This is probably an oft-asked question, but I had no luck in finding it.
When watching a baseball game on TV, the commentators usually throw out many interesting and relevant statistics during the course of the game. It’s my assumption that the commentators aren’t looking up these statistics themselves, but rather there is a research team that is constantly feeding them relevant statistics and then they just choose which to mention/display. Is this correct? Is there anything else interesting to note about the way this works?
My knowledge is primarily based on what I’ve read about local announcers in Baltimore, but one of them was Jon Miller who has become a national announcer. The announcers themselves do research and informal interviews before the games. They make notes on interesting things that they might throw in if the occasion arises. Of course, they have head phones on as well, so they might get fed some stuff that way.
There are a number of combinations that could come into play. For simple stats, the announcer can look it up. For example, if Player X hits a double, it’s easy enough for the announcer to glance at a stat sheet in front of him and say, “That’s X’s n’th double of the season.”
For more complicated stats, they’ll need help from the truck. For example, if Cleveland were to hit into a triple play tonight, we’d want to know when was the last time Cleveland hit into a triple play as well as the last time Boston turned one. The producers would probably look that up in the truck, using a Retrosheet-type database, and pass it to the announcers.
Some stats are more pro-active. As crotalus says, an announcer might turn up things in pre-game research and make a note to slip them into the broadcast at some point. The more elaborate, graphical info (such as those charts on where a batter hits the ball) is coming, obviously, from the truck with the announcer getting told over his headphones so that he knows to talk about the graphic. National broadcasts tend to involve more of the latter and less of the former, since the announcer hasn’t been spending all year with the team.
Son of a former radio football/basketball color commentator checking in … There is a lot of prep work done before the game. They’ll spend their days researching stats and interesting ‘trivia’ on players, looking for things that could potentially arise during the game, and making extensive notes. So they’re not searching a general database of stats during the event, but have a big stack of indexed notes listing things they might want to bring up, ready to go.
I’m sure the ‘big-time’ announcers have a staff helping with this. But they need to have some familiarity with the material in advance, I’m sure, to keep things rolling smoothly. And baseball is a bit different from football in this, too–you get a week between games to research your football stats! But I’m sure the principle is the same …
So you’re the guys who inflicted Jon Miller on us. Our loss is your gain. Sometimes he is going to say something so inane that Joe Morgan is going to throttle him on the spot.
The Expos had some wonderful announcers, one of whom, Dave Van Horne bailed and ended up with the Marlins, I think. Another one, Elliott Price wound up doing some morning sports show. And then they put Jon Miller and Chip (off the old blockhead) Caray on national TV.
Next time you listen to a game, listen in the background when a pitcher comes out of the game. About half the time I’m able to hear a voice in the background reciting the pitcher’s final line score for the day, and it’s usually repeated by the announcer a second later.
I’m pretty sure you got that backwards. Joe Morgan (an ex-Giant no less) makes me weep every time I’m forced to listen to him. Jon Miller, on the other hand, left the O’s for San Francisco, and he’s absolutely fantastic to listen to.
For Major League Baseball, there are also updated pre-game notes released to the media by the teams themselves. Some teams are very detailed with game-to-game stats, streaks, historical marks, latest trends, pitcher-batter matchups, etc. Internet subscribers of MLB.com also have access to these notes
Like Troy, I’m also sure you’ve got that backwards somehow. Morgan’s inanity is so egregious that there’s even a blog devoted to it: http://www.firejoemorgan.com/
This is what I was going to say I used to work in the press box of an NCAA Div 1 football team, and their game notes were pretty impressive with random stats.
Pages and pages of stuff. And at the end, you’ll see they include print-outs directly from their stats system. Those actually get updated constantly during the game, and distributed by interns.
The teams also make a yearly media guide that is a couple hundred pages long. There’s pages on each player that not only give stats, but trivia. (John Burkett is an excellent bowler). There’s a history of the franchise, team records, “Last time it happened” info, bios of team executives.
The voice in the background is employed by the home team and making announcements over an intercom to the members of the working press who are covering the game. He is not employed by the TV announcers.
They may repeat the information given by the pressbox announcer, but the other, more detailed stats come the announcers themselves and whatever statisticians who may work with them behind the scenes.
The pressbox announcer is most often used to give the line for the exiting pitcher, but will also announce the official scorer’s decisions and announce pinch-hitters.
Also, please note, the pressbox announcer is not the same person as the stadium announcer. The pressbox announcer is only heard on the press level by the working media. The stadium announcer is the voice that the people in the stands hear.
The reason why I threw that in, is it’s kind of an inside joke between me and my friend. When we listened to or watched Marlins games, we would say the over/under on “John Burkett is an excellent bowler” statement was the third inning. The announcers would always mention it.