I think that Cherry’s more specific than that. I was under the impression that he calls the 3-0 lead the “worse lead in hockey”.
Another football one I heard and probably was another Maddenism:
“At this point in the game, when you’re down by that much, you really need to start thinking about putting some points on the board.”
An old favorite from The Onion…
It sounds stupid, but most baseball fans know exactly what he meant…and that is that Phillies didn’t have the pitching to win low scoring games and thus had to out-hit their opponents.
Here’s one from Joe Theisman: “Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.”
It sounds stupid because it’s stupid. I know what he meant: if he had said “the Phillies need to rely on their offense because their pitching won’t get it done” he’d be fine. But he didn’t. He said something moronic.
I might let it go if it weren’t Joe Morgan. I have no idea who got the idea that the man could commentate, but I want it to stop. When he’s not making some inane and obvious observation, he’s attempting to impress us with his knowledge of the mechanical minutiae of the game, spouting irrelevencies and outright falsehoods. I can’t count the number of times that I hear something like “the catcher wanted the pitch inside, but it drifted over the plate, and that’s why Pujols hit the ball so hard,” while the replay shows us the catcher clearly set up outside with the ball right on target. Joe follows up with “yeah, see the ball is coming out over the plate there, even though the catcher is set up inside”. No, Joe, you’re wrong. The problem, of course, is that when Joe stops talking, Jon Miller starts.
Joe Morgan example: They were talking about a player that was red hot in AAA, but fizzled in the bigs: “Yeah, but there’s only one major league.”
Rod Black, doing play by play in a baseball game, and for some reason talking about Hayley Wickenheiser: “You know, Rance, some people say she’s the Gretzky of hockey”.
“When Dallas puts #60 in at tight end, you know it’s gonna be either a run or a pass.”
Thanks so much for ruling out the surprise punt on 1st down, Madden.
He’s consistent, though. I would like to believe what Juggernaut said, that he meant the Phillies would have to win by heavy slugging, but… a few years back, prior to a Braves-Astros playoff game, he noted that the Braves had won the previous game because they “scored more runs than the Astros did.”
I immediately started taking notes lest I forget such Delphic wisdom. You say the team that scores the most runs wins the game? Wow.
Any time a sportscaster mentions swagger, moxie, or momentum, it’s almost certainly blathering idiocy coming out of his mouth. Beware.
In the hurdles yesterday the announcer pointed out if they failed to clear the first hurdle they would not finish. I am glad I have that understanding now.
Clearly Steve Martin is not the Dallas QB.
Yeah. As a Giants fan, I’d like to apologize for Joe Morgan. We all regret his broadcast career greatly. Though in our defense, we booed Tim McCarver heavily when they broadcast the 2002 World Series in a public park.
Meh. I don’t find it moronic when a sportscaster uses a phrase that is well known and accepted use by just about everyone in the world who follows football or baseball. He meant they needed to rely on their bats. If that’s the worst thing he says while trying to fill 3 hours of air every game, then he’s doing pretty damn good job.
In the UK, we call this kind of malapropism “Colemanballs” after Private Eye (I think) started a column collecting this kind of wit, because David Coleman sometimes let enthusiasm get the better of him.
But the person with the greatest reputation for these is Murray Walker. He’s retired now, but he was the BBCs motorsport commentator (and particularly Formula 1) for nigh on 50 years.
I think the finest example, which happened back some 30 years ago was when he was commenting on a rallycross event. Rallycross was a sort of hybrid event that the BBC used to cover on a Saturday afternoon. Carswould race round a circuit that was part tarmac and part mud track. There was lots of junk thrown up, so the windscreen cleaners were always on, except for the front runner.
Murray had just finished explaining the advantages of leading in this form of competition, including the huge benefit that you could easily see where you were going, when the leader of the race ran into the side of a hill they were suppose to steer around.
I can still see this car bounding into the pile of earth that stood higher than the car. I wonder if it’s on YouTube; I’d doubt it personally, as it’s BBC archive footage that probably antedates video recorders.
One of Murray’s problems was that he regularly jinxed British F1 drivers. He’d joyfully proclaim that so-and-so “must surely win now”; if so-and-so was a British driver, a bit would fall off his car, or fall off someone else’s car and in avoiding it he’d crash. Alternatively, he’d drive over shards of bodywork, puncture the tyre and crash. It got to the point where his co-commentators would remind him that the driver now in the lead had asked him not to predict their sure win. Or he would, and immediately say that he’d jinxed them.
If I could still find my Colemanballs books (collections published by Private Eye 20-30 years ago) I’d have a rich vein of these to mine.
I like it! That’s almost worthy of Berra.
During the Olympics gymnastics last night, I heard the talking head of NBC (Al Trautwig, I believe) mention how the competitors were tied “to the one-thousandth of a point.” Uh, no. Six judges, scoring to one-tenth of a point, throw out the high and low, and average. It doesn’t matter how many decimals places are on the scoreboard, the closest resolution is one-fortieth of a point.
I was watching a Canadian Football league game years ago. The Calgary Stampeders were playing; they had a horse and rider who would gallop across the field to celebrate each touchdown. And they were running up the score quite a bit. “The only person I feel sorry for is that horse.”
I love Madden - at least he’s good natured and fun in a profession filled with complete assholes.
Though some of his quotes sound stupid only when taken out of context. Saying, “this team needs to think about putting points on the board if they want to win,” sounds foolishly obvious, but it is usually uttered in the context of a scoreless team deciding whether or not to kick the sure field goal or go for the touchdown. Many football fans would agree that getting the first score is a sort of psychological victory that is more important than going for possible extra points.
I also don’t mind, “This team came to play!” and other sayings that are just colorful euphemisms for saying a team is playing well.
Ugh, Trautwig is horrible. Last week, he said something about one of the men (I think from Germany) along the lines of “he isn’t the boy we all fell in love with four years ago”. Kinda makes you wonder why he’s working the gymnastics.
Here’s another Maddenism that is a favorite of my dad’s:
Madden and Summerall are calling a game where the receiver catches the ball at the sideline. His knee touches inbounds and is then pushed out. Summerall says, “He caught it inbounds! What a great catch!”
Madden replies back with, “No he didn’t, Pat. He only got one knee inbounds. That doesn’t count.”
At least he’s not John Tesh. I think it was '96 in Atlanta that he covered gymnastics for some reason. At some point he mentioned that “the histrionics are against him,” (or words to that effect; he was trying to say history but wanted to be fancy). I mean, I know gymnasts are emotional, but come on.