcasting, UW connections and ballpark snacks

In 1995, Angie Mentink turned down the U.S. Olympic Softball team to play for the Colorado Silver Bullets, the first professional women’s baseball team. Photo courtesy of Angie Mentink.

One of the greatest student-athletes in Husky history, Angie Mentink has been a sports nut her entire life. The Virginia native grew up in a military family and played two years for the nascent Husky women’s softball team in the early 1990s, setting several school records that still stand. In 2001, she became the first Husky softball player to be inducted into the Husky Hall of Fame.

A breast cancer survivor who was a Little League mom to her two sons—now one is in high school, and one is in college—Mentink was chosen to play on the 1996 U.S. Olympic softball team. But she bypassed that to become one of the first women to play professional baseball. This season, she has broken another glass ceiling as the first woman in Seattle Mariners history to serve as a color commentator for radio and television broadcasts.

This spring, we went to T-Mobile Park to catch up with Mentink, who joined the Mariners’ staff in 1997 and has spent her career as a pregame TV host and sports broadcaster for ROOT Sports Northwest.

Was a career in baseball broadcasting a goal of yours?

Yes and no. I intended to be a news reporter. I never intended to have a career in sports even though I was playing softball for the University of Washington. Nearly 30 years ago, I thought, “Oh well, I will just get my foot in the door in sports and then cross over into news.” Now, here we are all these years later. I’m thrilled I stayed.

How did you start on your career path?

Doing radio color commentating for the UW baseball program was how I started. When they added softball to the radio lineup, I did that, and eventually, I started doing UW softball on television. [Softball coach] Heather Tarr sent me a YouTube video from one of my first broadcasts the other day and it was painful to watch! One interesting note: I started out doing UW baseball on radio years ago and now I am back being a color commentator for baseball at the major-league level for the Mariners. It’s very full circle.

Talk about your experience as a UW student-athlete.

The UW softball program had just started, and I was part of the first graduating class. We didn’t have a field on campus, [so] every day we had to get into buses and drive over to Bellevue and practice at Hidden Valley Park. We had no locker rooms, no real sense of a home, but there was a lot of fun in that. It was wild, but also one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to come here [after two years at Central Arizona College] was to create a program. Who gets to do that? The trailblazing aspect of it really pulled at me. There were only three juniors on the team, one sophomore and the rest were freshmen. We as upperclassmen were outnumbered!

Tell us about your UW connections.

Most of my close connections are understandably through the softball program—the coaches and my teammates but also with guys like Joe Ross, a former baseball coach now with the Kansas City Royals organization; and Tanner Swanson, a former UW coach who is currently with the Yankees. The UW connections are everywhere, including the very beginning of my career, between Jim Daves, who was in Sports Information at UW, and Tim Hevley, who is with the Mariners but used to be at the UW.

Talk about the transition from pregame & post-game host to in-game color analyst.

It is quite different in how you prepare—when you are hosting, you are focused on the numbers and statistics. As an analyst, your job is to explain the how and the why of those numbers. I try to find the little things in the game that end up having a big impact on the outcome. I like the deep dive!

You are one of four color analysts for the Mariners. How will the color analyst rotation work?

They say variety is the spice of life. There will be me, Ryan Rowland-Smith, Dave Valle and Jay Buhner will come in for 19 games as a three-person booth with us.

Favorite Mariner ever?

Jay Buhner was always my favorite to interview. Kyle Seager was so kind and thoughtful, especially with my kids. Everyone knows I was a huge Ty France fan. But the truth is, I don’t have a favorite, kind of like with my kids. Also, there are so many good guys on the team right now. I really like the way Luke Raley plays. And find me someone who doesn’t absolutely adore Cal Raleigh.

Chapulines [toasted grasshoppers] or garlic fries?

Can I choose neither? There are so many tasty options at the ballpark: sushi, curry, Edgar’s Cantina are all places I love to hit when I venture out into the ballpark.

Is this the Mariners’ year? Please say yes.

I always think yes. Baseball is such a long season and so many factors play into your success. Of course, the Mariners’ pitching is their strength, and they’ve done a good job of overcoming some early [pitching] injuries. That goes on the position player side, too. Hopefully, they stay healthy because if they do, they are capable of great things this season.