Wait, did I read that right? The Tribune expects announcers not to question Dusty Baker decisions? Wow, I thought the Yankees had a bunch of homers, even Singleton will question some decisions.
Jim
The team voted to throw Steve and Chip Caray off the team plane, and then Stoney resigned shortly after Chip took a job with TBS to do Braves games with his father.
But yeah, Baker and Hendry got mad when he criticized Baker’s decisions during a post-game show.
This was about the time I started watching baseball. I was a young teen in the early '80s and every summer I spent a month or so at my Dad’s house. He had CABLE TV!!! and since he had to go to work in the daytime I had to amuse myself with reading and watching TV.
I started watching the Cubs on WGN (I mean, they were on every day) and got to know the players and announcers. Carey was lovable, sure, but Steve Stone was insightful and interesting. He is extremely knowledgable about the game and has many good anecdotes. He is also a good strategist. (Wonder why he never went into coaching/management?).
I’ve been subscribing to MLB internet ever since WGN backed way off its Cubs airings, and was very disappointed when Stone was forced to leave. Pat Hughes is calm and understated–good PbP guy. Santo is a bit over-the-top, but you can’t help but feel the anguish in his voice every time the Cubs screw something up (He’s been in rare form recently with the Cubs playing absolutely the worst ball I’ve ever had to sit through). I think a little piece of Santo dies every time a Cubs player gets picked off first base, pops up the sac bunt attempt, or misses the cutoff man.
But I digress. Stone was the best.
And another call to get rid of Joe Morgan. He is usually totally clueless, yet so full of himself he can’t see how much of an embarassment to the game hae has become.
I guess Stone is a perfect example of the other direction–of how much you must be a homer to broadcast in the Midwest. Though he was with the Cubs for quite a while.
I didn’t know they’ve been using Stone on their network broadcasts. Maybe there’s a chance he’s there as an option, in case ESPN ever grows some onions and pushes Morgan out the door.
(By the way, Joe Morgan and I are both graduates of Cal State Hayward. Kind of makes me wonder just how much my degree is worth…)
I think it might be more accurate to say he played a smart game. He obviously has no idea why he was such a valuable player. He’s an idiot.
Hear, hear. I think Cohen has been better than most as a TV play-by-play guy; I think a lot of the problems with the broadcast’s quality is that SNY is actually operated by part-time freelancers borrowed from a junior high school AV department in Astoria. I admit Cohen & Co. have been guilty of doing pointless mid-inning interviews and ignoring the action, which I hate. The next step is making the whole thing like the Olympics and we get an hour of heartwarming background stories and then the game is shown as highlights.
Ron Darling, on the other hand, is a stiff. I go back and forth on Keith Hernandez – his analysis is mostly good, he’s a total anti-homer, he says really surreal stuff sometimes (I swear last year I heard him use the phrase “zircon-encrusted tweezers”), but of course he’s arrogant, apparently a Nearderthal, and then there’s that moustache. I try and remember he was a brilliant first baseman and not a Seinfeld character. I say let’s get Wally Backman and Jesse Orosco into the booth and let the fun begin. And Doc Gooden can do the on-the-field spots with an ankle bracelet that alerts his parole officer if he leaves the stadium.
And I love Ralph Kiner and it’s great that he’s been there for 44 frickin’ years, but oh boy, is he way past his prime.
My problem with Sterling is not that he’s a homer (it doesn’t really bother me), but that he’s so often wrong. I’m driving a car and half-listening and probably switching to the Mets when they’re back from commercials and I have more of an idea who’s on second base than Sterling does.
I’m trying to make a case for myself for finding Suzyn Waldman annoying but that I’m not a sexist pig. Let me get back to you on that one.
Question: Has any Latin American player turned up as a regular color-comment or play-by-play guy on any US broadcast, radio or TV? I was thinking that a guy like Carlos Delgado would probably be an ideal candidate – he seems smart and reflective and speaks his mind well – but I wonder if he has a chance inthe US media because he speaks accented English. If not, I wonder who will be the first to break the Accent Curtain. Imagine Ozzie Guillen in the broastcast booth - that I would watch.
Rumors are that Costas has been offered the job at least twice. Well, “offered” isn’t quite the right word, but Cardinals management let him know that if he wanted the job, it would be his.
But Costas, at least for now, is happier doing his NBC work than he would be following the Cardinals around (and the Cardinals wanted him to be their permanent, full-time lead announcer.)
After two turndowns, and now that the Cardinals have Rooney, I don’t think that Costas could simply snap his fingers and get the job anymore.
The Angels sometimes use Jose Mota, from their Spanish language broadcast, on the English side. But he doesn’t get to sit in the booth. He has to sit in the dugout. ESPN and Fox borrow him occasionally. He has a slight Caribbean Spanish accent, but he grew up in the U.S.
Yea I did. Something close to “Fly ball, well hit to right field. Tarasco is going back, he’s camped under it…and a fan has leaned over the fence and grabbed the ball! Tarasco is pointing to the fan who grabbed the ball…” Amazing that you, I, John Miller, who was 500 feet away in the pressbox, God and anyone else with eyes could see what happened, but the fucking umpire on the field missed it.
Orestes Destrade was doing color for some of the WBC games with Gary Thorne, and ESPN Deportes had Hall of Famer Juan Marichal on color (but in Spanish, naturally.)
Orestes also has his own baseball show on XM, but it’s on MLB en Español and in Spanish.
Heh, it’s weird. I picked up MLB.tv for the next month tonight so I could catch the Sox-Yanks games I would have otherwise missed because they aren’t being done nationally… and I ended up with the YES video feed but Sterling and Waldman’s radio feed for my audio. I was going to come back to this thread and ask if Sterling ALWAYS screwed up that much. Maybe it was just really obvious because I had video so I could see the mistakes… but more than a couple of times he did silly stuff like say “and the pitch is a ball”, because he thought it was, and not correct himself when the ump actually calls it a strike. He confused which runner was on which base several times (I think Dustan Mohr scored three plays in a row at one point). It took him the better part of an inning to figure out how many of the runs Randy gave up were unearned. Sterling actually had a pretty good play-by-play voice and was sort of fun to listen to… but could he be wrong less often, please? I mean once or twice, okay, but pushing a dozen mistakes in one game would have been really annoying if I didn’t also have a video feed.
I also agree with you entirely on the Waldman thing.
Yeah, now that they’ve got Rooney, I don’t see Bob getting the job any time soon. Rooney was the guy they wanted over Robo-Hagin in the first place, and he and Mike have been fantastic.
I still think he’s probably going to get the job in a few years when he’s decided he doesn’t want to do the Olympics any more and Rooney and/or Moonman have hung it up.
I think Garcia was just afraid to call it. Could have caused a near riot in NY.
Mike Krukow on last night’s telecast: “Don’t be chokin’ that chicken, hang it up.”
It’s no “I’m still tingling, partner,” but it’s up there.
I love these guys.
John Rooney on last night’s radio broadcast: “Swing and a drive, way back, this is gonna be, at the wall, A HOME RUN for Albert Pujols!”
El Hombre is Baseball Jesus, and John Rooney and Mike Shannon are his prophets.
The scary part is that he barely got a piece of that pitch. He muscled that one out to the pen.
Announcing team for Rockies-Cardinals this afternoon: Gary Thorne, Steve Stone, Steve Phillips. Good analysis from Stoney, lots of poking fun at Phillips, Gary Thorne can’t speak Spanish at all.
Announcing team for Red Sox-Yankees tonight: Chris Berman and Joe Morgan. I may stab myself in the eardrums with a rusty icepick before the 4th inning.
Good ol’ Mike Shannon. I’ll never forget hearing him say this at the beginning of the second game of a double-header: (Don appropriate “Shhhannon” accent): “Well folksh. It’sh time to open up another cold, froshty twelve-pack!”
Best Jon Miller call was when total chump Ruben Rivera made about ten baserunning errors on the same play, with Miller deperately trying to keep up, ending with “…and now he’s heading home, and he’s out by about ten feet! And that was the worst baserunning in the history of the game!” If anyone can find a sound byte of that call, I’d love to hear it again.
I personally think baseball radio announcers should be homers. I mean, think about it: who are they calling the game for? The fans of the home team! When the game is nationally televised/broadcast and the network guys are announcing, then sure, be impartial. But when the local team is broadcasting to the local fanbase, then tell me how my team is rocking. Or sucking. I absolutely love listening to Dave Niehaus announcing Mariners games. The guy has been with the team from the first game they ever played. And you have to admit he’s got the best grand slam call in the game:
“Get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma! IT’S GRAND SALAMI TIME!”
Even his normal home run call, “Goodbye baseball!” is way better than that lame “It is high, it is far, it’s a home run” that Yankees ptui guy does.
I hate it when the Mariners play on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. The local sports station is an ESPN affiliate, so they have to play the ESPN feed of the game and I have to listen to ESPN announcers instead of Niehaus. It’s painful.
I grew up on Ernie Harwell so I got spoiled. Baseball broadcasters should listen to tapes of Ernie, and if they’re doing things different than Ernie, they’re doing them wrong.
I don’t quite get the knocks on the ESPN team, to me they’re quite easy on the ears and Morgan does get on the case of guys who don’t play the game right. There are a few lovable homers, notably Harry Carry and Phil Rizzuto, but the guys who frame everything as if every listener is pulling for their team in general bug me.