It was his first Opening Day on Royals radio — and his partner’s 55th: ‘Just amazing’

Jake Eisenberg says he’ll take a lot of memories from his first Opening Day as a Royals broadcaster.

That includes the pregame introductions that nearly had him choked up — when it fully sank in that he was about to call an MLB game at Kauffman Stadium in front of a sold-out crowd while sitting next to Hall of Fame broadcaster Denny Matthews.

“It was an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for this chance, and it was pretty powerful — pretty powerful,” Eisenberg said following the Twins’ 2-0 victory over the Royals on Thursday. “I won’t forget today. I won’t forget that moment hopefully for as long as I live.”

Eisenberg, previously a play-by-play announcer for the Royals’ Triple-A team in Omaha, joined the Royals broadcasting booth this season following Steve Physioc’s retirement.

The 28-year-old Eisenberg made sure to document Thursday’s occasion with plenty of pictures. That included a pregame photo with Matthews, who turned 80 in November; on Eisenberg’s opening-game debut, Matthews was commemorating his 55th consecutive Opening Day with the Royals.

“I just think it’s a really special thing that our broadcast booth has, that you don’t really see anywhere else in baseball. We talk about baseball so much as a generational game, and we literally have that in our broadcast,” Eisenberg said. “We’re technically two generations removed from one another, but we’re watching the same game. We’re talking about the same game, and we might view it through slightly different lenses because of our experiences, but we’re sharing it with this fan base together.”

In the end, Eisenberg said he thought the day’s broadcast went well. He expressed sitting next to Matthews was “just amazing” and described his first Opening Day experience as “incredible.”

“We had a good time. Obviously, if the result had been better, we probably would have had a little bit more fun,” Eisenberg said. “So hopefully some fun moments to come.”

Before Thursday, Eisenberg said he calmed some of his nerves thanks to a discussion with a current Royals player.

Eisenberg spoke with Royals second baseman Michael Massey on Wednesday about what he was expecting heading into his first MLB Opening Day. Massey told him last season he mostly stopped setting expectations because he believed they could be limiting; once you reach goals, Massey said, you can tend to ease up or not continue as diligently for improvement.

Massey, Eisenberg recalled, said that he would take Opening Day as it came while attempting to thrive with the unknown of what it would bring.

“I kind of stole that,” Eisenberg said, “and stopped myself from trying to expect how I might feel or when it might hit, when I might be nervous or what I might say, and just kind of let it wash over me and soak it all in. And take moments throughout the day to just breathe and look around and embrace everything that’s going on.”

Eisenberg had two fill-in broadcasts with the Royals last season; he was elevated to help with games on May 3-4, which coincided with MJ Melendez’s major-league debut and Bobby Witt Jr.’s first MLB home run.

A Port Washington, New York native, Eisenberg also will join some Royals TV broadcasts this summer.

As for Game 1 ... Eisenberg said that Matthews retold him a story Thursday about his first Royals engineer, who often said the same thing after radio calls: “Good work. Keep doing it.”

Eisenberg said that was Matthews’ message to him following Thursday’s season opener.

“And,” Eisenberg said with a smile, “I’ll take that.”