St. Joseph Mustangs public address announcer Greg Kastner addresses the Phil Welch Stadium crowd as the team honored the Bishop LeBlond High School state teams on June 15.
St. Joseph Mustangs public address announcer Greg Kastner addresses the Phil Welch Stadium crowd as the team honored the Bishop LeBlond High School state teams on June 15.
Jacob Meikel | News-Press NOW
St. Joseph Mustangs public address announcer Greg Kastner addresses the Phil Welch Stadium crowd as the team honored the Bishop LeBlond High School state teams on June 15.
Jacob Meikel | News-Press NOW
Greg Kastner says about PA announcing for the Mustangs: ‘It keeps me in the ball game, it keeps me young, keeps me around the sport that I love.’
At 71 years old, the enjoyment Greg Kastner gets from public address announcing for the St. Joseph Mustangs isn’t going to fade away any time soon.
“As long as I’m healthy, wealthy and wise, I’ll be here. I appreciate Ky (Turner) for asking me every year if I want to continue to do this,” Kastner said. “I enjoy what I do because there’s going to come a day that I’m not going to be able to do this.”
Kastner has been the voice of Phil Welch Stadium for roughly 20 years, witnessing MINK League Championships and soaking up the fun of each and every summer night he gets to work at the ballpark.
“It keeps me in the ball game, it keeps me young, keeps me around the sport that I love,” Kastner said. “I do it as a kind of a fun gig to do. I’ve been doing it ever since and enjoy it.
The love for the game didn’t start with PA announcing and it wasn’t how his legacy was initially shaped in the city of St. Joseph, where Kastner was born and raised. His reason for staying behind the microphone has a broader history than the time he’s spent at Phil Welch.
He was a longtime baseball coach at Bishop LeBlond High School where he won 12 district titles and became a member of the St. Joseph Baseball Hall of Fame.
Long before his coaching career, he was a baseball player at Missouri Western where he was also inducted to the MWSU Hall of Fame as a player and as part of a team. Add up the achievements on the diamond as a coach and his 40-plus years announcing high school, college and summer baseball in St. Joseph, Kastner doesn’t take any of it for granted.
“It was a busy life for me and I like it that way,” Kastner said. “Very few people know me by my real name, so they just call me ‘coach’ and I answer to it.”
Kastner said he’ll PA announce at Phil Welch until he can’t go up the stairs to get to the press box, but even then, he says he might just ask owner Ky Turner to move the set up down to ground level.
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Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
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Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.