It was a hurried zigzag of a trip for Matt Devlin, but the three-city run he made a couple of weeks ago says a lot about him.

He woke up July 12 in Las Vegas, where he was calling Summer League games for NBA-TV, but hustled back to Toronto to emcee DeMar DeRozan’s contract signing. That job done, he took off for Oakland later that night, switching gears from basketball — he’s been the play-by-play voice of the Toronto Raptors since 2008 — to baseball and a two-week, 11-game stint as the voice of the Toronto Blue Jays.

This marks the fourth year in a row that Devlin has helped give Buck Martinez, the Jays’ regular play-by-play man, some time off after baseball’s all-star break. Going from basketball to baseball is a big change of pace, but it’s part of what’s made Devlin’s 26-year career so successful. He juggles the Raptors’ full schedule with the Jays in the summer and college football in the States, starting in September.

He has also called NFL games for Fox and men’s and women’s NCAA basketball, he has worked two Olympics (voicing wrestling and synchronized diving) and he did 6 1/2 years of minor-league baseball. In 2012, Devlin worked a few CFL games when Bell had sent many of its employees to London for the Olympics.

“(A person like Devlin is) kind of like the utility infielder,” said Rob Corte, vice-president of Sportsnet and NHL production. “They do a great job at any position, and Matt certainly fits in that category.

“There are certainly some others in the industry as well, like a Rob Faulds at Sportsnet or a Vic Rauter at TSN who can call a variety of different sports and do it very, very well.”

“It’s not easy to immerse yourself into one thing, then immerse yourself into another thing and then go right into another. That, to me, is the most challenging part of it,” Devlin said. “But you try to find a comfort level and do the best that you can do. The opportunity to do it is pretty cool.

“The pace and the rhythm are so different. Basketball, you’re following that basketball constantly and there is a rhythm to it; it’s a quicker pace,” he said. “Baseball — ultimately it’s like sitting around with a buddy talking about the game. Then once something happens you need to be on top of it.”

At the start of his career in the early 1990s, Devlin watched an interview with two broadcasting giants, as Bob Costas spoke with Vin Scully. They both agreed that a great broadcaster needs to work baseball games to learn how to handle time and storytelling.

“That led me into calling minor-league baseball, which also led me into calling high school football and basketball and college football and basketball,” Devlin said.

His minor-league days and his 20s were spent much like a minor-league player. He rode buses to games, built relationships with other broadcasters and spent off-days at ballparks, sitting in the broadcast booths as a guest, listening and learning. He met Tom Cheek, the original voice of the Jays, and Sportsnet 590’s Jerry Howarth in 1993.

“Tom and Jerry were both so nice to me and so welcoming to a Single-A baseball announcer at the time, and really shared a lot of great anecdotes with me about what exactly I could do to get better,” Devlin said. They were among many people he said helped him develop as a broadcaster.

“I sent Jerry a cassette tape of mine for him to listen to, and I still have the letter that he wrote back with his critique,” he said.

Corte said that bringing Devlin into the Jays broadcast is always a seamless transition.

“He fits in right away and there’s not a big adjustment for the viewer or the listener,” he said. “He comes in and doesn’t try to take over. He blends in.

“It’s not just in front of the camera. It’s behind the camera with the crew. There’s really no rocking of the boat when he comes in — not for the viewer and certainly not for our broadcast team.”

Having lived in Toronto with his wife Erin and their three sons — Jack, 17, Ian, 14, and Luke, 12 — for almost a decade now, there’s one broadcasting hurdle that Devlin says he’d love to take on.

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“I’d like to try hockey,” he said. “I’ve done pre and post (game) for it, but in order to do that I think . . . I wouldn’t want to go right in and do an NHL game. I’d want to spend a little bit of time doing games just to get comfortable, whether it be college or AHL or something like that.”

Is it possible?

“Here’s the thing,” Corte said. “I have the utmost confidence in Matt, and I think I could put him on any sport and he’d do well.”