Biscuit rises: Adams-Wall gets callup to Tampa Bay

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- After a long stint with the Double-A club, Chris Adams-Wall finally got the call: He's going to The Show.

He's going to the pre- and postgame show, to be exact, hosting both as the newest member of the Tampa Bay Rays broadcast team. Adams-Wall is a homegrown talent, arriving in Tampa after spending the past seven-and-a-half seasons doing play-by-play for the Rays' Double-A affiliate, the Montgomery Biscuits. He will make his Major League debut Thursday.

Broadcaster @ChrisAdamsWall is headed to @RaysBaseball! He will join @RaysRadio as the pre & postgame host!

Chris is so, so deserving of this and we wish him all the best! pic.twitter.com/d9SJyOfqjF

— Montgomery Biscuits (@BiscuitBaseball) June 15, 2023

This writer caught up with Adams-Wall last Friday at Montgomery's Riverwalk Stadium. It was between games of a doubleheader, and his antepenultimate outing as the Biscuits' broadcaster was imminent.

"It's pretty surreal for me, still. Hasn't really sunk in, even though I found out last week. It went public yesterday," he said between swigs from a gallon-sized jug of spring water. "I heard from a lot of people I hadn't heard from in a long time. That means a lot to me. It's also tough, though, because I'm trying to do a good job here. I want to finish strong, but I'm also focusing on what the Rays are doing, because that's going to be what I'm doing going forward."

Summing it up, Adam-Walls said he was "very happy" -- of course, he's going to the Major Leagues! -- as well as "very sad." The melancholy amid the joy was having to say goodbye to the Biscuits organization and its fans. He called his first game with the club in 2015, working alongside lead broadcaster Aaron Vargas, who had taken over for Joe Davis. Yes, that Joe Davis, who succeeded Vin Scully in the Los Angeles Dodgers broadcast booth and also serves as Fox Sports' lead baseball broadcaster.

"I ended up with the Biscuits because of Joe Davis," said Adams-Wall. "I was working as a production assistant at Fox Sports in Los Angeles. And I was working on a remote production crew, working college football games. ... My second year doing that job, the lead play-by-play guy on our crew was Joe Davis. And I'm sitting there wondering, 'How am I the same age as this guy?' I'm the lowest guy on the totem pole. And then I started to talk to Joe, you know, we became good friends."

Davis, a man with Biscuit connections, put Adams-Wall in touch with Vargas. And that's how the journey began.

"And so then I became one of the first people, I think, in human history to move from Los Angeles, California, to Montgomery, Alabama. It has been the best experience of my life, though. It couldn't have worked out better. I worked for free as a No. 2, learned how to broadcast baseball, even though I had never broadcast a game of baseball in my life. I did some [broadcasting] in college, right? Football, basketball, hockey, but never baseball. But Joe gave me that chance and so did Aaron. And so I feel extraordinarily grateful that that happened."

Adams-Wall was feeling some understandable anxiety as he simultaneously closed out his Biscuits tenure while preparing for his job with the Rays, but it's not as though he's going into a wholly unfamiliar situation.

"I look at the Tampa Bay Rays roster right now, and about half of them at one point came through the Biscuits," he said. "I remember when I went down for my interview [in Tampa Bay], Josh Lowe giving me some crap when when he saw me on the field, like, 'Who let him in here?' He was here [in Montgomery] in 2019. Got to see Taj Bradley again, who won most outstanding pitcher in this league last season, and now he's in the Rays rotation."

Bringing butter to the Bay 🎙️

Congratulations again to @ChrisAdamsWall! Thank you and your voice will be missed in The Gump! 🧈 pic.twitter.com/L63O7mTPsy

— Montgomery Biscuits (@BiscuitBaseball) June 19, 2023

As Adams-Wall contemplated his then-imminent and now-in-the-rearview final call with the Biscuits, he said it would be emotional. "There's a new rooftop bar that just opened up down here [in Montgomery]. It's called Waterworks. I'm pretty sure that's gonna be me on Sunday."

It's hard to say goodbye, but in this case, it'll be even better to say hello.

"[The Rays] are people-centric, and love taking care of their own," he said. "So I feel extraordinarily blessed that they've chosen me, and I'm going to try my best not to let them down."