There’s an article in the paper today about Tom Heinsohn, longtime broadcaster for the Boston Celtics (previously player and coach) who just loves his Celtics and views games through the prism of right and wrong (right being when calls go the Celtics way). The article (in the Wall St. Journal) cites this approvingly, while disparaging “homogenized, corporatized” national sports broadcasting.
I’m glad to have missed out on Celtics broadcasts. I have not been so lucky with the Cincinnati Bengals, who I root against chiefly because their “color” man Dave Lapham is such an obnoxious homer (he does things like yell “Oh nooooo!” when a Bengals play goes bad, and encourages the Bengals linemen to “Hit him in the mouth!”. I can’t listen to a White Sox broadcast if Ken Harrelson is on the air.
But fans must like their style. I’m curious about how many Dopers do.
As to the topic itself, I can’t stand homers. I think there are lots of ways that an announcer can discuss the things that will be of most interest to fans of the home team without needing to openly show bias towards the team (or against the opponent). Vin Scully, I think, is a master of this. There are plenty of others.
This is part of the reason I can’t stand Hawk Harrelson, who epitomizes homer announcing. It’s obnoxious.
I think it’s natural for an announcer who covers every game for a team to end up being a legit fan (plus, of course, they’re paid by the team). I don’t mind when they’re happy when good things happen and frustrated with the rest of us when the team blows.
Just don’t tell me everything is great when it’s not, or go on and on about how talented a sucky player is. The problem is not so much rooting for the good guys, but attempts at spinning poor performance.
It actually depends a bit. When watching club games I prefer neutral announcers, but in games where my national team play I don’t mind that the announcers for obvious reasons are homers. But I can’t stand, in either case, announcers who force the viewers’ attention to themselves, by being a bit too worked up or otherwise. “It’s not your show,” Wakinyan thinks annoyingly.
The people who do Blue Jays announcing are speaking largely to Blue Jays fans, and so it’s appropriate for them to concentrate on Blue Jays news and take a perspective related to the success of the Blue Jays. So I don’t mind that. I’m more interested in the Blue Jays than I am in the Orioles or whomever, and if the broadcast has the tone of “Blue Jays winning is good” that’s appropriate. The people tuning into local Jays broadcasts (or, in their respective areas, local Yankees broadcasts, Rangers broadcasts, Royals broadcasts…) are fundamentally tuning in to hear another episode in the story of “How My Team Is Doing.” For the home side’s broadcasters to pretend that is not the case would be silly and, heck, almopst impossible. You can’t have an into with a trumphant fanfare and someone announcing “WELCOME to Toronto Blue Jays baseball!!” and then spend three hours pretending the show isn’t basically about the Toronto Blue Jays. (Or Cubs, Rangers, Royals… San Antonio Spurs, Boston Bruins, etc. etc.)
That said I kind of hope the announcers will not be stupid, such as
Criticizing umpires for calls that go against the Blue Jays but are obviously correct
Shrieking like a maniac a la Hawk Harrelson
Criticizing other teams unreasonably
NOT criticizing the Blue Jays, or Jay players, when it is appropriate to do so and an honest reporter is avoiding the plain facts by withholding criticism
As it happens for the most part I think Jays announcers, both on TV and radio, take a reasonably homer-but-not-silly stance (TV color man Pat Tabler is unbearably stupid, but not for this reason.)
Personally, I want a little bit of homerism, but I also expect some fairness and objectivity. It’s a thin line, and not one that most commentators can pull off.
I expect national broadcast teams to be completely neutral. I expect the local guys to be complete homers.
The SF Giants TV team of Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow both finished their careers playing for the Giants, and are unabashed fans and possibly consider themselves adjunct coaches. They received World Series rings, which Kruk has said was one of the proudest moments of his life.
Gene Deckerhoff is blatantly pro-Buccaneers (and Seminoles). That’s as it should be; if I am listening to him, it is on a local radio broadcast. He’s a team employee. Why the hell shouldn’t he be biased?
Of course the team’s regular announcer should be a homer. They give us the best calls, like Brett Favre’s interception in the NFC championship game in, what was that, 2010? The Vikings’ announcer was hilarious. I want to share their rejoice or disappointment.
Now, national broadcasters are another story. They obviously should not be biased.
I want the local guys to be homers, but I don’t want them to be idiots. Essentially what I want is good, solid coverage of the game, from the home team’s perspective and covering primarily home team topics. But what I don’t want is some clown getting up there blaming everything on bad refereeing/field conditions/opponent cheating, and trying to make excuses and hand-wave away anything that the home team did that wasn’t optimal.
I’m honestly less annoyed with homer local announcers than when the national guys have an obvious bias or love for a particular team. You see that a lot in college football, where the B-teams tend to have wood for one team or the other in a fairly obvious fashion. I’m not talking the ABC/ESPN/CBS guys, but the ESPN2/ESPN-U level guys.
I actually like watching my teams games described by the other team’s announcers, because sometimes they tell tales out of school – little bit of the background on my team that the “homer” announcers have been instructed not to say anything about.
Otherwise, homerism doesn’t bother, and sometimes it is annoying in a nationally televised game to hear the network announcers falling over each other trying to be fair and impartial.
Harry Caray was a notable combination of home team suckup and hyper-critic.
He would root openly for the Cubs (“Oh, for a home run now”) while tearing apart Cubs players who were (at least for the moment) not performing up to Harry’s standards.
There is a hilarious example of this in David Halberstam’s “October 1964”. At the time Caray was a Cardinals’ broadcaster. Reserve catcher Bob Uecker did an impression of Caray (who repeatedly ripped Ken Boyer on-air during a slump). “And Boyer strikes out. He never even took the bat off his shoulder. I can’t understand why the fans are booing him here at Busch Stadium.”
When I was growing up, I liked the Mets’ team of Lindsay Nelson, Ralph Kiner and Bob Murphy.* When you listened to them you knew it was a Mets’ broadcast, but they didn’t bother with home-team worship.
*there’s a line in a Nero Wolfe novel about (Archie?) listening to a Mets’ broadcast on the radio, and getting up to turn down the volume when Bob Murphy took over play-by-play. Bob was kind of loud.
I want to hear more about my team, but I want them to be objective in how they describe plays. Fouls should be called as such for both teams, both teams should be praised or criticized as appropriate. But I want more background and analysis for me team. Coverage should be slanted, but I don’t think it’s homerism.
Just imagine “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”, or “The band is OUT ON THE FIELD!” if those calls had been made by non-homer unbiased national broadcasters.
In reading some of these responses, I am realizing that I define “homer” differently than perhaps the majority of folks. I don’t have a problem with an announcer that gets excited about his or her team doing well. As someone pointed out upthread, an announcer is paid by a team and spends every day watching these specific players perform or not perform. I think it would be hard to not get excited at times. I’m not looking for someone to be bored and utterly neutral in all respects.
What drives me crazy, and what defines a homer to me, is someone who is actively rooting against the other team. An announcer who, when his player hits a pop-up, starts commenting about hoping the defense will drop the ball or something akin to that. An announcer who sounds depressed every time the other team makes a positive play. I want sports announcers, even for local teams, to be fans of the SPORT first and foremost. And there are some (again, I’m looking at Hawk Harrelson) that don’t leave me with that impression.
I think Jon Miller (Giants) and Tom Hamilton (Indians, and next to Vin Scully, absolutely my favorite announcer) are great examples of announcers who can get excited about their team doing well, but who also are just generally really enthusiastic about seeing great baseball (or appalled by bad baseball) no matter which side is doing it. I can listen to those guys all day and not be troubled. I can see why people would define those guys as “homers,” but that word has a much more negative connotation for me that doesn’t apply to them.
I love me some Homer broadcasting, as long as they don’t criticize calls against us that were clearly correct.
My favorite Pacers call:
“Ewing down the middle, he drives, he shoots, he missed!! He missed! He missed! Ring the bell, baby! Ding, dong, the witch is dead! The Pacers win it 97-95, and we’re going to Disney World!!”
I dearly miss Johnny Most calling Celtics games. Laimbeer and Mahorn will forever be “McFilthy and McNasty”, thanks to him. Johnny was alleged to have once told the radio audience “Chamberlain has just hit Russell in the elbow with his eye!”
Homers are great *if *they go to extremes the way he did - it’s the entertainment industry, right?
I like a homer who likes a good game, compliments the other team when they deserve it, but isn’t afraid to say the home team sucks that day.
In fact, I really only like to hear criticism from home team announcers because they’re the ones who follow the team regularly. They can tell if the players are on top of the game, or playing like they’re hurt/tired/just not into it.