I hate baseball on Fox

[rackensack]

@El_Kabong

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.

Not far off. They actually mike nearly everything – the bases, the outfield walls, and yes, the foul poles, on top of lots of manned parabolics and shotguns.

From a 2001 article in Mix: Professional Audio and Music Production:

Fox Baseball will run between 12 and 16 microphones throughout the outfield, ranging from Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun microphones to DPA 4061s with Crystal Partners Big Ear parabolic microphones to Crown Audio PCC160 plate microphones. “We’ll probably put a shotgun on the foul pole,” explains Saltans. “We may even augment that with a contact microphone on the actual foul pole to get a real good gong if that ball hits the foul pole. It’s pretty shattering.” Outfield mic placement is geared to suit each stadium, he adds. “Some stadiums may have better places to mount a PCC microphone vs. a parabolic, or there might be Plexiglas out in the outfield that we might put a PCC on there as well to capture a ball hitting into the glass or a player making a jump into the padding.”

[rackensack]

While I was waiting around my hotel room for the NLCS Game 7 to start, I caught quite a bit of Game 1 of the 1991 Braves-Twins World Series on ESPN Classic. The announcers were Jack Buck and Tim McCarver, with Jim Kaat providing commentary from the stands. It was sort of gratifying to confirm that I wasn’t misremembering that McCarver wasn’t nearly as annoying back then. Didn’t seem to feel compelled to fill every second of potentially dead air with chatter, and didn’t seem to need to overstate everything. Still fumbled a name here and there, but that’s not so bad by itself. I wonder how much of it had to do with working with Jack Buck, who was a legend, had been the Cardinals’ announcer through much (all?) of McCarver’s days in St. Louis, etc. Whatever the cause, the contrast with his manner the last several years was really striking.

[Skywatcher]

@jsc1953

I hate baseball on Fox

Phil Mushnick? That you?

[jsc1953]

No; but I could be Steve Kroner .