The ump was merely signalling that no out was recorded and the ball was in play. Similar to signalling that a ball was trapped, not caught, in the outfield.
The call on A-Rod was marginal. I think the difference between the normal arm motion of running and swatting at the ball is just a matter of inches. If he hadn’t straightened his arm I think it would have been no interference.
Regarding whether a walk or a homer is more useful- depends on whether the pitcher is much more effective from the windup than the stretch, and whether a baserunner can rattle him. In some situations, a walk may indeed be as good as a homer in that situation. It’s all in what makes the second batter more likely to score.
Ooh, can I complain about Fox’s choice of music? I generally don’t think of the instrumental parts of songs like Guerilla Radio as really being baseball music. (Actually, this goes to an observation I made a while ago, in that sports broadcasts and news programs use new music while commericals generally use classic rock. There are exceptions of course, but I think it still pretty well holds.)
Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are talking about Ortiz and saying he reupped with Boston this year and he may be the best deal in baseball. And McCarver said Epstein signed him for peanuts! Peanuts! Yes, and more peanuts!
Yeah. Chances are neither of them actually could remember what his salary was, nor the guys in the transmission truck, and they didn’t didn’t want to sound like even greater idiots by giving a wrong figure.
Did, however, enjoy Buck’s little zinger about what spending 25 million bucks got the Yankees, after Brown and Vasquez combined to give up eight runs in four innings.
…Did you really expect anything more from the network that brought us “The Simpsons”? Do you think Fox really cares about the broadcasting the game itself, or is it all for the “show”? - Jinx
Heehee…gee, maybe the Yankees decision to spend a bazillion dollars on an extra shortstop, instead of beefing up their pitching, might not have been wise.
On the homerun off the foul pole – could the sound of the ball hitting the pole have possibly been that loud naturally? Or did Fox, or the stadium, have the foul pole miked?
They supposedly DID beef up their pitching with Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez. It just didn’t go the way it usually does with them.
Also, I suspect there was a mic on the foul pole. The ball hit that steel mesh and we got EVERY reverberation from it. I bet that might be more like the sound you’d hear if you had your ear on the foul pole, moreso than what you’d hear sitting near it, but I could be wrong.
At first I thought that FOX had decided to add sound effects to home runs. But when I realized what it was, I thought it was pretty funny, just a big cymbal-crash to accentuate the homer.
Hey, did anyone else notice that the even-more-annoying-than-Wesley-Crusher talking baseball seems to have disappeared the last few nights? Next, if we can get rid of the flames logo when a pitch goes over 90 mph, we’ll at least be back to barely acceptable coverage.
Though I thought the close ups of faces in the dugouts were good. Baseball is so much a game of attitude, that it’s nice to see it. And the last two nights were the first time I’ve ever seen close up shots of Yankees looking like they expected to lose, which is important to see (and of course rewarding, speaking as a Sox fan).
Luckily last night the crowd in the bar was loud enough to drown out whatever the announcers were saying. And more importantly, we sang ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ loud enough to drown out whatever George Costanza was singing. Restoring 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame’will indeed truly show that we as a nation have restored our correct priorities. Why hasn’t Kerry made this a central part of his campaign?
Last night was the first time I watched the games. First I couldn’t find them (thanks, Brighthouse!) and second, I was surprised (being more a football guy) to learn that Fox was carrying both series. So they had to start the second game after my kids’ bedtime. Thanks MLB, it’s clear where the next generation of fans are coming from! And I want to xxxth the nomination of McCarver as a total talking buffoon. Is the WS on Fox as well?
My impression, although I haven’t seen any documentation to back it up, is that they have someone with a directional mike following the action. If you listen carefully, the sound of players’ voices often gets louder every time there’s a close play at home or on the bases, which suggests that the director momentarily gains up a directional mike feed; probably the same thing is done to catch the sound of homers clanking off the fences.
I have this vision of Harry Caul from The Conversation hunched over a sound board in the broadcast truck.
