Roy Williams dadgum voice of UNC’s PitchCom devices

CHAPEL HILL — Whenever a North Carolina pitcher hears the call for the next pitch through the PitchCom devices, it’s the voice of a dadgum legend.

Before the season, Hall of Fame coach Roy Williams recorded the pitch calls that UNC pitching coach Bryant Gaines communicates to the pitcher by pressing buttons on the device.

“The whole team really liked it,” UNC sophomore right-handed ace Jason DeCaro said of the reaction when they heard the idea.

PitchCom is a wireless communication system. A catcher or coach — sophomore catcher Luke Stevenson sometimes does it — presses a button according to which pitch they want, and the pitcher has a receiver in his cap to hear the pitch called.

Last season, Gaines was the UNC’s PitchCom voice.

“It’s really odd to hear yourself talk to yourself for 150 pitches in a game,” Gaines said during Inside Carolina’s “This Week in UNC Baseball” podcast last week. “It’s just a little bit strange. I was like, ‘How can we make this cooler and it not just be me talking to myself.’ "

UNC coach Scott Forbes said they were always joking about who they wanted to be the team’s PitchCom voice and Gaines said they should ask Williams, a huge baseball fan who attended many NCAA tournament games last season.

Forbes immediately assumed that Williams would be happy to do it. At the First Pitch Banquet on Jan. 18, Forbes mentioned it to Williams, who was all in.

“He had Coach Gaines and [director of player and program development] Carter Hicks go meet him over in his office, and they knocked it out,” said Forbes, who hears a lot from Williams during games. “I keep a PitchCom, which I love, in my hat. So, every pitch is Coach Williams, which is really cool.”

The number of words or phrases that they recorded Williams saying may not have been as numerous as the number of plays he prepared for his Tar Heels teams, but it was a lot. They hear Williams not only call the pitch but the location.

“Every pitch that we can throw,” Forbes said. “Everything we can do, possibly — the bunt defenses, pitches, you name it. It is Hall of Fame coach Williams. It’s his voice on every one of them.”

Are there any dadgum curves?

“He might say something in there every now and then. We’ll keep that a secret,” Forbes said.