I hate baseball on Fox

Cafe Society
21

I listened on the radio when I was in Boston, but I’m in Chicago now, and relegated to the TV. All of the above bother me…but I’d also like to mention how much I hate the little “highlight reels” set to music that get played when they go to or come back from commercial (or whatever sets them off). It seems like instead of actually recapping the game they’re collecting stuff to make a point about one team or the other–often “Ha ha, Red Sox are sucking” and “Oooo, aren’t the Yankees great?” At least it looks that way to me. I’m biased though, so maybe I notice those more.

But if this really is the case, it seems a little unprofessional. Oh, for the days of the division series and coverage on ESPN.

22

This would be one more reason to look into satellite radio if you are interested and can’t get ESPN Radio over the air in Chicago (I say this because I honestly have never gone looking for it in Albuquerque, though I assume it’s probably available somewhere on the AM frequencies.) As I said earlier, I’m listening to the game coverage on XM’s broadcasting of ESPN Radio. There is some transmission delay, of course, but by only a few seconds. Probably never more than a minute. I know Sirius also has ESPN Radio.

23

One more rant against that miserable piece of shit, Scooter. Tonight he actually explained what a brush-back pitch was. WTF? We just saw Pedro put Matsui on his ass and we need this amimated fuckwit to explain it to us like we’re three years old? If the idiots at Fox wanted to explain what a brush-back was, all they needed to do was to replay the last pitch. It was a textbook example.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that those Budweiser commercials with Joe Buck assume a little too much? For instance, they seem to assume we think that Joe has any talent, integrity or knowledge of the game in the first place.

Oh how I wish they had these games on ESPN. John Miller and Joe Morgan are soooooo much better than these asswipes. Well, they’re not all asswipes. Al Leiter is OK.

24

Well, we have Fox in our cable package. I don’t think it’s kosher to superimpose your own signal on someone else’s channel, is it?

The Canadian station with rights is Sportsnet, but they just rebroadcast Fox. Cheaper than producing their own, I suppose.

25

However, I will jump in and say that I think Joe Buck is a decent broadcaster, and Jon Miller in excellent. I think Miller calls a wonderful game, and Buck isn’t half bad - not as good as Miller and not a tenth of what his father was, but he’s solid. Certainly above the level of the knobs I have to listen to when watching the Blue Jays.

Regrettably, Buck and Miller are partnered with Tim McCarver and Joe Morgan, who are to colour work as Carrot Top and Pauly Shore are to intelligent comedy. Morgan is especially frustrating because he was probably the smartest ballplayer to ever play the sport - him or Barry Bonds, or maybe Jackie Robinson - but as a broadcaster he sounds like he’s retarded. Worse yet, he’s ARROGANT in his stupidity. At the beginning of Yankees-Red Sox Game 2, when the Yankees crowd was chanting “Who’s your daddy?” the exchange between him and Miller went like this:

MILLER: And the Yankee crowd is chanting “Who’s your Daddy?” (laughs)
MORGAN: That’s because of what Pedro said.
MILLER: (Explains story of PEdro MArtinez joking that the Yankees are his daddy, because they beat him a couple of times)
MORGAN: You know, what Pedro said didn’t mean that. (note that the meaning had never been discussed) It’s hip hop slang, and hip hop slang sometimes has more than one meaning. (like, you know, most of English.) So the Yankee fans are chanting that but it’s not what he meant.
MILLER: (stunned silence)
MORGAN: So, you know, he said `they’re my daddy’ but he didn’t mean the same thing. (there has never been an explanation from Dr. Morgan as to what the first assumed meaning is)
MILLER: (stunned silence)
MORGAN: 'Cause it’s hip hop slang (apparently Martinez is a rare idiot savant who only speaks in hip hop slang) and it has more than one meaning.
MILLER: (stunned silence)
MORGAN: You know, because he didn’t mean that. (What? WHAT???)
MILLER: Uhh, here’s Derek Jeter…

McCarver, on the other hand, is 70% John Madden, 20% Terry Bradshaw, 10% Harry Neale, and 100% slapnad.

Buck and Miller have to struggle to be respectable when they’re sharing booths with these people.

Frighteningly, Al Leiter, despite being too quiet and not really knowing how to talk on the air, provides more valuable insights than Morgan and McCarver combined. David Justice, not so much.

26

Yeah Morgan is horrible. Joe Buck is good and so is John Miller, but I can’t tell you how GLAD I am that the talentless hack Bob Costas isn’t allowed to World Series games anymore, since Fox has bought the rights.

27

Morgan and McCarver seem to be suffering from the same disease – they’ve had so many people tell them how smart they are, they seem to constantly be trying to outdo themselves to prove how smart they are, and they wrap back around to the stupid end of the spectrum. I actually enjoyed both of them in their earlier days as broadcasters, but they’ve both become insufferable.

I agree with the others who’ve been impressed with Al Leiter’s work so far. And that David Justice was no better than OK.

I’ve been really spoiled over the last dozen years or so with the Braves’ broadcast team of Joe Simpson, Pete Van Wieren, Don Sutton, and Skip Caray. And I guess it’s a good thing that Chip Caray’s joining the TV crew for next year, but I’m disappointed that they’ve asked Sutton to take a pay cut as a condition for coming back next year – I’d be surprised if he does, and I hate to see him go.

28

I keep waiting for the announcers to talk some more about Johnny Damon’s hair, though perhaps we should be glad that the 14 pitching changes tonight actually gave them more material (14 different hairstyles! Bonus points for facial hair!)…

29

I’d like to lock Scooter in a bench vise and slowly saw him in half with a hacksaw.

McCarver blew the infield fly rule- when the Sox had men on first and second, none out, and Damon popped up a bunt. He said the ball didn’t go high enough to trigger the infield fly rule. No, Tim. The infield fly rule does not apply to bunted balls. Posada could have and should have let it drop and gone for a 2-5-4 DP.

That stroboscopic score display drives me bananas. Every stinking out, the team on the scoreboard flashes, turns into the logo, and then turns back again. And we’re watcing the stinking game! Do we need the silly graphic to flash “Astros home run” as we see Beltran circle the bases?

Enough of the praying fans, let’s see more Jeannie!

Silly side bar on Johnny Damon. Since he cut his hair, we call him “He-Man” in our house. The haircut looks remarkably like the old He-Man cartoon of the early 1980s.

30

All Yankee fans know that Scooter was, is, and evermore shall be Phil Rizutto. Scooter is not a stupid animated baseball. Blasphemy!

31

Man, she’s got a lot of hair. She ought to show up on set with it piled up in a B-52 'do, just to flip everybody out.

Oh, and whoever came up with ‘Scooter’ should be tied to a stake in front of home plate while Beltran and Pujols take extended batting practice.

32

McCarver is the one who really gets to the Sox fans out here. He’s constantly muddling the names of just about everyone on the team. He called Bronson Arroyo “Brandon Arroyo” at least 3 times, by my count, during Arroyo’s start the other night. Terry Francona occasionally becomes “Derek Francona”, and last night Tim Wakefield was rechristened “Winfield”. Oh well. His stunning analysis of the game makes up for it, I guess. :rolleyes:

McCarver brings about as much to the table as a waitress with no arms.

33

A wiatress with no arms at least might have a personality.

34

The funny thing is that animated baseball is smarter than Rizzuto.

I’m not really on the same page as all of you.

First of all, Joe Buck is probably my favorite play-by-play guy ever. I think he calls a great game, is original with his language, drops the cliche only when unavoidable. He brings a lot of humor to it, knows when to shut up (and McCarver even does sometimes), drops in the esoteric reference from time to time, CLEARLY knows his baseball history.

AFAIK, Joe Buck was the inventor of the concise, “track. wall. gone.” a GREAT home-run call which has been totally ripped off since – so much so that I’m not sure he even says it anymore.

As far as zooms and swooshes. Whatever. It’s modern TV production. FOX might do a little more of it than other stations, but that kind of stuff has been going on for 10 years now. I’m almost oblivious to it.

Baseball is different than football in terms of “shots” too. Football runs a play that can then be disected in slow mo while nothing happens.

Baseball is a lot of nothing happening. I think the close shots of the faces of the pitcher and batter bring a lot to the game. I think they try to recreate being at a game a little between pitches. I mean what do you do? You look up at the Budweiser sign, look at the scoreboard, look at the kids banging on the wall, then you watch the pitch.

Watch a classic baseball game on TV. Catcher throws the ball to the pitcher. Camera stays there in centerfield with that one shot of the battery until the next pitch. Every pitch. All game. Ho hum.

I’ve liked Al Leiter, too, mainly because you only hear him once every two innings. He’s had some really interesting things to say that really bring you into the game. Even small stuff like last night on the liner back to the pitcher. He says, “that looks really fast on TV but usually you have it all the way and its not that tough of a play.” That’s good stuff.

McCarver might say stupid shit sometimes, but not every thing out of his mouth is dumb. I think most of the time he has something good to say. And he’s pretty good with Buck. The other day Buck says, “we’ve seen Mel Stottlemyer more tonight than in the 1964 world series,” and McCarver was cracking up.

35

Amen. At some point on Sunday night, Buck & McCarver mentioned that someone had struck out in his previous 3 AB’s…followed by dead air. I opined that Krukow would be saying right now that “he’s got the hat trick, and he’s going for the Golden Sombrero”. :smiley:

I love Krukow.

36

I thought he went to “Home Run! Slam-a-lama, DING DONG” like in his commercial.

The whooshy graphics don’t need to be part of the broadcast. I don’t see them on ESPN or local baseball broadcasts. This season has been the first that FOX has made the score graphic flashy and irritating. They suck.

37

Can I get a job laughing at Buck’s jokes? I’ll do it for half of what McCarver makes.

38

One thing Fox hasn’t done…yet…is use the crowd shots to flog their upcoming series. They launched this abominable practice 3-4 years ago; “oh look, there’s the entire cast of Ally McBeal sitting together, enjoying the game”.

39

They’ve been doing that during football season so I’m a little inured to it. I think it bugged me at first to.

I think they whoosh in and highlight whoever has the ball, or they whoosh it when they change the down or something.

I’ve come to accept the “between batters” mini-commercials and the zooming in on the “budweiser” sign during the game. They know that between innings I’m on Monday Night Football and they gots to pay the bills.

40

Amen to that. I keep expecting a quick cut to the 3rd base coaches box and hearing:
Joe Buck: And there’s Jason Bateman giving signs to Damon. I’m surprised Bateman has time for that considering his starring role on the critically acclaimed Fox show “Arrested Development” airing Sundays at 8:30.
Tim McCarver: That Aaron Benton is one funny guy.
Buck: And now to explain 3rd base coach hand signals, here’s our little cartoon buddy, Scooter.
Whooooooooooooosh
At this point, McCarver has slowly but strongly entered the rarefied air of broadcasting irritation heretofore populated solely by Billy Packer.