SLO County broadcaster will be voice of Women’s Baseball World Cup
Longtime local sports broadcaster C.J. Silas will be on the mic at a global women’s baseball event this summer — expanding on her commitment to helping grow a sport that she’d long dreamed would develop and thrive. Silas, host and executive producer of ESPN 1280 Radio’s The CJ Silas Show and Cal Poly baseball’s public address announcer, will serve as the public address announcer and emcee this summer’s Women’s Baseball World Cup Group Stage in Rockford, Illinois, set to take place July 22-26.
Twelve nations will be split into two groups for this summer’s group stage, with the top six advancing to the World Baseball Softball Confederation Women’s Baseball World Cup Finals in July 2027, including elite teams from the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, Chinese Taipei, Venezuela, Mexico and Cuba.
Silas also has signed on to serve with the Women’s Baseball World Cup at the finals in 2027, likewise to be held in the Illinois city that was home to the historic Rockford Peaches, an iconic team that played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1943 to 1954. The Peaches were featured in the 1992 feature film “A League of Their Own,” starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell and Madonna.
“I’ll be doing the stadium public address announcing like I do (at Cal Poly baseball games), but I’ll also be moderating press conferences,” Silas said. “I will be hosting dinners and clinics, whatever they need. I’ll be the voice of the World Cup here in the United States. ... It’s like a dream come true.”
Silas will continue her Cal Poly role and ESPN 1280 Radio broadcasting around her work for the women’s baseball events.
The Women’s Baseball World Cup was launched in 2004, and nine tournament events have been held in its history. The U.S. has won the event twice, with Japan winning seven times.
As a longtime advocate of the sport, Silas said she’s eager to play a role in the advancement of women’s baseball.
Silas served as an announcer last summer during the tryouts of the new Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL), which is set to debut in August. Four teams currently make up the league (San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston), with 30 games to be played in Springfield, Illinois, in the first year, and plans to establish field locations in the teams’ cities in coming years.
“I didn’t think that there would be (U.S.) women’s pro baseball while I was alive,” Silas said. “I had no idea. Of course, it would have been amazing, and I was hopeful, but we didn’t even see it coming. And then when it showed up, because of (league co-founders) Justine Siegel and Keith Stein. It blew my mind, because I get to be alive to see it, and not only alive to see it, but be young enough to be a part of it and be there from the very beginning.”
During her time in Washington, D.C., as last summer’s WPBL tryouts in August, Silas broadcasted events featuring some of the biggest stars in women’s baseball, including Mo’ne Davis, Kelsie Whitmore and Ayami Sato.
Silas also established connections with the WPBL leadership, which helped her land her role for the upcoming World Cup events.
“A lot of the women that will be in the World Cup, I’ve either already seen at the tryouts, because we had players from 10 countries represented there, or I’ve met them through the draft or on social media,” Silas said. “The name pronunciations are going to be a challenge, because there are players from so many countries, but I’m already ahead of the game because now I’ve infiltrated myself, and they’ve welcomed me.”
Silas, who’s in her 24th year as the Cal Poly baseball public address announcer, said she’s proud to represent women in sports media after a long career that admittedly has been challenging at times.
Reflecting on her journey, Silas recalls once not being admitted into men’s locker rooms, having to wait in hallways to speak with athletes, and generally feeling a lack of respect for her sports knowledge from men in the business.
“I would say a lot of the challenging parts are behind me, because I have a different attitude when some moments become challenging,” Silas said. “But also because I’ve been doing this for so long, I stand up for myself more than I used to, because I have interns on my radio show at ESPN that are looking at me as a model. And I want them to see that women do deserve the jobs, are credible, know enough about sports, are intelligent enough and should be allowed to be in sports.”
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Silas has served in fill-in announcer roles at live Major League Baseball games for the San Francisco Giants and Miami Marlins, and auditioned with the Chicago Cubs, Atlanta Braves and Tampa Bay Rays.
She still will apply to full-time roles with Major League Baseball teams for public address announcer roles. But she said she’s thrilled to be representing women’s baseball events, and will prioritize her commitment to serving those events. The World Cup role has helped her not have to work in the restaurant industry to make ends meet.
Silas, who has long juggled multiple jobs, said her current sports media roles have allowed her more time to focus on her broadcasting career.
“I feel very lucky, and I’m grateful,” Silas said. “I have never made the kind of money of someone who has been in the business as long as I have makes, because my jobs are seasonal. And I have been dealing with pay disparity for my entire career. I would say I’m grateful, I’m proud. But I would like to not be a bartender or a waitress at this time in my life if I didn’t have to be. So this year, this year, could be it. I’ve gone two whole months without a restaurant job.”
Working in sports media, she enjoys many sports, but Silas said that she has long held a passion for baseball as a former Little League player herself.
And Silas has been around baseball the most of any in her various roles. She has watched generations of Mustangs thrive at Cal Poly and go on to professional baseball careers, including Brooks Lee, Bud Norris, Drew Thorpe and many others.
Currently, she has a large group of mostly female interns for whom she serves a mentor, and will carry on representation in the media industry as women’s baseball and other women’s sports grow.
“I never would have thought in my life that I would get to a point in my career there where I would be important to young people, because I didn’t have kids,” Silas said. “(The C.J. Silas Show) will turn 14 years old on March 31, and I started with one intern. As the last 14 years have evolved, the intern team has gone up to six. I think right now we have 10. And now, when I walk around the planet doing my work, I always have in my mind, ‘What will the interns think? How will this affect the interns? How do I want to represent myself in front of the interns?”
Silas added: “I have to show the young people that are leaving college to go into this business what the behavior should be and the treatment of them as professionals out in the world of sports journalism, because we’ve had enough.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
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