IDAHO FALLS −
John Balginy sits in the same seat he has sat in for 41 years. On Aug. 30, it is his final day in that chair in the Jim Garchow booth at Melaleuca Field.
The Idaho Falls Chukars' home finale carries extra implications: they are clinging to thin postseason hopes. They do not know it yet, but this will be farewell.
Balginy could have made it about himself. He could have rambled on about his service to the franchise or expected flowers, tributes and a grand send-off. He did neither of those. In fact, if that were your first time listening to John Balginy, you would have thought it was any regular game.
But it wasn't. It was the end for a man who came to Idaho as a college kid and served as the soundtrack for countless summer nights.
"Number one, radio's my business," Balginy told the Post Register. "But baseball, getting paid to watch baseball, that's just a pleasure. I never thought of it as a job, and just enjoyed it and still do."
Balginy was exposed to the game at an early age. Growing up in El Paso, the Los Angeles Dodgers had a minor league affiliate. His father was a trainer for the team, providing John a glimpse at what much of his adult life would contain: spending time at the ballpark.
When Balginy was 12, he was a bat boy for the Sun Kings. Always trying to emulate the players, he took them up on their chewing tobacco offer. Except, nobody had alerted him about spitting. In the fourth inning, John went to retrieve a bat and sprayed that tobacco on the playing field in front of 4,000 fans.
"Oh, I never did it again. I wasn't that dumb. But boy, the players had a hoot. That's for sure," Balginy said.
John never quite retaliated in this lopsided prank war, falling victim again when the players convinced him to step into the box against Bob Feller. The Hall of Famer was in town for a promotion and, despite having retired some years earlier, Balginy "never saw" his fastball go past him.
It was during those days that Balginy would listen to and watch the greats: Howard Cosell and Vin Scully. Harry Caray and eventually his son, Skip Caray. As a freshman at the University of Texas at El Paso, John wrote for the El Paso Times, thinking he might one day go into sportswriting.
However, the urge to leave the place he knew so well tugged at him. One of those Dodgers, Larry Eckenrode, lived in Pocatello.
"Why don't you come up and look at Idaho State University?" Eckenrode asked John.
The transfer application was in, though he still expected to return to El Paso for work.
"I just wanted to get away from home. Try something new. And 1,000 miles later, I found myself in Pocatello," Balginy said.
On July 1 that first summer, it snowed. The Texan was horrified. And while the "hellacious" winter buried the ground white, he would meet his wife and find a job.
Eckenrode was ISU's play-by-play commentator at the time and asked John if he wanted to help. At first, it was stats and brief on-air work. It became his path into the Idaho sportscasting world.
"I sort of got hooked on it," Balginy said.
In 1981, Jim Garchow hired him at KSEI. Garchow was the voice of Skyline High School sports and wanted to expand to Idaho Falls High School. John was his guy and stood out so much that four years later, Garchow invited him to professional baseball.
John had spent time with Dodgers like Steve Garvey and Ron Cey, been in dugouts and clubhouses and learned the language of the game. It was always going to be a natural fit.
"Being around the game, meeting a lot of ex-major leaguers. That just, I think, helped me with my broadcast as far as telling stories and that sort of thing," Balginy said.
Balginy's stories often had no limits. Just this past summer, he detailed to his partner, Carson Harper, a golf shot that hooked so brutally it decapitated a bird. They would delve into random top-10 lists — doughnuts were among the more contentious in 2026.
Even though the players and coaches were not regular listeners, they got to know John during his postgame clubhouse visits.
"He's meant the world," outfielder Tyler Wyatt said. "… He's a class act. He's pretty much everything you want in a broadcaster. He's rooting for us up there."
"He's been an outstanding human and he's been someone you can look up to, honestly. He's been very, very helpful for us," Wyatt continued.
He would guide fans through the game and make sure they were up to date on the action. He also learned when to get excited and when to call a routine pop fly a routine pop fly.
"In baseball, it's more of a laid-back storytelling," Balginy said.
Season ticket holders would frequent the Garchow booth, stopping by to check in on their announcer and wish him the best. Plenty of stars accompanied Balginy in his office over the years, too.
One evening, they were showing "A League of Their Own" in the outfield after the game. The movie's lead actress, Geena Davis, was scheduled for one inning of talk. Six outs later, her assistants showed up to pluck her away. Davis refused. She wanted to hang out with John and did so through the third inning.
Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Famer and, at the time, a hitting instructor for an Atlanta Braves affiliate, Willie Stargell, felt like watching a game from higher than the dugout. But the old McDermott Field press box was tiny, and Stargell had grown accustomed to major league perks. He demanded a La-Z-Boy recliner and spent the afternoon leaning back next to Balginy.
"If I'm going to come up here, I want to be comfortable," Stargell said.
Another former ballplayer and Hall of Famer, George Brett, stopped in, too. On air, Brett talked about a game when he dealt with hemorrhoids. Geena Davis remained John's best guest.
In 2004, Idaho Falls became an affiliate team for the Kansas City Royals. It was time for a name change. "Eagles" was the frontrunner before Balginy went to president Kevin Greene with an idea.
"I got a great idea. How about the Idaho Falls Chukars?" Balginy suggested to Greene.
John's father had hunted chukars in Kansas, he highlighted the connection of "chucker" as slang for a pitcher and they were native to the region.
"What the [heck] is a Chukar?" Greene asked.
"So I explained what it was and he goes, 'Well, that's not bad,'" Balginy said. "He thought about it for a day or so and he said, 'Yep, we're the Chukars.' And that's how that came about."
Of all the great players, such as Billy Butler and Salvador Perez, and successful seasons John experienced, perhaps none stand out more than the 2019 Pioneer League championship.
Idaho Falls had a fierce rivalry with Ogden. There were several bench-clearing brawls throughout their history and one even made it on SportsCenter's Top 10 segment. After losing the first of a three-game set at Melaleuca Field, it was down to Utah to try and take two.
The Chukars won both.
"Winning it in Ogden with those fans of Ogden, that was so nice. We had a pretty good party that night," Balginy said.
Those fans, who appear low on John's "I'm going to miss them after I retire" list, heckled Greene's wife one time. Balginy stepped in, though he was never bothered much by hecklers.
Now that John has more spare time, he plans to watch his granddaughter, Violet, play tee-ball and hopes to move to Pocatello. But he cannot quit Melaleuca Field quite yet.
"I'll make the little 40-minute trip and come see Bob (Milacki) and Chris (Hall) and the boys, and hopefully they'll have a good season next year," he said.
"We'd talk baseball for an hour after the game," Milacki said. "He's just such a great person. He'd tell us stories about back when he first started and as he progressed… I love him to death."
From watching Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris as a kid, to spending time with the Harlem Globetrotters — for whom his father was also a trainer — to thoughts of bartending school and decades of broadcasting baseball and accepting Idaho as home, John Balginy has at last belted his final, "Long, strong, gone," call.
"41 years has been a great run. A lot of bad baseball and a lot of great baseball, but, you know, the friendships that I have garnered over the years," Balginy said.
"Yeah, no second thoughts at all."