Max Gun was hoping someone would give him a shot.

They did and he’s had quite a summer, helping to describe the baseball exploits of the likes of Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig and left-handed pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu, among others.

Gun attended his first MLB Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tenn., in January, hoping to land a minor league play-by-play job and ended up with two offers.

He accepted an unpaid internship calling the middle innings, among other duties, for the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the High-A affiliate of the Dodgers on FOX Sports 1340 KTDD-AM.

This past week he passed his biggest test of the summer, calling three consecutive games on his own, along with handling a pregame and postgame show solo.

“I knew there was potential for more innings down the road if things worked out well, but I was never told I’d be doing full games alone,” Gun said. “Since I was on the road by myself, I had to do everything also. I had no color guy. I had to run the Twitter by myself, I had to write the postgame story by myself. It was a lot of work, but I had a blast.”

The voice of the Quakes, Mike Lindskog is in his 24th season calling minor league baseball games, the last six with Rancho Cucamonga. He’s in his 19th season calling games for Brett Sports & Entertainment Inc., which owns and operates minor league baseball franchises and other sports clubs in the U.S. and Canada.

Working under a veteran broadcaster was one of appealing aspects of the internship for Gun.

“I wanted to learn under somebody, especially (someone) as highly regarded as my broadcast partner, Mike Lindskog,” Gun said. “I wanted him to show me how to do it right, as opposed to being thrown into the fire and figuring it out myself.”

Gun’s other offer from the winter meetings was to handle play-by-play for the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, a short-season team in Keizer, Ore., that is affiliated with the San Francisco Giants.

Gun said that was appealing for a few reasons. He would have been the lone voice of the Volcanoes, and his girlfriend lives a couple hours away in Seattle.

“I did really strongly consider that position,” Gun said. “But after talking with everybody and learning about the different ownership groups and talking to people who had been at both places, it seemed like this was a better fit with all that combined. And 100%, without a doubt, I made the right decision.”

He would have called 72 short-season games for the Volcanoes. He’s calling 3-5 innings for 140 games with Rancho Cucamonga.

Gun had caught the radio bug while working for the student radio station at Bloomfield HIlls Andover in high school.

From there he bounced around metro Detroit with internships when he wasn’t taking classes in East Lansing. He interned at WTKA-AM 1050 and for Bernie Smilovitz at WDIV-TV. He was also a Student U announcer for the Big Ten Network.

Last summer he handled play-by-play duties for the Battle Creek Bombers, which plays in the 18-team Northwoods League. That’s a summer league for college baseball players based in the Midwest.

Gun worked 72 games over 76 days last summer.

So that was another reason the 140-game schedule that Rancho Cucamonga had was appealing to him. He wanted to see if he could handle the grind of a long baseball season.

“I still love baseball, I still love broadcasting,” he said. “I can’t wait to do it every day.”

There’s also another bonus to calling games for a Dodgers’ High-A affiliate that it is so close to Los Angeles. When the Dodgers need to make injury rehab assignments, they are often down the road to Rancho Cucamonga, rather than Triple-A Oklahoma City.

Gun got to call a home run by Puig, who has since been demoted to Triple-A, a few months ago. Gun also got to call the action for left-handed starting pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu during his multiple injury rehab with the Quakes.

Puig hit a home run in the third inning of his first rehab start at Loanmart Field in an 8-1 win over Lancaster on June 3. Although it wasn’t Gun’s normal inning to do call, Lindskog let him do the play-by-play of Puig’s at-bat.

Here was Gun’s call: “Now with two out, nobody on, here is Yasiel Puig. First pitch is lined to rightfield. This is deep. On the run is Bobby Boyd. He turns, looks up, that ball’s gone! Yasiel Puig goes yard at LoanMart Field, and it’s 3-1 Rancho in the third.”

Dan Dickerson, the radio voice of the Tigers, let Gun visit him before a game at Comerica Park last season, before Gun went off to call the games in the Northwoods League.

Dickerson showed Gun the research he does on starting pitchers before games and how he writes down all of that information on index cards so he can quickly refer to it.

Lori Anne Dickerson, a journalism professor at MSU and Dan’s wife, gave Gun a completed scoreboard her husband used during a game years ago. Gun still has the scorecard and the pitcher’s index card.

Dan Dickerson said any time he talks to students he tells them to be passionate about whatever profession they plan to pursue.

“You try to pass along some knowledge that others passed along to you,” Dan Dickerson said. “Help them any way that you can. These are talented, bright kids, and you just hope that something you say might stick.”

Dickerson recalled a conversation during his first spring training with legendary announcer Ernie Harwell.

“I didn’t know what a long season was like,” Dickerson said. “I didn’t know if I’d like baseball at the end of 162 games.

“First day of spring training, I’m wondering ‘How is this going to go? What’s this going to be like?’ On the backfields of Joker Marchant, I can remember he said: ‘Hey, just remember, get what’s in front of you right. Everything else is style.’ ”

That stuck with Dickerson.

“Does your listener have a clear understanding of what just happened,” Dickerson said. “That’s your No. 1 job.”

The Tigers had traded for Juan Gonzalez in November 1999 but finished 79-83 in 2000, when Dickerson was calling the middle innings and Harwell handling the rest.

Dickerson remembered talking to Harwell early in that season, after the team got off to a 9-23 start.

Dickerson asked Harwell how he dealt with calling games when the team wasn’t good.

Dickerson said Harwell told him to remember that someone’s always listening and to give them a reason to listen to that game.

“That’s why I’ve always loved baseball,” Dickerson said. “Each game stands on its own.”

Those are the things Dickerson tries to pass off to budding broadcasters he meets such as Gun.

Gun knows he’s trying to make it in a very tough field. Only a handful of players on the Quakes will end up reaching the big leagues. And Gun knows the odds are long for him to reach the big leagues doing play-by-play.

That’s why he feels lucky to have received firsthand advice from a couple of MLB broadcasters.

Joe Block, who is in his first season as the radio voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates, has helped Gun a lot over the past three years.

Block, from Roseville, graduated from MSU in 1999. Block handled play-by-play duties for several teams in the minors before spending the past three seasons doing play-by-play for the Brewers. He was then hired by the Pirates.

Gun said he met Block during a journalism alumni workshop during his sophomore year at MSU and kept in touch with him over the years.

“Any time I’ve ever accepted an internship or job since then, I’ve always run it by Joe,” Gun said. “And he’s been very helpful and very hands-on in my progression in this field.”

Gun said every year Block will critique his work.

“He was obviously in the minors for a good number of years,” Gun said. “So he’s definitely a great guy to bounce things off.

“And the great thing about him is he’s so accessible. He’s so willing to help. Every time I thank him he just says ‘Max, the more likely I am to help you, the more likely you are to help somebody one day when you’re in my shoes.’ That’s really cool.”