Feeling Cranky
Posted: October 8th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 151 Comments »
I don’t know if I am getting crankier in my old age … check that, I do know. I am getting crankier. I know this because I have spent way too much time the last couple of days barking at the television set. That’s not healthy. Chip Caray cannot hear me. Dick Stockton cannot hear me. Bob Brenly cannot hear me. I know this is true, and I know that if they could hear me I would not be yelling these things in the first place because it’s not polite.
And also, I have a healthy respect for broadcasting — I am not speaking of anyone personally, but the whole genre of sports announcing. Before I wanted to be a sportswriter, I wanted to be a baseball play-by-play announcer. I would sit in front of our 13-inch television with a tape recorder and I would try to call games. It’s impossible to give yourself a fair scouting report, but my self-scouting report would go like so:
1. Voice is so awful and grating, it could inspire listeners to kill entire villages.
2. Utterly incapable of putting coherent sentences together — after several innings of my mumbling radio call the listener would probably have only a vague idea of what sport was going on, if it was a sport at all. A listener could be excused after listening to four innings of me calling, say, an Atlanta-Cincinnati game, if he or she thought it was actually a recreation of the Kennedy assassination.
3. Better suited for manual labor.
And I truly hope this does not come off as excessively immodest. I was really a whole lot worse than all that. So I do have a lot of natural appreciation for anyone who can sit in front of a microphone and a sporting event and add any insight at all. I even appreciate a decent effort.
But the last couple of days, I have not been able to help myself. I have turned into the two old Muppets in the balcony. I’m constantly shouting wisecracks at the TV. I hear Bob Brenly jabber about how what makes Tony La Russa so unique is that he likes to have a good No. 2 hitter and he will not have Albert Pujols or Matt Holliday bunt, and I shout. I listen to Chip Caray jabber endlessly about something that has no bearing on anything in the world while not actually telling me if in the infield is in, and I shout.* I listen to Dick Stockton say again and again and again and again how this game sets up perfectly for Joe Torre, because apparently no other manager in the game, now or ever, has the mental dexterity to handle a 5-2 lead in the seventh inning. And I shout. I hear all of them use terms like “off-speed pitch” and “breaking ball” for anything that doesn’t look like a fastball and I shout. Is it too much to ask for men charged with calling the playoff action for all of North America to call a slider a slider, a curveball a curveball, a change-up a change-up?
*I know that Chip Caray has taken a lot of heat for his now infamous “Line drive base hit” call on Nick Punto’s 10th inning lineout in the one-game playoff against Detroit, but to me that was just a mistake — yes, a mistake of unawareness (the outfielder was playing in because of the situation and because it was Nick Punto hitting) but only a mistake. I have found his inning-by-inning work to be much more difficult to endure.
I have become such a crank. I mean, why should I be bothered by the constant and inane references to people like Mark DeRosa and Nick Punto as “ballplayers” who “live for the game” and “do all the little things that help a team win?” I should just let it go. They ARE ballplayers, after all. I’m sure they DO live for the game. But it is like fingernails on the blackboard of my soul. When DeRosa threw the ball 25 feet over the head of the second baseman — apparently something that ballplayers who live for the game will do from time to time — I heard Bob Brenly say that it was shocking because DeRosa is “one of the most accurate infield throwers in baseball.” Is this true? How would you measure that? Have they had one of those skills competitions? I have no idea if this is true. More to the point, I suspect Bob Brenly has no idea if it’s true. It’s just something you say about players like Mark DeRosa.
But really … what difference does it make? Serenity now! I’m sitting here in a hotel room in San Diego — I’ll explain that one later — and it’s beautiful outside, the sun is coming in over the palm trees, and there’s no reason to be an old grump. It’s baseball! It’s sports! It’s fun!
No. It’s not working. I suppose more than anything any announcer has said I’m still feeling grumpy about a Trey Hillman quote that appeared in my friend Ken Davidoff’s story in Newsday the other day.
The quote:
“It’s challenging because most of the time, our local media and even our fan base, they don’t want to hear about the process. They don’t want to be educated on the process. But it is a process. … People don’t want to take the time to learn, because we’re not bred that way, culturally. It was an easier sell in the other culture, in Japan, because they’re very used to processes. And they don’t care how long it takes, as long as you get it set to last.”
A few years ago, I wrote a column mocking a quote by Royals manager Tony Muser — it was the one where he said that too many players on the Royals were milk-drinkers. He thought the Royals needed a bit more of a tequila-drinking personality. It was out there, yes. But compared to this quote, that was Hamlet and King Lear rolled together.
The Kansas City Royals lost 97 games this year … a year they expected to contend in the easily-contendable American League Central. It was only a late run that prevented them from losing 100. They had the worst defensive team in baseball. They had the worst base-running team in baseball. They finished 13th in the American League in walks drawn, and last in the American Leagues in walks allowed. They were blown out 41 times — losses of five runs or more — more than any team this decade INCLUDING the incomparable 2003 Tigers. They were also a putrid 16-25 in one-run games — only the Pittsburgh Pirates were worse. They spent a lot of time explaining why numbers are bad and Yuniesky Betancourt is good. They did their level best to blow out the arm of $55-million pitcher Gil Meche before he finally found sanctuary on the DL in late August. Hillman himself seemed so confused by how to use Joakim Soria that at some point you could actually see question marks floating over his head like in the comics. Two innings? One inning? No, two innings! Only now he needs three days rest. Maybe one inning? Hold on. What’s the question again?
And Jose Guillen announced that he sucked.
Now, if there’s a process in there … yes, I do need to be educated. And I do want to hear. I think I speak for many when I say that despite our breeding, culturally, we do want to learn. Please don’t hold our American upbringing against us. Teach us. Enlighten us. Bring us shelter from the storm.
I know that it is hard to be part of a losing team … especially when you expected better. Disappointment infuses everything. It’s like when you are trying to fix something — say you’re assembling a grill using the 700-page instruction book — and you work on it and work on it and can’t quite get it fixed, and then someone says, “Man, I’m hungry, is it ready yet?” And you want to shout (maybe you do shout) “No, it’s not ready yet! I know you’re hungry! I’m working on it OK? This is complicated, OK? You don’t know. You can’t understand how hard this is to fix. You haven’t tried to read this manual. It’s impossible! There are like a million steps, and this thing isn’t even English I don’t think, and this screw doesn’t fit anywhere, and I’m almost 100 percent sure that I’m missing a piece for the starter, and I think I put that on backward, and it’s a process, you jerk, a total process, and you can’t understand the process, you can’t understand how hard it is to do this. You want, like, instant results, we live in such an impatient society, everybody wants their food NOW, but I’m doing the best I can and I’ll get it fixed and I’ll let you know when it’s done, OK???.”
And by saying all that you are really saying something else. You are saying: “I really have no idea what I’m doing.”
* * *
Addendum: Here is a good piece about the frustration of being a Royals fan in the Time of Trey And Dayton from the excellent Royals Review (via Think Factory).
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Amen brother!
I expected a “Mr. Wilson” riff in there somewhere
Maybe the process is trying to accumulate #1 picks like Tampa Bay did.
Yeah, I agree. It’s been brutal.
The in-game interview last night of Gardenhire was really the icing on the cake.
Q: So how about that Joe Mauer? Great player, eh?
and
Q: So what do you have to do to beat the Yankees?
(Loved Gardenhire’s answer to this one: “have more runs at the end of the ninth inning”)
“And by saying all that you are really saying something else. You are saying: “I really have no idea what I’m doing.””
Good point (ok, the article is good). But something I want to point out about his quote is his reference to Japan. Japan is (obviously) much different culturally than America. Way more deferential to “authority” figures, whether they be political figures, bosses (as in boss at work), or baseball managers. America is the home of the rebels & wanna-be rebels, “challenge authority”, “dissent is patriotic”, etc etc – so his comment about “processes” and them being more used to “processes” in Japan does not ring true, because when comparing the cultures, it’s about plenty of other things on a list before you get to “processes”…
My family has gotten to where they roll their eyes when I try to explain how god-awful is. How even Denny Matthews isn’t as good as he used to be, and that Bob Costas should be allowed to work for any network if there’s an important baseball game.
Similarly, they simply nod in understanding when I rant about the stupid moves Hillman makes and the condescending attitude he takes trying to rationalize them.
It’s amazing, Joe. You’re like the eloquent version of me.
I can’t listen to most announcers in most sports. They just say stuff*, as if it is true. Most of them don’t seem to be bothered with researching the teams they are covering at all. Many of them don’t describe anything that is happening on the field in any way that is insightful at all. The state of announcing in this country is generally awful.
*The Twins do the little things right – that might have been true 5 years ago, but even Seth Stohs and Howard Sinker have been saying for two years they don’t anymore.
*What a great play by ARod – really? He didn’t even have to dive.
*I love how TBS shows the pitch trek and says how great the ump is doing when it agrees with him, but never says anything when it doesn’t.
*Frankly, I’d give more examples, but I spent most of the last two days with the tv on mute….
First line should read “My family has gotten to where they roll their eyes when I try to explain how god-awful {insert pretty much any announcer here} is.”
Stupid HTML–removing my bracketed text…
I’ve always thought it would be funny to have some characters at the bottom of a game making wisecracks at the announcers ala Mystery Science Theatre.
Like the game would be on ESPN but you could do the other version on espn2. I know which one I would watch.
So funny I nearly choked on my Jimmy Dean pork sausage laughing. In abject frustration is much humor. Why anyone would actually pay to see a Royals game under the current regime is beyond my comprehension. Hillman just dissed the whole fan base. I’ve followed baseball religiously since 1959, and he is THE WORST skipper I’ve ever had the displeasure to follow. And Dayton Moore couldn’t sell water to a parched land, because even thirsty people have their pride.
Circle me, Statler and Waldorf…
Someone quipped in a TBS game “this isn’t the red sox/yankees but its a pretty good game.”
ARE YOU F’N KIDDING ME?
Carey’s call of Jeter’s homer last night is one of the most annoying, grating things I’ve ever heard. And I’m a Yankees fan. Way to ruin a good moment, Chip.
The one that bothered me last night was Caray breathlessly saying that Phil Hughes “has passed his first test!”
Hughes of course already has a post-season win to his credit, a must-win DS game against Cleveland two years ago. So not being aware of that is kinda bad, but what made it so annoying was that the 2007 game was ON TBS and was called by Chip Caray!!
I generally hate it when people nit-pick announcers – I’m in a small minority of people who never liked FJM because the Statler and Waldorf routine is frankly pretty cheap and easy – but Chip Caray is so atrocious that you seriously wonder if David Levy, who runs Turner Sports, watches the games.
Wait, wait… I’m confused…
Is Gil Meche a milk-drinker?
As far as Brenly’s comment on Derosa, keep in mind Derosa was a Cub for two years and Brenly was the announcer for every single one of those games. He has seen a lot of Derosa.
Chip Caray is horrendous, but not nearly as bad as Stockton was last year.
I just have one thing to say with regard to bad sports announcers:
Bob Davis
In game 163, I nearly threw my Diet Mountain Dew at the TV when the announcers were calling any pitch thrown by Fernando Rodney that was under 90 mph a “breaking ball.” Seriously? Do they not know that Rodney’s best pitch is his change-up? And that change-ups do have a tendency to drop (or “break”) at the end? Garrr, Steve…garr.
Stockton isn’t good but at least he was OK once. Chip isn’t good and never was and never will be.
About The Process … have Hillman or any of the other Royals’ “baseball people” ever talked about The Process or tried to educate the unwashed about it?
I’m a Tang drinker…but that’s just me.
It’s not that the local fan base or media doesn’t want to be educated on the process, it’s just that we collectively have no clue what the “process” entails.
By “process” does Hillman mean that the Royals need to continue the “process” of stockpiling of a bunch of No 1. Pick’s that appear to be underachievers or busts. Does trading for OBP percentage giants (facetious) like Mike Jacobs represent part of the “process?” How about signing clubhouse cancer like Guillen – is that part of the “process.” Trading some decent middle relievers for little in return, is that part of the ”process?” Sitting through game after game, night after night, watching an incompetent manager make one poor decision after another – part of the “process?” I could go on and on about what appears to be the Royals “process.”
I just wish the Dayton Moore would come out and clearly state what constitutes the “process.” Of course, before you initiate a “process” you have to have a “plan” and the Royals don’t seem to have one.
To #13: Thank you! You would have thought from his call that Jeter had blasted the ball out of Yankee Stadium. Umm, Chip, the ball went five rows deep behind a shallow fence. Relax. And of course that was followed by an entire inning spent in praise of the greatest ballplayer – nay, the greatest mortal to have ever walked the planet.
Of course compare and contrast to Scully, as someone on the previous post pointed out. Man, I miss him doing the national games.
My wife thought it was funny how annoyed i was getting last night with the announcers.
I don’t know how many times i heard Caray (i think) say “Strike – right down the middle” when it was cleary borderline. I think Martinez had to chime in a few times with the old “It started out over the middle, tailed and just caught the edge”. Plus no real mention of some of the iffy calls. Ugh.
What’s really amazing about Chip Caray’s “line drive base hit call” from the tiebreaker game is that he almost did the EXACT SAME THING in yesterday’s Yankee-Twins game. Only as he was midway through “base” he cut himself off because the ball was caught.
I’ve never heard another announcer so consistently wrong about the trajectory of the ball. The only comparison I can make is Tom Seaver who, on the rare occasion he had to do actual play-by-play instead of simply doing analysis, would say things like “Fly ball, let’s see where this one goes.”
But at least he didn’t make blatantly wrong calls.
After a bitterly disappointing Cub season, the one thing that the playoffs promised was sweet relief from Bob Brenly’s inane ramblings. I forgot about TBS’ cruelty.
Joe, its because you’ve been enlightened, you can’t stand hearing the mindless drivel anymore – and in the back of your mind, you’re thinking “There has got to be someone out there who could call this game and actually teach me something, entertain me, enlighten me, without resorting to cliche after cliche.”
Problem is, the broadcasters and producers would tell you, they aren’t calling the game for you – they are calling it for the folks who think batting average is the way to evaluate players. I think that’s a load of bunk, but what do I know?
In the 10th innings of the Twins-Tigers game, Caray said that he was ready to stay up late to watch the end of this one. It was, like, 9:30 in the east.
In fairness to Bob Brenly, he broadcasted Mark Derosa’s two seasons with the Cubs so I wouldn’t put it past him to know about his throwing accuracy. I like Brenly. I thought he was annoying when he did Fox national games a long time ago but listening him do Cubs games, I was shocked to learn how funny and kooky he is. And he can be insightful too.
I agree with all your other media points.
Chip Caray has to be the worst, clueless about the game, annoying voice and only honks out cliches and stock phrases.
Dick Stockton was perfectly adequate during the regular year.
Actually, I think this column and comments point to an obvious solution: TBS shouldn’t be allowed to do MLB postseason games.
Play calling is second-rate and production values have been high-school level so far: couldn’t get the mic to work during post-game interview yesterday with Cliff Lee and last night’s technical difficulties in the Dodgers v. Cardinals game make things difficult to watch.
Give the early games back to ESPN.
Announcing has really gone down hill. Evan Costas is a shell of himself these days. I am a BIG Derek Jeter fan, but the endless praise heaped on him embarrasses even me. The same for Mariano Rivera. And all this crap about the way the Twins play baseball…uhh…did they win 90 games? Three really glaring things about the game: 1. They never showed Gardenhire going to the mound to get Duensing. They were too busy showing the Yankee dugout so we have no idea what Gardenhire was so mad about with his pitcher. 2. Once it was seen that Gardenhire was upset at his pitcher, no follow up was done to tell us why. It was one of those little details that would have been very interesting and instructive. 3. The home plate umpire had a terrible night calling balls and strikes. He was just awful. And yet it was heard that there have been no complaints about the home plate umpire. He’s called a great game. Wrong. Darling is passable, but I agree about Carey. He’s a far cry from the greatness of our baseball past.
I didn’t bother turning on the TV to see any games yesterday, even as I followed online and on the radio a little. Now I know why my mind was resisting. Chip Caray. Buck Martinez. Dick Stockton. Ugh. I still can remember being apoplectic last year when Caray dissed “Moneyball” and sniffed that the Red Sox may work counts but they aren’t up there trying to walk.
Baseball Process:
http://loop1.aiga.org/documents/edition001/teachinginteraction/bbflchrte1.pdf
Players announcers love: smallish white guys with average to abysmal OBP.
See: Rowand, Aaron. Eckstein, David.
There is latent racism in a lot of baseball euphemisms, and a majority of the time its using terms like “scrappiness” to justify the paychecks of below replacement level white players. And I hate the race card, but baseball has been taking steps backwards in the race department for the past few years.
I really don’t think Darling’s half bad.
Caray’s unique. Other than Joe Buck (not coincidentally, another man hired solely on family connections and not talent. But it’s affirmative action that’s killing America. But I digress), most of the announcers that people hate (McCarver, Morgan, Sutcliffe, Steve Phillips, Rob Dibble) are color commentators.
It takes really skill to stink at play-by-play.
Jim Palmer still does Orioles games. He’s pretty good. Not great. Good.
Yesterday, I had to run an errand in the middle of the afternoon. I turned on my XM Radio, eager to catch a bit of the Phillies-Rox game.
Only then did I realize the horror – the ESPN play by play announcer for the game was…Chris Berman.
During the entire time I was listening, Berman never once referred to a specific type of pitch, “off speed” or otherwise. As you can imagine, this is particularly annoying on a RADIO broadcast where the consumer doesn’t have the benefit of supplementing the call with their own eyes.
When the Rox doubled in their one run of the game in the ninth, Berman’s call went something like this:
“Oh, uh, right field. Helton coasts into second.”
What was really hysterical (and sad at the same time) was that the radio broadcast clearly picked up the pitch in the catcher’s mitt or the crack of the bat. So it was painfully obvious how long the delay was between Berman’s call and the actual play.
Beating up on Berman is old, old ground and his schtick has been tired for more than a decade. But why, oh why, would the network assign him to play by play on radio?
Announcers are not paid to inform us about the game we are watching. They are paid to sell their product. They are pitchmen, and like any good pitchmen, they will say anything to make a sale. Looking to announcers for accurate information is like looking to a used-car salesman to better understand car mechanics. Neither is interested in educating you, because then you won’t need them any more.
First of all, Nick Punto is not just a ballplayer, he is a baseball player.
And Matt Guerrier has been pronounced Ger- rare, not Ger-rear since birth- or since I’ve heard of him. But that’s not grating at all.
Heh heh heh. I am glad that I’ve found company, and now know that my wife isn’t the only one groaning after my similar rants directed toward the television. I do try to think that it could be worse, though. All NFL announcers are at least ten times worse.
Phrases they all use like “I tell you what…” Really? Why preface your statement with that? JUST TELL ME! Ugh!
Their constant use of “football.” “This football player likes to make football plays with a football on the football field.” Ya think? I thought we were watching Jay Cutler play tennis. Ugh!
My least favorite phrase is “making plays.” “This football player knows how to make plays.” It sounds like my potty-training daughters…”making potty.” If these people want to sound intelligent (which I think is their intent)…why not say, “that was a well executed run?”
Oh yeah…that’s right…they aren’t intelligent.
UGH!
Incidentally … Vin Scully pretty much calls every non-fastball pitch an “off-speed breaking ball.” Just sayin’.
No patience???? Royals fans have nothing but patience!!!!
When was our last playoff appearance? I think we’ve been patient.
Shut your pie hole and try winning some games before lecturing us.
I’ve posted this before in other similar threads, but Ron Darling is a very enjoyable listen as a Mets’ color man: informative, articulate, willing to criticize when needed without being “old-man cranky”.
I don’t get a lot of chances to see the other guys around the leagues but it’s hard for me to imagine anyone doing much better than Cohen/Darling/Hernandez.
Josh in DC, if you ever get a chance to see Darling do Mets games I think you’d really enjoy him. When he’s working with Gary Cohen (underrated p-b-p guy) and Keith Hernandez he’s great.
Honestly, I think at times he’s so flummoxed by his TBS partner’s incompetence that he just doesn’t know what to say.
Utard, I’ll tell you what, when you look at a guy like Utard, that’s a guy who’s going to get annoyed watching broadcasts of the National Football League.
With regard to Chip Carey’s Punto line drive comment, I think it is a bit more egregious that the man on third (Casilla) made the same mistake in assuming a base hit.
Hillman’s got no answers, folks. GMDM has the ‘plan’ (such as it is) and Hillman’s the guy dangling out to dry, trying to explain that which has probably never been adequately explained to him. And it’s not like the front office’s moves have been part of any plan that’s easy to pick up from outside observation.
That being said, the last thing he should do in that situation is to give a quote that blames the fan base. When has that ever been the right thing to say, in the history of ever? It usually gets the manager sacked, across all sports, pro or college. It’s not Royals fans’ fault that the team has built such an unappealing mismatched collection of replacement-level talent. It’s not their fault that the whole plan seems to consist of the hope that Zack Greinke can start 135 games next season; or that a mysterious scout in a blue police box can bring in Carlos Beltran, Johnny Damon, George Brett, Bret Saberhagen, Frank White, and Dan Quisenberry, all in their primes.
The whole building-a-grill analogy would work better if the builder in question was trying to build it apparently without using a manual and using spare junk discarded by others.
“I’m GOING to finish the grill! You’re just too stupid to see that!”
“Okay…it’s just that you have a propane tank and three pieces of plywood and an old bicycle tire and now you’re talking about buying some old garden gnomes off of someone on craigslist to finish it off. I just don’t see how you can make a good grill out of -”
“IT’S A PROCESS!”
As for terrible announcers, I’d like to throw Blue Jays announcer Jamie Campbell into the mix. I can’t count the number of times this year he’s made a call like this:
“Ohhhh! That ball is POUNDED! And (insert outfielder’s name here) takes a few steps in and makes the catch.”
On more than one occasion, he’s gotten all shouty about a ball that was hauled in – no exaggeration – about 60 feet past the infield. The guy has NO depth perception.
Oh, and while I hate homerism in announcers, I’d also prefer one who doesn’t treat a walk-off win by the opposing team as he would a dramatic game seven World Series victory.
Random product placements popping up in readers’ comments, ridiculously complex flowchart .PDFs, Dr. Who references…..it’s time for me to go find something else to read today.
Oh, and while I find Berman’s commentary poor-to-terrible, he does regain some points for giving us the ridiculousness that is ‘You’re with me, Leather’
http://deadspin.com/166410/he–could–go–all–the–way
At least you got to see/hear the games. Because of the odd start times, I have to rely on the radio and my local ESPN radio affiliate (which has been advertising for weeks that I could hear every pitch of the postseason right here on ESPNRadio) decided that the idiot local guy would be better programming than the baseball playoffs.
DVR the games, turn down the sound, put on some music, watch baseball without oblivious announcers and inane commercials. Get in the habit fast because Fox is coming, with Buck and McCarver, to make anyone with a brain pine for the salad days of Caray, Brenly, et al.
And since I wasn’t listening, did any of the astute announcers in the Cardinals/Dodgers game manage to mention that Larussa the Genius got completely outmanaged and blew the game in the 4th and 5th? Torre yanked Wolf, ineffective and barely hanging on all night, in the 4th with the Cards threatening to tie or go ahead, and Weaver got the out. Rasmus doubles in the 5th, tying run on second, Larussa lets Carpenter bat and make the third out, even though Carpenter had been ineffective and barely hanging on all night. Carpenter promptly goes out and gives up another run.
Would a pinch hitter have gotten the run home? Who knows. But everyone knew Carpenter wouldn’t (two pathetic bunt attempts in his previous at bats) and knew Carpenter would be lucky to get through another inning or two the way he was pitching. Torre went for the win in the 4th, Larussa choked.
It’s OK, Joe. I’m 23 and I was yelling at the TV much of last night. If I hear the phrase “plays the game the right way” out of those guys one more time I might throw myself off the Brooklyn Bridge.
Because, you know, selfish jerks like Manny Ramirez run to third base first.
Funny, as I have the topic of bad announcers on my to write list for my blog. Don’t think mine will be written anywhere near as coherant or interesting as Joe.
My take is that it is hard to do a job well, no matter what the job is. Call customer service and 95% of the time it is an excrusiating process. Go out for dinner and once in awhile you get a server who truly loves what they are doing and puts in the effort.
I think the same is true for announcers and especially colour guys. It’s not an easy job, as Joe confirms from his experience, and its a job that can only be done exceptionally through a lot of hard work. Even then, the analyst may fail due to their lack of education and related skills.
If we do stumble upon a great announcer, the definition of which will vary by fan, it is unlikely that they will perform at a high level 9 innings a game, 100 times a year. They’ll have nights where they hit for the cycle and other nights where they’ll lay an egg.
When the CBC was having contract issues with their announcers a few years back, they televised a few Canadian Football Games without any announcers, leaving only the sounds of the game and the in stadium announcer telling us down and distance. It was certainly watchable, but I did miss having someone watching the game with me and talking about it.
Announcers I like to listen to:
Vin Scully- yes he ignores the game from time to time and yes he talks a lot, but I always learn interesting bits about the players. A break from the every day announcer.
Ray Ferraro- a hockey colour guy that really explains what happened and isn’t afraid to call out the home team. Too bad he moved to TSN last year from calling the Oilers game.
Jim Hughson- the main announcer for Hockey Night in Canada. He’s accurate and he use the right amount of inflection in his voice. If something is exciting, he’ll let you know, but he won’t grab your attention in the play doesn’t warrant it (Peter Labardias I’m looking at you).
NFL- I struggle to think of anyone I enjoy. Tirico is ok and Gus Johnson is always a laugh, but I’m fine watching with the sound off.
Chip Caray is a product of Nepotism, the single greatest threat to America. Chip Caray and Joe Buck no more deserve to be broadcasting high school football games than Luke Russert and Bill Kristol merit a pen and a spiral-bound notebook.
“NFL- I struggle to think of anyone I enjoy. Tirico is ok and Gus Johnson is always a laugh, but I’m fine watching with the sound off.”
52.
Tirico’s a confirmed sexual predator and workplace sexual assailant who got bounced from ESPN for 90 days after he went after a number of female staffers. The guy’s an animal.
Joe,
I was wondering what you thought about Ron Darling, I find him extremely insightful about pitching and baseball in general. He is both able to understand the game, explain it, and articulate what its really like to pitch in a game every day for Mets fans. I wonder if that carries on to national broadcasts as well?
It’s so gratifying to know I’m not the only curmudgeon railing at play by play and colour men to anyone who will listen. Justin, as painful as Jamie Campbell is, he’s Vin Scully compared to Rod Black. While I’m not a Jays fan, the days when Schulman was the pbp guy were a pleasure.
Did anyone catch the scouting report on Chris Carpenter shown by TBS? He’s a “road warrior” because his record was 9-2. Um, his home record then was 8-2. Huge difference! Ugh.
Was it Ron Darling who pronounced that A-Rod was out of his slump (accepting the overblown premise that he’s been in a post season slump) by driving in two runs, the second of which was a well hit ball to right which still should very likely have been caught, given that it hit the wall about half way up, and about 10 feet away from the Twins right fielder?
You’re not getting cranky, Poz. I’m only 32 and last night was the first time I’ve yelled at the TV because of the inane comments by the announcers. They are terrible!
Nothing is more irritating than when somebody spends a little time overseas and thinks that experience lets them make broad macro statements about an entire nations shortcomings.
Hillman is sounding like the 22 year old who decides to postpone working for a little longer, takes a trip to Europe, and then returns to lecture all on American arrogance. I think it’s great you got to see the Eiffel Tower, really I do. Still, when it comes to opinions on foreign affairs and cultural shortcomings, I think I’ll stick with listening to people that have lived in the real world for a while.
Paul P @#9 – that is an AWESOME idea!!!!!
Joe,
Are the excruciatingly long games making you grumpy? LaRussa v. Torre went almost 4 hours last night in a 5-3 game, while the Yanks vs. Twins game went about 3 hours and 40 minutes. It’s getting absurd how long the games are.
I was screaming at the TV on Monday, but at Gerald Laird to take two pitches with the 3-1 count.
#54- Mark- perhaps its the animal in Tirico coming through in his telecasts that makes him watchable.
#56- Charles- amen, brother! Rod Black surely announces all broadcasts that are played in hell. Nothing makes me madder than finding out Rob is calling a Rider game instead of Cuthbert.
The Royals should try and trade for Miggy Cabrera. Definitely not a milk drinker.
Can’t you just feel Rany’s frustration from here? I picture him having to physically restrain himself from cranking out another angry post.
Chip Caray killed my soul by saying on Tuesday not once, not twice, not three times, but four times “The Tigers are in the lion’s den.”
I hate Chip Caray.
It’s time “Circle me Bert” is officially replaced by “Educate me Trey!” or the optional Dayton insert as required.
What arrogance by these guys! They are truly the most delusional team in all of pro sports.
When I get the chance to hear Dan Schulman (sp?) and Dave Campbell on the radio (ESPN) I am usually entertained by there knowledge and comfortable enthusiasm. For national broadcasters on the radio, I think they are the best.
I have never liked Stockton. When he was young in the late ’60s he was in Pittsburgh w/KDKA TV for a few years. He never caught on with the working people there. He dated my sister’s friend a few times as well. Never got very high grades in that category either….
Chip Caray would be bagging peanuts if his last name was Smith. I am one to be easier on Joe Buck. Atleast his sense of humor/irony comes through much of the time.
I love the Premier League Fan Zone, which does EPL games. It has the regular camera shots of the games, but rather than have normal announcers, they get one fan from each team to call the game together. They will smack talk, yell at their guys, go completely insane when their team scores, weep into the microphone when scored against, start singing along with the crowd cheers, talk about games between these two teams fifteen years prior, you name it.
And here’s the thing: in today’s media environment, most of the people watching are fans of one of the two teams, especially in the regular seasons. It works. Usually, the game they show is from the weekend before and it is on in the middle of the week, so they have a couple of days to dub out the cursing and belching. It is a different perspective and quite enjoyable.
And, I must say, British soccer announcers put American announcers to shame anyway.
Joe,
Don’t feel bad. I’m 27, and I have to mute the TV to watch baseball. I don’t think it’s a sign of old age, crankiness, or curmudgeon-ly-ness. I think it’s a sign of having a damn clue that baseball isn’t played in the sixty-seventh dimension by gnomes sporting unicorn-horn-laced sunglasses.
Baseball isn’t inexplicable; it’s hard, but in the grand scheme of things it’s relatively easy to understand why it’s hard. I, like you, have never had much tolerance for those who try to tell me that a man throwing a sphere in the general vicinity of a man holding a stick is beyond my comprehension.
So, once again, don’t feel bad.
@Paul P (#9), I’ve been told that watching a game on TV with me and my friends is pretty much like listening to a group of drunk, disgruntled sports fans pay tribute to Mystery Science Theater 3000. I’m not sure it was a compliment, though.
@Justin (#46), Bravo, sir. Bravo.
It is funny how the TBS guys keep saying that the Twins ‘do all the little things,’ and yet the Twins have a team UZR that is third to last in MLB, only better than the Mets and our boys in blue.
I guess saying that a team does all the little things really means that they have a low payroll, and so the only way they could possibly win is if they did these ‘little things.’ Never mind that the high rollers do all the little things too.
I find myself getting more and more annoyed by Hillman and his whining. All this “fans don’t understand and need to trust the process” stuff. So the process is to show some improvement, preach fundamentals but play incredibly horrible defense, take a massive step backwards in wins and overall play, then win the division? We never heard this “process” stuff last year. It’s hard to “trust the process” when a season is so disastrous. They don’t want trust, they want blind faith.
I actually didn’t think the Royals could find someone dumber than Muser but … trust the process, I suppose.
Trey Hillman must have ‘paper-thin skin’ if he is making these comments. Dave S #58 hit it on the head with his comments…
Listening to Boomer on the radio yesterday afternoon in the car, Cliff Lee was batting and, if I heard correctly, he “snailed” one to center. Not knowing what that meant, I had to wait almost a minutes, hearing the crowd cheering and Berman talk about how Lee is a pretty good hitter, but you don’t expect that, yada, yada. I thought it could have been a home run, the crowd sounded pretty loud, but given its a pitcher maybe it was just a long fly out and they appreciated that? No real idea. Finally, Boomer got back to describing it, saying he “smacked” it. I still didn’t know what happened until he said the next batter was digging in with a runner on first. Unreal.
Ian, the TWins USED to do the little things right (under Tom Kelly).
The problem is that the media is too lazy to actually do anything (like prepping for their job) other than repeat what they’ve been saying for years….
CharlesH [#56]: I agree, Rod Black is terrible, but I think I’m more annoyed by Campbell, if only because he does the play-by-play for so many more games (about three times as many, if I recall correctly.)
The Jays have had a long line of brutal broadcasters: former game show host and drunkard Fergie Olver, the generally-distinguished Brian Williams, ex-player Joe Carter…they were all inexcusably bad.
Shulman was a godsend but, of course, he got snapped up by ESPN once people caught on to how knowledgeable and skilled he was.
Raise your hand if you muted the TV after about 15 minutes of Jeter-fawning?
/raises.
I’ll have a damn stroke if Chip mentions Harmon Killebrew, Kirby Puckett, hell even Jack Morris. Apparently he can rattle off Yankee greats with ease, which puts him in the same company as everyone else who has ever seen a baseball game. Good work, Chip, keep living off your last name.
Agreed that being a good play-by-play or color guy is a tough, and that few people have the talent to carry it out. So why are those jobs consistently awarded based on either a.) nepotism or b.) former player-ism, regardless of merit?
You know the worst about Heillman?
He is a dead man walking, a 140-184 in two seasons manager that has his days counted with the clock ticking faster each day for the deadline, because each day he opens his mouth to say something about baseball you can feel incapacity for that possition.
Honestly, I think Ron Darling is just as bad as Caray…weird, since he’s supposed to be good. He never seems to think about what he’s saying, and ends up sounding completely unsure of himself except when he’s rattling off an endless string of cliches (a lot of “knows how to play the right game”). Yesterday, he criticized the Yankees defense because they have bad corner outfielders who are both TOO OLD (Swisher is 28 and he and Damon are both above average). He and Carey are worse to me than Buck and McCarver, since Buck > Carey and Darling is just as grating as McCarver.
The chasm between the knowledge of a reasonably informed fan and the knowledege of most sportswriters/broadcasters is amazing and difficult to explain. I don’t expect the broadcasters to understand all the nuances of VORP and every other acronym, but I do expect them to understand a little more than HR’s and wins and a bookful of cliches about clutch and love of the game and so forth.
As a Braves fan who watches 100+ games a year, I have the distinct displeasure of listening to Chip year round. This is how he is every freaking night.
Mercifully, a majority of the games are broadcast locally on a network that does not employ Chip and I am grateful that the other network used Boog Schiambi for play-by-play. My soul would die a little more each time I tuned in only to realize the game was carried on Chip’s station.
I am absolutely devasted by the news that Boog is leaving Fox to work for ESPN as listening to him on a recurring basis has been a real treat and something I truly looked forward to every night. I wish him the best of luck at ESPN and hope he is used frequently.
My memory of the Indians teams of the 60′-70’s is that they were just bad. I may be wrong but I don’t recall any excuses. Most of the problem was of course, Gabe Paul. One of the worse presidents ever in MLB. He was so bad for Cleveland but so good for the rest of the league he was named executive of the year once. He even got hired by the Yankees but they wised up quickly and he was back in Cleveland.
Concerning baseball announcers today, most are not very good but I consider Joe Buck the worse. I turn the sound off when watching a baseball game he is calling. Which is funny because I never turn off the sound when watching a football game he is calling. Buck only drives me nuts when he calls baseball games.
@#79 – FWIW, I did several years’ worth of hockey commentary on radio in college and did a few soccer and baseball games, and ever since I was a kid I’d wanted nothing more than to be a sports broadcaster when I grew up. Let me tell you, it’s *so* difficult to break into the business as a commentator – you really have to know somebody to have a chance even at the entry level. Pure talent alone is nowhere near enough to get you a job. (I briefly had a gig at ESPN International as a soccer analyst, which I attribute mainly to the fact that I was a passing acquaintance with the former ABC/ESPN analyst Seamus Malin, but that didn’t last, and that was it.)
On the college hockey team I covered, one of goalies on the team was quite outgoing and always good for a quote, but I wouldn’t say he was especially articulate or anything. The father of his best friend on the team is the owner of an NHL team. Last time I checked, said goalie (his dreams of playing the game professionally having died out in the minor leagues) is now the color commentator for said NHL team’s local/cable TV broadcasts.
I’m not saying I would have been the best commentator in the world, but I’m absolutely certain I would have been better than half the guys I hear on the networks if I’d had the chance to shine. But alas, I’m no good at playing politics or schmoozing my way into a job, so I never had the chance to find out.
There’s two color guys who are former players that I enjoy listening to, David Cone and Jim Palmer, probably the only two ex-players I’ve heard refer to any kind of advanced stats intelligently and don’t automatically spout the party line of the organization.
As for the Royals management chastising the fans for wanting “instant gratification,” talk about hypocrisy. The GM went out and traded for Mike Jacobs and signed Kyle Farnsworth to try to contend in 2009, and traded for Yuniesky Betancourt after Mike Aviles went down with an injury. Someone with patience (and understanding of logic) would not have made those moves, which are the ones the fans are complaining about in the first place.
Chip Caray wasn’t aware that the outfield was playing in when Nick Punto was up because he’s too busy trying to find on his computer or stat sheet something to say about this Nick Punto guy who he never heard of before. He’s a home team announcer doing play-by-play for a game between two away teams. He can’t fall back on all the knowledge gleaned from watching 143 Braves games. He has to wing it. Either that or he has to actually prepare. But, he’s probably like most other people in that he’s not going to kill himself preparing for his job.
Radio’s even worse.
Ever hear Public Relations Man John Sterling air a Yankees’ game? Sterling kisses Steinbrenner’s butt every other pitch and gives you the count, score, and inning once every 42 minutes.
Let’s not even get into the cast of Prepubescents that call themselves sports talk radio hosts. From the 11-year-old boys on FOX Sports Radio at night to that imbecile with the beard and Colin Cowdung, sports talk radio is light on interviews and actual analysis and heavy on burp, fart, and ass jokes.
Announcing a live sporting event is very difficult. Anyone who thinks it isn’t should try it, like Joe did. Not just babbling with your friends during the game, but recording yourself, and then playing it for other people. Not your friends, but strangers, and let them respond to it.
But because it’s so hard to do, the whole system should be changed to make it easier, which would really serve the viewers and make the broadcast better.
Now allow me to vent for a minute.
The problem isn’t the announcers, it’s their producers. They are the ones telling the announcers what to do, and they are the ones in charge of the broadcasts. But these producers are so married to the conventional wisdom that none of them will change for a long time, and watching these broadcasts is going to stay horrible for a long time.
What should they do to improve things? First of all, never have three announcers in the same booth for a TV broadcast. In addition to being completely unnecessary, it causes each of them to blab too much, to try to prove their worth. It causes nothing but too much hot air and nonsense.
Second of all– but probably the most important– stop telling the announcers to give us a “storyline.” Announcers are encouraged to present each game as a simple story that everyone, even casual viewers can follow. That means not just tell us what is happening during a play, but spin everything that happens in the game into a “narrative.”
This is a horrible concept, one that has come about in recent times and ruined sportscasting.
Because in a “narrative,” you have to have heroes and villains, and events are controlled by the morality of the participants, and anything that doesn’t fit the narrative needs to be ignored, and the narrative can’t change if you’ve just spent two hours blabbling about it.
This all is a horrible match for sports. Sports has its own drama, it doesn’t need some jackass trying to sell us on some story he made up about how some players have more heart than others, or how a hitter missed on a swing not because he was fooled by the movement of the pitch but because the pitcher is dedicating this game to the memory of his recently departed father.
Adding phony drama mars and even ruins the true drama that is a huge part of why we like sports in the first place. Sports doesn’t need that. The game will provide its own “narrative,” stop trying to impose a phony one on us, as if we can’t see it for ourselves.
The reason producers want announcers to push the narrative is because the producers have no respect for the viewers. They think casual viewers need to be catered to. But this is the 21st century, there is far, far more sports on TV and more sports coverage than ever before. Anyone who is watching a game on TV now has experienced sports many times before, (even if not this particular sport) and understands how competition works. No one needs to have an imposed narrative spun to us. We don’t need that extra layer of spin, we just need the announcers to tell us information that we can’t already see for ourselves.
With TV announcing, less is more. Don’t tell us what we can already see, add to what we see with useful comments. And be accurate, because nothing irritates viewers more than being told something that we know is wrong. It’s better to say nothing than to be wrong.
That doesn’t mean to be boring, actually it means to be less boring. Instead of narrating a ground ball by telling us what we see like this: “Groundball to short. He fields it, and throws him out at first,” (this whole tradition descended from radio, where announcers DO have to narrate each play.) Instead, if you find it necessary to talk, then point out something interesting about the pitch or the swing or the fielder’s technique. Add to what we see by being interesting or entertaining.
When you are at a game with friends that are fun to watch baseball with, does one of them narrate every play that you are already watching? Of course not, that would be irritating. Do they talk down to you and tell you what to think, like a know-it-all? The ones who are enjoyable do not. Do they try to frame everything that happens to make it fit into some morality play, with a player or team who is the predetermined hero? God no, that would be irritating as hell. You’re there to see the competition and see who actually wins, not to be told the story of how Team A is going to win because they are morally superior to Team B.
The friends who are best to watch a game with aren’t the ones who prattle on and tell you what you can see, they’re the ones who make comments that are entertaining and informative. And if they don’t have anything entertaining or informative to say, they shut up until they do.
Why can’t announcers be like that?
Because they are told not to be like that. No dead air! And they are chosen by people who want them to be smooth, confident- sounding instructors– they are supposed to tell us what’s going on and why, and the kind of people chosen for jobs like that tend to believe in their own expertise.
So we end up with people who aren’t curious about learning anything– they’re the expert here. They aren’t there to learn, they are there to instruct, and to tell us a story beyond what’s happening on the field, and instruct us in what to think and how to react.
And it’s just insufferable.
Paul P @#9 –having some characters at the bottom of a game making wisecracks at the announcers (a la MST3K) would enable me to die happy. Especially if I could be one of them.
@79
those are the qualifications for EVERY job
Brenly just said:
“Generally you don’t want runners in scoring position for the bottom of your lineup.”
and
“You’ve got to put points on the board before the shadows roll in.”
It’s not just you, Joe. I’m 23 and he wears me out.
Imagine this if you will,
Runners at the corners 1 out. Kyle Davies on the hill. Joe Mauer rolls one over to short. The announcer instinctively says, “If Yuni doesn’t make this play he should be drawn and quartered.” I want to watch that game.
Actually, it would be more enjoyable if the announcer said (with anticipation):
6…
4…
3!
That would suffice.
@81: Ron Darling is really good when he does Mets broadcasts, but whenever I’ve heard him on TBS, it’s been brutal. I think he just has much better chemistry with Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez. That and I think Chip Caray would make even Vin Scully terrible in the booth.
Also, could someone tell Dick Stockton that regular season stats don’t continue to accumulate in the postseason?
I hesitate to say this because I am not 100% I heard them correct last night, but I’ll post it anyway because it seems topical and maybe someone else will recall whether I have it right or wrong.
Anyway, in the first inning yesterday after Kemps HR, I am pretty certain that Brenly said Dodger Stadium is a different ballpark at night than during the day. Brenly argued that Kemps home run had some extra legs because it carries so well at night, but during the day the ball doesn’t carry. That’s what I am pretty sure he said yesterday.
Now today, after Ethier’s home run, Bob Brenly tells me that ball carries real well during the day but that it is a real pitchers park at night. Now, in the first inning of the game today they were definitely talking about how teams needed to score in the first couple innings, because the shadows were going to come in play.
Long story short, it seems their story changes to fit whatever it is their eyes just saw. But, again, maybe I heard wrong. Maybe someone DVR’d it and can tell me one way or the other.
My 2 cents, Joe you are not old.
The last 3 nights listening to these guys (pick any pair for any game) has got to be the absolute low point in television sports announcing. Every pair is insufferable, unprepared and out of their element. I am 42 and have never in my memory listened to more crap then what I have heard since Monday.
As for our Royals, I am willing to take the high road and see what happens regardless of the lack of intelligence/couth/professionalism/public relations/(whatever the right word is) displayed by our current brain trust. If the trend continues this winter with the double talk (and Trey isn’t off to a good start) then, it will be back to ignoring them like I did the 6 years before GMDM came on board. I really didn’t miss anything then, and i probably won’t miss anything now. But they are certainly alienating their core demographic for season tickets.
One final comment, only seen two games on TV at the new Yankee’s Stadium. After witnessing the second game, I realized they aren’t playing in a major league park. They are playing on a slow pitch softball field disguised as a major league park. We grouse about the steroid era, what about the next era of band box (314 to left, 318 to right, excuse me?) stats built by playing in band box parks?
I’m 17 and I was yelling at the TV.
Serenity now, Joe. Insanity later.
Joe, your grill analogy is flawed. What any sane person would do is assemble the grill. Then, and only then, WHEN HE HAD ACQUIRED THE WHEREWITHAL TO BE A GOOD GRILLER, would he apply for the position of backyard barbecuer.
If, on the other hand, you’re suggesting Trey Hillman has no business managing in the big leagues until he has his crap together … then, well played, sir.
I cannot stand Dick Stockton, because he represents what I hate most about national sports broadcasts – no personality. Not a shred. Has his few things he likes to tell you about any given situation, knows some history, and is just so inane and boring you wonder what’s even the point. Like Kevin Harlan.
#89 makes a lot of sense. The games are already scripted by the sports-hating producers, complete with in-game phone or dugout/sideline interviews. But sometimes the darn game veers from the script. That’s the next step, probably, to control that.
Not one person in the Royals orginization has had a clue since Mr. Kauffman.
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Feeling Cranky [...]
I always appreciate proper posts like this, it’s pleasing to know I can add another site to my bookmarks and have something to check up on.
That’s gold, though, that Swisher is too old.
Maybe he thought it was Steve Swisher in right field.
(I still am sour that the White Sox essentially gave the Yankees Nick Swisher. Then the WSox sell low and he goes right back to being 06-07 Swisher: his OPS+ from 06-09 by year have been 125, 127, 92, 126. One of these things is not like the other).
By far my favorite quote from last night was when Chone Figgins came up in the 6th inning of the Sox-Angels game and the announcer said “Figgins has grounded out, struck out, and made a sacrifice bunt in the 5th that set up the Hunter 3 run homer.”
A sacrifice bunt. That sets up a homer. Egads.
I can’t stomach Buck Martinez but has anyone noticed how good Don Orsillo is?
I knew we have it good out here with Kruk and Kuipe,,, were that they were still on the air this late in the month,, next year,, Hummmm Baby
[...] on a day when one of the my favourite writers, Joe Posnanski, vents about the poor level of commentators, I am subjected to one of my least favourite colour guys, Louie [...]
What team of voices was doing the Rockies/Phillies game on TBS on Thursday afternoon? I was half watching/listening while at work and the broadcasters seemed to be pretty good – at least with what I could hear? I was surprised and impressed. Perhaps TBS has their lesser known crew on the (probably) least watched playoff series?
Anyway, like in ‘Butch Cassidy”, “Who the hell are (were) those guys?”
The brilliant Richard Sandomir weighs in on Caray and TBS in this morning’s NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/sports/baseball/09sandomir.html?_r=1&em
A partial list of mind-numbingly stupid things said by Chip Caray during the 30 or 40 Braves games he worked in 2009:
While Jair Jurrjens is throwing a one-hit shutout through five innings to (thus far) beat Tim Lincecum:
Chip: If any of these sabermetric types looked at the stats before the game and saw Jurrjens’ 8-7 record, they’d have probably said “Well, if anyone’s going to throw a shutout it will be Tim Lincecum.”
Chip Caray on Albert Pujols:
I bet he’s going to finish his career at some point.
Chip: The thing was, the Brewers had C.C. Sabathia and Ben Sheets going back-to-back in the first two games of the series, and losing both of those games just crippled their chances of winning that series.
Chip while extolling the virtues of Jeter the Golden God of All Things Defensive: “I just think that sometimes all these people who are so into the stats and the sabermetrics and the fantasy baseball and the zone things and the Dungeons & Dragons are missing out on seeing the whole picture.”
Once upon a time, he was just this annoying little twerp with really bad puns that he thought were funny. Now, he’s like Joe Morgan’s even more annoying godchild. There were times where he would almost completely ignore a game for three or four innings while he ranted and raved about how, now that the steroids era is over, we can finally abandon stats and get back to stolen bases and sac bunts, which is how baseball should be. He had long treatises about what a completely disappointing season Jair Jurrjens was having because his record wasn’t much better than .500, despite his sub-3.00 ERA. And so on and so forth.
At some point, Chip stopped being harmless and annoying, and became instead someone who is constantly on an anti-stats soapbox, and who is completely incapable of stepping off of that soapbox for long enough to actually bother covering the game in front of him. I don’t know when exactly that change happened, but just be glad that for the most part this is not the Chip that you have gotten in the postseason thus far. Otherwise, you just might have broken your TV by now.
I love TBS’s coverage, because reliable material should never be shunned.
http://thedugoutdoctors.com/2009/10/tbs-covers-the-playoffs/
Buchholz Surfer makes some great points, but here’s what we (as a group with, generally speaking, more than passing knowledge of the game) have to realize: we’re not REALLY the ones to whom the broadcasters are trying to appeal.
They KNOW we’ll watch baseball, and there are precious few options out there. It’s not like we can make a conscious decision to shut off Chip Caray and watch the game with any of a dozen other broadcasters in his stead, so we’ll sit through inane babble because we love the game.
What they’re trying to do is widen its appeal, bring in the casual fan or the non-fan by manufacturing drama. Hard-core fans will be drawn to the natural cadence of the game, the importance of every pitch, the nuances inherent in any situation.
If the networks can draw in a few more fans through blatant pandering, then they’ve done their jobs.
Leading back to the discussion about pop culture and how niche-ified it’s become, though, I WOULD love to see some alternate broadcast for the more informed fans, whether it’s a MST3K-style lambasting of regular broadcasts (an idea that I’ve wanted to see come about for a while now) or simply a more in-depth broadcast with more statistically-minded people – Rob Neyer-types – behind the mic.
I don’t know if there would be enough of a market to make this happen, but damn, would it ever be nice to not feel like the game’s being narrated to eight-year-olds.
Just read this post and the comment on Moore/Hillman on the Royals Review and have this question…
Do Moore and Hillman feel they are reinventing the wheel with the Kansas City Royals? What is the process?? Seriously, are they afraid some other organization might see what OUR TEAM is doing now and try to replicate it?? Seriously??
Please, Glass family, get rid of those two idiots and find some people who are passionate and not condesending…
Please…
What’s the deal with announcers pining for the days of complete games?
The funny thing about the dungeons and dragons comment is that that community has the same fight – some people hate when the game is broken down to stats and dice rolling, and think the game is only played the right way when you ignore all the stats and numbers…..just like some baseball people think.
@94,
You are quoting *Skip* Caray (not his idiot son Chip), who used to do that back when I watched a lot of Braves games. This was years ago, but I’m assuming he didn’t change his approach in later years: let you see what was happening on the field, with minimal confirmatory commentary; no unnecessary embellishment. Loved it!
Josh in DC
Obviously because Bob Gibson used to throw them all of the time and was fine, so all pitchers should throw 300 innings a year.
Obviously everyone should be like all time greats. I have one of my own articles linked up to my name, check out the fun Chuck offers.
and Buchholz Surfer is completely, 100% right. Turning games into narrative battles is ridiculous. Everyone recalls Game 1 of the Twins-Yanks ALDS already, of the heroism of Derek Jeter, the supposed failings of Alex Rodriguez (whose postseason stats look a whole lot like Mr. Jeter’s).
The biggest problem w/ baseball, versus basketball and football, is that ANYONE can be built as a hero to the casual or lazy fan. In basketball, the best player usually speaks for himself; it’s obvious who the key guy (or guys) are. No one confused Derek Fisher for Kobe Bryant in the 2009 NBA Finals. Football, yes skill offensive players tend to get a little more respect than they should, but in general, you can watch a game and tell whose workload is contributing the most.
Baseball, though? Well, first off, baseball, in all its individualism, is perversely the most team oriented sport of them all; everyone has to contribute, no one is hidden. Even a top end leadoff hitter will get, what, 12% of his team’s plate appearances? That’s not a lot of time to impact a game on your own. Top end starting pitcher may get 14-15% of his team’s outs? Once again, not a lot of time. Thanks to people like Tom Tango, we can understand what contributes to winning. But the lazy fan? They’ll ride on anything. They’ll believe Ichiro was the key to the Mariners offense in 2001, despite the fact that Bret Boone and Edgar Martinez were better hitters. For more perversion, Tim Salmon had himself a nice season in 2002. Too bad no one noticed because scraptabulous Eckstein was getting all the attention for the Angels’ run.
How does this relate to the Yankees? Well, look at the team OPS+ of the WS Champs Jeter has been a part of, and this 2009 team for shits and giggles:
1996: Jeter 101, Team 100
1998: Jeter 127, Team 116 (!)
1999: Jeter 153, Team 110 (Okay got me here)
2000: Jeter 128, Team 103
2009: Jeter 129, Team 119 (!!!!!!)
One season where Jeter’s production really was a “carrier”. Of course this season, Jeter’s been awesome, but so has his whole team. How much “carrying” does one need to do?
Of course, if the Yankees go on to win the WS, who will inevitably get an unjustifiable amount of credit? Jeter. If they lose, who gets the blame? A-Rod. As you could tell from Jeter’s 2001 postseason, where in 70 PA he went an outstanding .226/.275/.290, and became Mr. November for this superhuman effort, Jeter’s reputation is completely untied to his actual performance. Who can we thank for this? Broadcasters and their lazy fawning, and the producers for encouraging and promoting it.
@114 That was pretty good Steve
I was also asking the same question of how Brenly knew that DeRosa was one of the most accurate throwers… Whatever.
However, I can clarify the process for you if you really want to know. It is the process of getting good players on the team. The AAA team has to be able to replenish the ML team when injuries occur. Until we get good/decent players in more positions and in the minors, it will be a ‘process.’
Eric @ 123.
That would make perfect sense, if it was what GMDM and Hillman were preaching all along. Instead, they hyped the current roster as a team that would compete in the AL Central. To make it worse, they went on to trade for one of the worst players in MLB, and gave away a real prospect in doing it. To make that even worse, they would go on to essentially brag that they ignored the numbers in bringing Yuni in, and that he passed their “eye check” in making the team better. And now the fans (and Royals fans have struck me as a pretty good lot of fans in terms of knowledge), after being promised a winner, have a failure. So of course, they’re pissed, and they have plenty of points to complain about. Hillman’s response to them is essentially “shut up and let the baseball men take care of this”, like you need to know all the little nuances of the game to know that the Royals FO dropped the ball in a big way in 2009.
Random notes on the Royals: They had THREE replacement level and under players (Bloomquist, Jacobs, Guillen) accumulate 300+ PA’s EACH.
They had only 4 men in the lineup accumulate over 2 WAR. One of them was Miguel Olivo. 21.7% of his fly balls clearing the fence sound about right to everyone given his career # is 13.9%?
It’s tough to compete when your best regular is David DeJesus. At least he’s a plus fielding, high 700’s OPS guy that would be useful as a 7-8 hitter on a good team.
(Oh yeah, Hillman probably threw Meche out there while he was injured. Way to eff up the one good investment GMDM’s made).
> It’s tough to compete when your best regular is David DeJesus.
Yeah, it would be; but wasn’t the Royals’ best regular named Butler?
He will be in 2010 or 2011, but I give the 09 edge to DeJesus. Very good defensive LF.
> Very good defensive LF
Yeah, but a 107 OPS+ compared to 125? 51 doubles, for a guy who looks like a pretty slow runner? Sure, he ain’t the world’s best-fielding first baseman, and I know he doesn’t make the 3-6-3 DP as well as Keith Hernandez did, blah blah, but still. . . .
It isn’t just a matter of being cranky; it is also a matter of just getting tired of the constant mistakes.
Things that keep getting said over and over (your examples are good ones) – THAT DON”T HAVE ANY REAL BASIS IN FACT – seem to make me yell at the TV.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to yell at the TV (BTW I hate to think how much more often it would happen with hillman as a manager – shudders) but I suspect they are not going to listen to me. Heck I doubt they will even listen to you, Joe and you have some cache and I have none. So I satisfy myself and get some cathartic yelling done in privacy
@111
The Phils-Rox announcers Thursday were Brian Anderson and Joe Simpson. Never heard/heard of Anderson before; Simpson’s been a TBS guy on Braves games for years and is pretty good. At least doesn’t make me want to turn down the sound.
And now Darling and Caray somehow give Jeter credit for applying a tag at 2nd after Gomez slipped rounding the base. Oh, and for calling for the ball when that was the only logical base for Swisher to be throwing to.
I hear a lot of Brenly here in Chicago and have heard him quote a handful of Fangraphs’ advanced metrics during a few games. That earns him a lot of points in my book.
Any possibility that, by and large, what makes a good announcer a good announcer is mutually exclusive from what makes an analytic mind analytic.
Not in all cases, obviously…we could all come up with exceptions.
But I would guess that successful announcers as a whole show less analytic ability, and that analytic minds disproportionately make bad announcers.
Not being a Twins regular season follower, I was wondering….. How many safe hits do your guys usually need to score even one run?
In your 11th tonight you had a double and three clean singles to the outfield – Zip, zero, nada runs….Don’t know if I’ve seen that before.
Oh, does Joe Mauer carry bricks around with him as he runs the bases? That base to base to base strategy is fascinating stuff!
No matter who was calling that game from the broadcast booths, they never could have butchered their responsiblities like the Twins players and coaches did!!!
Oh yeah, the leftfield foul line umpire needs to be removed from his responsiblities immediately!
Buck Martinez, at Game 1, Angels v R Sox, ventured the opinion that win numbers were a poor method of assessing a pitcher’s ability.
Wow! Didn’t expect that from someone as grey of hair and lined of face.
But then he reverted to type. The solution was for pitchers to pitch deeper into games.
And JR @ #132 . . . I’m sure there’s truth in what you say.
“In your 11th tonight you had a double and three clean singles to the outfield”
Funny thing: the double and one of those clean singles were hit in the first at-bat.
#130: How exactly was 2nd base the only place to throw to, when the runner rounding third hadn’t even scored? Swisher could have easily thrown home to try to get the runner. The credit went to the fact that Jeter and/or Swisher reacted quickly enough to throw Gomez out before the run scored. It was a big play in the game.
#121: For what it’s worth, Jeter wasn’t called “Mr. November” because of his numbers in the 2001 postseason. He was called that simply because right after the clock ticked over to midnight on the morning of November 1st, he hit a walkoff home run. And he did that. That’s it. His numbers that postseason have nothing to do with it, and with the rarity of November baseball, it’s just a little wink wink, look what he did just after November started.
In the top of the 11th, Caray mentioned that the Yankees had pitched to Joe Mauer carefully and this tactic worked wonderfully. He then cited what happened in the game to that point: he struck out twice, walked twice and singled. I guess reaching base 3 out of 5 times is a bad thing? He then singled (right after getting cheated out of a double by the LF umpire who had one thing to do all game long and got it wrong) to make his OBP .667 for the game. If Derek Jeter had done that they would have exclaimed how amazing he was. But when Joe Mauer does it, he’s being handled nicely by the Yankees pitching staff.
Hey, waddaya mean? He’d been up five times, count ‘em, five, and he only had one hit to show for it, a measly single at that.
None of that other stuff counts for anything. He only had one hit in five times up. Therefore.
I don’t understand the philosophy of the strategy anyhow. Pitching around someone, whether Mauer or Pujols or even Jeter to “keep them from beating you” seems like defeatism to me. Would you rather be beat by a BAD hitter? According to Paul Splittorff (as I understand what he said) it’s better to walk four consecutive batters to force in the winning run than to throw a pitch the batter can reach. He apparently doesn’t think it’s possible for a batter to make an out on anything that’s thrown in the strike zone.
137 – The odds of throwing him out at home were very slim, and throwing home risks putting runners at 2nd and 3rd. It would have been a terrible idea for Swisher to air one out there, and he was going to throw to 2nd whether Jeter held his hands up or not.
The runner was a couple of steps away when the tag was made simply because the throw to 2nd was about half as long as the throw to home.
Jeter’s role in that particular play was minimal, either way.
I liked smoltz when he did it last year.
and if you’ll excuse my crankiness, I am a person who probably spent $500 going to phillies games this season (i spent more last year) and 4 days into the playoffs i have yet to see a lead change because i happen to be at work at 2:37 pm on a weds/thurs. meanwhile, the first pitch i should see on a bloody weekend will be at 10:07pm…on a sunday.
so i guess i see your point about complaining about announcers…. i just wish i could see/hear some announcers to complain about.
[...] First off, Joe Posnanski wrote about the TBS announcers far better than I did. Read it here. [...]
I stopped yelling at announcers years ago. Maybe it was listening to “the round mound of sound” aka Jay Randolph, doing the Reds games on TV in the’80’s, or maybe it was the idiots that CBS, NBC, and especially Fox hire to do “color” on NFL games, but I stopped yelling at them. It’s pointless. They’re idiots. They always will be. They can’t help it.
Now, the players, that’s a different story! How can you have played baseball since you were six or seven years old, and still, as a Thirty-something year old, run from second to third on a ground ball hit DIRECTLY to the shortstop??? Yes, I yell at that!
I am so glad they used Don Orsillo for the Red Sox/Angels series! (although so far that’s been about the only good thing about the series from a Sox fan’s perspective). He is a good broadcaster and most importantly knows interesting stuff about the players and not just the usual boring stupid platitudes.
I don’t know why they can’t expand on that idea. Hire the local PbP announcer from one team and the color guy from the other team. You’d get a much better more interesting broadcast with announcers who actually follow and know the teams they’re covering.
And let’s face it, all of the TBS and Fox announcers (except Darling) are awful and none of them would be missed if they were all fired. Caray is the worst, does he know any other adjective to describe a ball being hit other than “fisted”? ugh!
[...] (here meaning AL fans), since it means we no longer have to hear from TBS’ Chip Caray, who Joe Posnanski (and the rest of sane America) cannot stand. Speaking of the Yankees and American sports writers, Wright Thompson’s piece on the most [...]
17: Shelby said at 9:43 am on October 8th, 2009:
I just have one thing to say with regard to bad sports announcers:
Bob Davis
Was this supposed to say “Bob Davie?” Because that would make a lot of sense.
Phil @ 127
Agree to disagree. Butler will be a good player for years, though.
Michael Q @ 146.
What I really like about Orsillo is his ability to not say the stupid.
Obviously the difficulty in calling a baseball game vs, say, a football game, is a lot of down time that needs to be filled in. And obviously he could’ve taken lazy ways out and started comparing Dustin Pedroia to David Eckstein (hey, they’re both short and white), or David Ortiz’s clutchness, or other normal go-to’s, but doesn’t. Best of all, he doesn’t do it for the other team, either.
What about all the whistling in the stands at a high decible. the mics behind home plate should be shut off. The whistlers go crazy during October.
And why was the MLB logo for postseason changed from red, white & blue to pink and some other God-awful color?
note to MLB & NFL: No more pink bats, shoes and hats. Enough already.