By Shawn McFarland, The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — There were two separate instances in the last five years in which Jared Sandler learned that his wife, Emily, miscarried within a half hour of a Texas Rangers game.
He was devastated each time. He used the slim window between then and first pitch to process what he could and collect himself as much as one possibly can under such circumstances. He informed those closest to him on the radio team.
Then he wired himself into the microphone.
“The Rangers have made it clear, in those situations, no one’s forced me to work,” Jared said. “I feel like it’s my responsibility to work and it provides a little bit of an escape.”
The escape — once as the club’s pre-and-postgame radio voice, then as a member of the station’s play-by-play rotation, now as Ranger Sports Network’s on-field host — is the culmination of a work of passion and relentless work ethic in an often unforgiving and arduous media career that’s spanned more than a decade.
He’ll call it a dream job.
Salvation, too, in the wake of unimaginable grief.
Jared and Emily have lost 10 potential children through miscarriages, unexpected health conditions, failed In Vitro Fertilization and multiple surrogacy efforts in the last half-decade. The highs of long-sought career milestones with his hometown franchise, the countless hours required to document it and the continued growth of a million-dollar charity geared toward the aid of children existed simultaneously.
The first loss was in May 2020, two months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and two months before baseball resumed. It ransacked the couple and sent both into a universe that they had “zero idea of what we were going to get into” Jared said. It preceded a period he considers the darkest of his life despite its arrival on the heels of a magnificent personal and professional accomplishment.
His duties as a broadcaster — and, more specifically, the people, players and fans he interacts with because of it — lifted him through the anguish. He was once reluctant to publicly discuss the fertility challenges that he and Emily have faced, but in an effort to “break down” the stigma behind it, he hopes his story can serve others.
It’s always been about the people.
“Emily and baseball saved me,” Sandler said. “Baseball and Emily both gave me purpose.”
‘He just helps everybody’
Jared and Emily were set up on a blind date by a rabbi in November 2015. Their first date was at Barley House. Their second was at the since-closed Victor Tangos. He invited her to his apartment for a drink afterward and poured a cocktail — the same one she ordered at their initial meetup — in a yellow Dickie’s Barbecue cup.
“I didn’t even remember what I ordered,” Emily, a Plano native, said. “So I was like, ‘Wow, that’s so thoughtful.’ Like, he really pays attention.”
The two married three years later. They planned to invite 350 people, but when they first collaborated on a guest list, Jared arrived with a directory of 300-plus that didn’t yet include his family or anyone on his fiancée’s side of the aisle.
“He makes friends with everyone,” Emily said. “I’m like, ‘Are they your friend? Or are they acquaintances?’ He’s like, ‘No, they’re my friend, I talk to them all the time.’ I’m like, ‘Jared, you talk to more people in a single day than I do in six months.’ That’s genuinely who he is.”
That, those who know Jared say, is an indelible trait. His family, friends and broadcast partners experience it on a daily basis. The baseball players he meets and works to build connections with — a group that ranges from reserved superstars like shortstop Corey Seager, veteran pitchers like Nathan Eovaldi or Andrew Heaney and newcomers like first baseman Jake Burger — have identified it as a uniqueness among his peers.
Seager was in the midst of his first full professional season in 2013 when he first met an eager and energetic minor league broadcaster. Jared Sandler — a Dallas native and lifelong Rangers fan — was in his second year with the Single-A Great Lakes Loons of the Los Angeles Dodgers organization.
“He wants to get to know you at a human level,” Seager said. “He wants to be able to tell your story during games. He wants to be able to talk about somebody on a personal level — not just the player, not what they’re doing — that goes a long way with a lot of people in the clubhouse because, for lack of a better word, you’re not just a prop out there. He wants to be able to express people’s stories and have their backs.”
Rangers television play-by-play broadcaster Dave Raymond met Jared nearly a decade ago, inside the media room at the club’s Surprise, Ariz., spring training complex, after a morning media availability with then-manager Jeff Banister. Raymond was in his first season with the club and was unable to discern one of Banister’s responses to a question. He asked Jared to fill him in.
He provided the answer. Then he offered more background information from conversations he’d previously had inside the clubhouse. Then he provided even further context behind the answer that Banister had given that those in the media sphere may be hesitant to offer even a peer.
“Frankly,” Raymond said, “I was still trying to make sense of who he was or what his role was. But I got the sense that he was on the broadcasting side and I was like, ‘This guy’s awesome, what a nice dude.’ From that point forward, he’s never changed. He just helps everybody.”
Jared was then the pre-and-postgame host at 103.5 The Fan. Raymond classified Sandler’s position — a major on-air role with the hometown team — as “borderline unheard of in the industry” because of the arduous job demands and the relative slim opportunities nationwide.
He had joined the station a year prior after completing the rigorous climb required for professional broadcasters. He served as the television voice of the Double-A Frisco Rough Riders and the G League’s Texas Legends. He was an on-air host at Dallas’ 103.3 FM ESPN. He spent two years with Michigan’s ESPN 100.9 FM where he broadcast Loons games and hosted the station’s afternoon sports talk show. He interned at SportsRadio 1310 The Ticket. He directed the student-led sports radio station at Southern California and worked at Los Angeles’ ESPN 710 station. He assisted former Rangers television broadcaster Josh Lewin in an unofficial capacity arranged by his high school basketball coach at Greenhill. He walked into USC baseball coach Chad Kruetuer’s office on his third day of college and left with a student manager gig.
“Man,” Jared’s older brother Jason said, “he accomplished more on his third day on campus than I did in four years at my college. He’s always been fearless to just find a path and just be around it somehow.”
Jason — the middle child of three Sandler brothers — was hardly surprised at the tenacity. He described his younger brother as an “energizer bunny” who, as a child, was given endless tasks and chores by his elder siblings and accomplished them sans complaint. He’d mimic the Dallas Mavericks broadcast crew when the brothers played sports video games and called the fictitious contests himself. He’d dial into Norm Hitzges’ radio program — as “a little kid,” Jason said — and shared his own encyclopedic knowledge of sports statistics.
He coupled the interest with an incessant and required work ethic. Jared, described as the consummate “grinder” by peers, is wired with a motor that doesn’t relent. He’s the first to arrive at the spring training facility’s media room — often hours before others — and carries identical habits into the regular season where he’ll nestle into the radio booth sometimes five hours prior to first pitch.
Raymond and color analyst Mike Bacsik sit opposite him on the team charter to and from games. His traditional setup includes his laptop, a “comically large” iPad hung from the seat in front of him and often an active phone call while he navigates the three devices.
“What’s that commercial with Patrick Mahomes and Little Troy Polamalu?” Raymond said. “Where he’s never not working? He is never not working. He is little Troy Polamalu.”
Jared would appreciate the reference to an alma mater legend. He’d still consider it the bare minimum requirement.
“I never want to lose sight of how a broadcaster can influence a fan’s experience,” Jared said. “It’s not because of me. I don’t ever want to lose sight of how important their passion is and I never want to give them anything less than what they deserve in that regard.”
The RSN venture started last season after the club parted ways with Bally Sports Southwest and opted to broadcast its games in house. Longtime field reporter Emily Jones met with the network’s brass last fall to discuss the changes and learned of Jared’s new title and duties.
“My very first response was ‘He is absolutely the perfect person to do what you’re wanting done in this role,’” Jones said. “You couldn’t find anyone better. He’s perfect.”
The mettle that Jared had shown to rise into his previous position in the first place is one reason. His aptitude to meticulously balance the job requirements and maintain a ceaseless devotion to peripheral occasions — like the daily broadcaster home run pick ‘em, or fantasy sports leagues, or gambling pools, or social outings (“You ever been in a text chain with him?” Jones asked playfully) — was another.
He operates at an on-field desk before games, often with former Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus, and helps analyze the affair in its aftermath. One day he’ll invite a member of the club’s staff or front office onto the broadcast to help explain an advanced baseball metric or strategy. The next he’ll dress up as a member of Globe Life Field’s mariachi band. Or as a Six-Shooter. Or as one of the Golden Chick “dots.” Or as a ball boy.
That doesn’t include his radio duties, the occasional television play-by-play fill-in opportunities, the extensive outreach he’s done on Twitter and TikTok to educate fans or the charity he founded and runs.
“We all joke that this guy really needs a kid,” Jones said. “He needs something that’s going to maybe take one of these things off of his plate. We joke with him and obviously love him for it.”
‘You could only have hope’
The Sandlers’ first pregnancy lasted nine weeks before Emily miscarried.
The fetus was diagnosed with two chromosomal abnormalities, and after further examination, Emily was diagnosed with the same. She has Robertsonian translocation — a form of chromosomal rearrangement that can increase the risk of miscarriage and infertility — and half of her eggs also have that abnormality.
The couple turned to IVF — a process in which eggs are fertilized by sperm in a laboratory — in January of 2021. The first attempted transfer was canceled. The second one didn’t take. The third resulted in a pregnancy that lasted just seven weeks. The fourth didn’t take, either, and the fifth was an attempt at twins and ended in a miscarriage after nine weeks.
One singular IVF cycle can cost anywhere between $12,000-$25,000 and sometimes scales higher. Sandler estimates that the couple has spent “well into six figures” on the endeavor. He picked up a side job in real estate investment to help fund the efforts.
“That job has allowed me to keep doing this dream,” he said of his media career, “and it’s also allowed us to kind of proceed without having [limited resources].”
They discussed adoption. Sandler had a “heart-to-heart” with former Rangers outfielder/current first base coach Travis Jankowski about it after his own experience with adoption. They tried surrogacy in 2023, but multiple transfers with one surrogate didn’t take either.
One miscarriage, Jared said, draws pity.
But “five years of this stuff,” he said, “we’re constantly a source of bad news.”
“Our first miscarriage, we got Tiff’s Treats and flowers and DoorDash gift cards,” Sandler said. “It got to a point a year later where we told people, ‘We don’t want it.’ I don’t want the attention, I want to be a dad. I don’t want the pity, I want to hold a baby.”
On Oct. 1, 2023, when the Rangers were in St. Petersburg, Fla., to begin the wild-card series against the Tampa Bay Rays, Emily called Jared to inform him that she’d become pregnant naturally.
The Rangers marched through the playoffs and won a World Series all while the pregnancy passed several key “miracle” checkpoints that the couple believed would allow them safe passage to parenthood. Emily Sandler described it as a “cloud nine” feeling while her husband both helped document and celebrate the franchise’s first-ever championship.
“The coolest part about the World Series run was that Emily was pregnant,” Sandler said. “You could only have hope.”
The baby was diagnosed with an unexpected heart condition at 14-and-a-half weeks in which it developed only two chambers instead of four. The couple was informed that the pregnancy either wouldn’t make it to full term or last long afterwards.
On Dec. 12, 2023, at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the couple lost Remi.
It was the first child that they were able to name.
“She was resilient and she was a miracle,” Emily said. “That’s how we came up with R-E-M-I.”
Sandler hugged his wife for what “felt like forever” after the procedure before she motioned for something in her pocket. She pulled out a piece of paper with Remi’s footprints upon her release.
“When she handed me that,” Jared said, “I collapsed.”
He wears a chain that signifies the nine babies that they had lost at the time of its creation. A pink stud symbolizes Remi and her footprints are on the back of it.
“I kiss this before I go on air,” Jared said. “Whenever I get nervous, or sad, or scared, I just find it and hold it. It’s the first time in this process that we had a baby so far along that we had a baby.”
Emily carries a small green placard with Remi’s footprints.
“I would put the card on my chest,” Emily said. “OK, she’s near me, and I would feel this whole body relief.”
‘It’s just getting up every day’
Sandler keeps a thorough daily schedule in the notes app on his phone. His wife jokes that it’s detailed down to the very minute and jam-packed in ways that, well, may draw comparisons to a cartoonish football player in a commercial that works endlessly.
That’s how Sandler is built.
That’s what made the winter of 2023 — and the early months of 2024 — a stark diversion from traditional habits.
“I was a zombie,” Emily said. “I didn’t leave my house. We were in bed all day, every day together. We didn’t do anything. I took off work just to process. I literally could not function. We couldn’t do anything. We were completely helpless.”
Said Jared: “I didn’t want to hang out with friends. I would change the channel if there was a baby. I would look miserable if the topic of a baby came up.”
He noted that it’s nearly impossible to avoid pregnancies, children and parenthood in any form of media that the two could’ve used to distract themselves. The real world doesn’t offer much of an escape either for Jared, 36, and Emily, 32, at this stage of their adult lives.
Mother’s Days became brutal in the five-year stretch that the couple endured. Father’s Days weren’t much easier. They became harder after losing Remi. Their friends began to raise children and, as Sandler described, “walked on eggshells.” They had to balance it, too, because the desire to be “Uncle Jared and Aunt Em” often interfered with the pain that a child’s birthday party created.
“We’re going to have kids someday in one way or another,” Emily told Jared, “and we’re going to want our friends to step up and celebrate our kids and be there for our kids. We need to do that for them now, and although it might be tough, we have to compartmentalize.”
Jared doesn’t remember the exact day or time period in which he felt like himself again. He knows that when baseball started “in earnest,” as in the regular season and the incessant grind that it brings a broadcaster, he recognized a semblance of normalcy.
“It just was impossible not to,” he said, “because, again, it’s the people.”
Socially, though, it was harder. Jared loves his birthday. It has little, if anything, to do with the self-importance or attention that the day brings. He relishes the opportunity to gather friends and family in one place, though, and the annual celebration offers the best chance to do so.
“What do you want to do?” Emily asked him in advance of his May 1 birthday, some five months after the couple lost Remi.
“Nothing,” he replied.
Emily organized something anyway, because she knew the benefit it would have. She navigated the same difficult path and welcomed the familiarity of those in their lives as her husband did. She was on a walk one day that summer with Madi Bradford, the wife of Rangers left-hander Cody Bradford, when a relatively common-for-the-time question was asked.
“How are you doing,” Bradford said, “with everything with Remi?”
Emily paused in her tracks.
“I don’t think you recognize how meaningful what you just said is,” she said. “Those small things — mentioning her by name — that meant the world to me. It was just little things like that. I’ll never forget that.”
She felt a “weight off of her shoulders” Dec. 12, 2024, on Remi’s first birthday. Jared said that his wife’s strength became his anchor.
“It reminded me that I need to fight for her,” Jared said. “I’ve learned this girl who I used to think — because she wasn’t an athlete and if I stepped on her toe you’d think it’s World War 7 — is kind of a baby, is one of the toughest people I’ve ever met.”
He stopped to collect himself.
“She’s my best friend,” he said. “I don’t think her strength is that she doesn’t ever get to those dark places. It’s just getting up every day.”
The two have done so together.
“I’m sure there’s days where it’s hard to get out of bed or to smile,” Jason said, “but you don’t really see that. They’ve opened up at times, and there have been some tears, but, you know, they’re way stronger than I could ever be or other people in our family would be through all the challenges they’ve had.”
‘It takes a special couple’
The Sept. 11 attacks — and the on-field unity that followed — opened Jared’s eyes to the influence that sports can have on society.
He remembers the support that Boston Red Sox supporters showed New York Yankees fans at the peak of their bitter rivalry, the waves of football teams that exited their tunnels with the American flag in tow and Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa’s famous home run trot.
Jared then believed he’d be a four-sport professional athlete who would one day be able to provide a similar service. That wasn’t necessarily in the cards. The impact was nonetheless.
“A broadcaster has a platform that the best accountant at Deloitte doesn’t have,” Jared said. “A part of what I love about sports is the way that sports can impact people. I wanted to use that platform and it’s worked out so wonderfully.”
He founded The Sandlot Children’s Charity eight years ago in an effort to provide adaptive and inclusive athletic opportunities to those with disabilities and expose them to the impact that sports can have. He was influenced by Hitzges’ Normathon and Nadel’s annual birthday benefit.
Jason, a member of the charity’s board of directors, remembers when his brother first approached him with the idea and said that he’d “like to take some of that little fame I have and try to do something good with it.”
The two initially expected it to be a “friends and family” caliber of organization that could give a few bucks back to the community. The non-profit has since grown well past that and, this spring, hired an executive director to help run the ship. Its signature fundraising event, “Swinging for a Cause,” is now held annually at Globe Life Field. The organization has raised more than $2 million since its inception.
“I don’t know if he could have like envisioned where it was going to go, like how successful it was going to be, but he’s done a fabulous job,” Emily, also a board of directors member, said. “And I think it again goes back to the fact that he puts his heart and soul into everything he does. The things he does, he does so passionately, and he creates trust with the people he has involved.”
People, the couple says, are also what urged them to speak publicly about their fertility challenges. Sandler started a multi-part video series in which he’s discussed what various steps and processes of IVF and surrogacy can look like.
“I don’t honestly know how they’ve handled it so well,” Seager said. “It takes a special person and it takes a special couple to navigate that.”
Emily has spoken about it on podcasts, shared her experiences on social media and fielded questions and inquiries from those in similar situations.
“I know, in my heart of hearts, that if someone can relate and feel less alone, then that’s worth one person’s judgement,” Emily said. “If that’s how you are able to connect with people, or feel less alone, then that’s amazing.”
On Oct. 1 — two years to the day since she called her husband at the start of the postseason to inform him of one pregnancy — Emily Sandler posted on Instagram that she was pregnant and due to give birth this spring. They initially expected to have twins, one naturally and one via surrogacy, before their surrogate miscarried.
Her caption read, in part, that “we’ve dreamed of what becoming parents would look like but all along God had a plan.”
That plan tested and pushed Jared and Emily in ways that the two could have never imagined.
That plan led them where they’d always hoped to be.
“When we first started May of 2020 I wanted to be a dad, I wanted to be a great broadcaster, I wanted to be a great husband,” Sandler said. “I definitely want all those things. I think it means something different to me today than it used to.”
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