I’ve listened to several hundred Chicago Cubs games on the radio over the past few years, with the team of Pat Hughes & Ron Santo calling the game.
Each game, Ron Santo will be gone for half an inning, and someone else in the WGN sports department will provide color commentary. Pat Hughes will also be gone from time to time as well, but Santo (unlike Hughes) does it every game.
What’s this about?
My insticts say “Bathroom break,” but I’m not clear on how that takes exactly half an inning, every time. Pretty miraculous, if you ask me, that every time Ron’s gone and the opposing team scores a few runs, Ron’s dropping a floater, and every time he’s gone and the inning goes 1-2-3, Ron only has to pee.
Actually, it probably is a break. As for why it lasts a half-inning everytime, it’s simple. It would break up the rhythm too much to have one announcer for the first batter, switch to another for the second batter and the first two pitches to the third batter, then have Mr. Weak Bladder pick up for the nexst pitch.
It’s not just bathroom breaks, though. Listening to Cardinals games I’ve heard the distinct sound of a phone ringing followed by the other announcer call the game for the next batter or two.
I’ve always thought that Ron’s break was a bathroom/rest break…he has type I diabetes, and might need to walk around a bit for his circulation in addition to hitting the rest room.
I would assume the reason he always takes 1/2 an inning (no matter how long that might be) is so they can make the switch at a commercial break.
A lot of radio announcers have been at it for quite a while and as such, are quite old. Even things like calling a baseball game can be tiring after a while, especially if one of them is starting to get up there in age.
A break is probably just getting up, walking around, taking a bathroom break, getting a good drink of water, maybe a small bite to eat (remember they’re talking the whole game, this is their only chance).
I used to work with one that worked the booth solo so he had to break between innings. If he didn’t get back in time he would have to recreate the inning. It was funny hearing him call a HR two minutes after it happened.
The announcers will take the occasional half inning break in the Cardinal games, which gets especially painful when the only announcer calling the game is Mike Shannon. And in tonight’s game (9-14) that was the top of the ninth, which seems like an odd time for a break.
Are the games on TV? I have seen during Seattle Mariners games that the disappearing radio broadcaster is doing half an inning on TV. The TV guys do the same, miss half an inning on TV to fill in on the radio broadcast.
The Albuquerque Dukes radio announcers used to work separately. One of them would work two innings, then the other, and back and forth until the end of the game. Generally the one who did the 9th inning (assuming no extra innings) also did the game recap.
A famous baseball commentator would drink the sponsor’s product (beer) during the commercials as he called the games. His speech often got slurry by the 7th or 8th inning.
Tom Hamilton, the Indians’ radio announcer, get himself a half inning off. He’s not an old guy.
It’s quite noticeable because while Mike Hegan is decent, I just MISS Tom when he’s away. They do switch on and off calling innings, but there’s a definite void when Hamilton has left the room.
Hegan probably gets a half inning off too, but I don’t notice it at all
Doesn’t Niehaus do the first half of the game on TV, and then switch over to radio around the 5th inning? I always listen to the games on the radio, and it seems to always be Rizzs and “somebody else” (Blowers, Sims, Valle, etc.) for the first half, and then Niehaus shows up to replace the “somebody else”, and he and Rizzs finish out the game on the radio.
Most radio tandems can accommodate breaks more seamlessly than Hughes & Santo, because the remaining announcer will take over the play-by-play and you don’t much notice if you go a few batters without getting any color commentary.
The Cubs, however, have Santo as their color man, and he’s frankly incapable of doing play-by-play. Age and illness have slowed him down, and he isn’t sharp enough to call the plays clearly or accurately. The Cubs keep him on for color because he’s an icon and because people admire his ambition to keep working and travelling on two artificial legs.
As a result, the Cubs have to have a third man in the booth, to allow Hughes to rest his voice and go to the bathroom. I’m not a regular Cub radio listener, since I’m a Sox fan, but my impression is that Hughes rests an inning during most if not all games. The third man takes over the play-by-play, and he’ll also take over for color when Santo needs a break.
Just a WAG…but do sports announcers ever straddle two or more channels/stations during the same event?
That happens at a local radio station complex I have worked at. Four stations, each a different music format, but owned by the same company and housed in the same suite. If someone is interviewed, they start at the rock station, then go to the country station, then the polka station…, and since they cannot be on all at once, they disappear for minutes at a time. After making the rounds, they may visit the first station again. Meanwhile, 3 tunes have played, the weather has been announced, and there have been 2 commercials.
So if sports announcers do this, they might call one inning at one station, then the next at another…
Only in the situation described above, wherein some teams switch announcers back and forth between radio and television. (And the Cubs aren’t one of the teams that does this.) Teams generally allow only one home radio and one home television broadcast of each game (after all, press box space is limited), and syndicate it to any station that wants it. The only exception would be when a team broadcasts its games in a language other than English–for example, the White Sox provide radio broadcasts for some games in Spanish.
Bob Uecker and Jim Powell regularly switch off at half innings during Brewers games. I think it might be because Uecker is kinda old, and calling the entire game may be a little much for him.
Also, if a game goes into extra innings, Uecker is gone. Maybe his contract calls for 3.5 innings a game, period?
Vin Scully is 79 and when he works Dodgers games (just ones that are televised and not out of the NL West although he did got to Chicago), he works the whole game by himself.
