Courtesy photo Nashua's Matt Neverett can't wait to resume his baseball broadcasting/video production career in Las Vegas once the global pandemic ends and activity resumes in Vegas.

It’s become almost a daily ritual for Nashua’s Matt Neverett, former Nashua Silver Knights/WSMN radio broadcaster.

He leaves his Las Vegas apartment, located about four or five blocks from the famed Vegas Strip, and takes a drive up and down the Strip.

Normally, it might take him a half hour with all the traffic and pedesterians, etc.

But he can do it now in a breeze. In the COVID-19 pandemic, that whole area is a virtual ghost town.

Empty.

“Pretty much every day, or every other day, I go out and take a drive, and go up and down the strip and see how dead it is,” said Neverett, who like many is waiting for professional baseball to resume so he can get knee deep into his new job with the Las Vegas Aviators, the Oakland Athletics’ Triple A team.

It’s a surreal sight.

“For sure,” Neverett said. “It’s funny, I lived here until I was 10, so I remember it when I was a little kid. And obviously it’s been a little bit different from when I was 10 years old.

“I said the same thing to my Dad, and he said he’d never seen it like that before and that I’d probably never ever see it like this again.”

Neverett knew that once the strip activity waned, things with the pandemic were getting to the critical stage.

“When the casinos shut down, that’s when I started taking it very, very seriously,” he said. “A lot of these magnates who run these casinos, they’ll stay open through an earthquake, they’ll stay open through a flood, but it takes a worldwide pandemic for them to close their doors.

“And it makes sense. Everything about a casino is touching something in some way, shape or form. And it’s surreal. There is nobody. You know it’s bad when they shut down those escalators that take you up to those bridges that bring you across the street. That’s when you know it’s bad.

“You just associate Vegas with hustle and bustle, and it’s just not there.”

Of course Neverett’s father is Nashua’s Tim Neverett, a Los Angeles Dodger broadcaster who was visiting him in Vegas when the pandemic alarm was sounded. Matt Neverett, who broadcast Silver Knights games in 2016, spent the last two seasons broadcasting and working for the Pittsburgh Pirates Class A affiliate in Bradenton, Fla.before he got hired by the Aviators, who wanted a change in their video production.

“It was the first year in their brand new ballpark out here last year,” Neverett said. “They weren’t really happy with the video board and how the video streaming element went last year. They wanted to bring in some people who had some more baseball experience, video streaming, video production as how an event is run live.

“I spent the last two years in Bradenton kind of running that show,so I kind of pitched them on that.”

Neverett met with the Aviators as far back as October, had been talking with them all winter along with another team in the Cubs system. He had opportunities to get other work in Vegas, “so I made the leap of faith.”

He’ll be working at the Triple A level, “which is something I definitley was cognizant of throughout the whole process, applying, etc. Skipping a level in any job in minor league baseball is kind of a big deal. Something I was mindful of. But I don’t think there’s a stage that’s too big in terms of being overwhelmed. I’m definitely fortunate in this specific setup to be in this ballpark (Las Vegas Ballpark) that led minor league baseball in attendance last year. It’s got the video board in the minor leagues. It’s better than a handful of big league ballparks and that will allow me to showcase a couple of things I’ve picked up in the last couple of years.”

He picked up some production work with famed broadcaster Brett Musberger’s VSiN’s Stats and Information Network, “and that was going really well. I was able to pick up as many hours a week as I wanted. They were doing 17 hours a day of live content. But since this has all happened and there’s no sports, they’ve cut it down to five or seven hours a day.”

Neverett wasn’t laid off, but basically furloughed and told he’d be brought back once things resume. He’s also had other freelance broadcasting work.

“I was really lucky,” he said. “The layoffs have been nuts, as (Vegas) is contributing to the rise in unemployment applications.”

Vegas is a spot where Neverett is comfortable, having spent some of his childhood there. “Absolutely, there was a lot of familiar sights, there were a lot of new sights,” he said. “That’s kind of the way it is out here – the more things stay the same, the more they change, however that experession goes. They’re always adding new stuff. It was really surreal, coming back, driving around, seeing stuff I recognized but hadn’t thought about in 20 years or so. It was really cool.”

Neverett hasn’t been let go by any of his various jobs but also isn’t getting paid. Fortunately for him, when he first got out to Vegas in February, “I worked my tail off, almost non-stop for nearly a month. I’m fortunate to where with the freelance element, those checks are still coming in, but it will reach a point here shortly when that’s not going to be the case anymore.”

Neverett is looking forward to the Aviators job, which will mostly be in production but also with a little bit of fill in broadcast work filling in for longtime team broadcaster Russ Langer.

When you think about it, Neverett should be in a Vegas that should be shining bright. The NFL Draft was scheduled to be held there late this month, which would have been a boom. Instead, it’s a bust.

Neverett says this could be the worst time ever for Vegas.

“It’s going to end up being worse than 2008,” he said. “It will probably end up being the biggest economic downturn in the history of this city, which is perfect tining for me, a month after I got here.”

To pass the time, Neverett is doing anything he can “to try to not go stir crazy.”

He’s been joining a couple of friends who do podcasting full time, and finding other things.

The casino shutdown was originally supposed to be until the middle of this month, but with the nationwide guidelines in place until April 30, the shutdown will certainly last through that time.

There’s not a shelter-in-place order there, Neverett said, but there may as well be.

“Just driving up and down the strip, not much going on,” he said. “The state by state thing with Nevada is so weird because it’s so big. There’s Vegas and Reno and then there’s not much going on the rest of the state. It’s kind of a unique location in that respect.”

Meanwhile, Vegas remains empty. All the hotels are closed as well.

“Not everybody got the ax right away,” Neverettl said, “and I haven’t seen any kind of concrete numbers on this, but there’s a chance that 40 percent of the population got laid off or are temporarily out of work in this town.”

And then he continued his drive to basically nowhere, passing by no one.

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