Father Scott
I’m not going to link to anything or post pictures or be funny. I just have a quick idea to float out there, and then I’ll leave you alone.
There’s plenty of complaining about announcing and announcers and it gets old to read about, but I actually think for the most part their problems are understandable. They’re often hired based on name recognition rather than skill, so you end up with the Joe Morgans and Emmitt Smiths of the world who make up words or make assumptions about things and basically add no value to a broadcast. And then when you get to the playoffs, networks choose their ”best” announcers regardless of how much of a sport they have watched that year, or who they have focused on. If Tim McCarver has watched 75 Cardinals games this year, it doesn’t mean that he has anything insightful to add to a Phillies/Dodgers tilt, which is why he spends the whole time complaining about Manny Ramirez.
The MLB playoffs have been full of inanity. Buck Martinez, who drives me crazy because of the way he says Ortiz, and also because he sounds like the slimy senator in the Godfather, made a comment last night during the Rays/Red Sox broadcast along the lines of the fact that most Red Sox fans may not know who Matt Garza is, or that he’s capable of dominating. News flash: The Rays were the best team in our division, we faced them like 97 times this regular season. We know who Matt Garza is.
But I guess this isn’t entirely Buck Martinez’s fault. How is he to know what Red Sox fans do or do not know? It’s true that most baseball fans might be shaky on the guy, so I guess it’s plausible for him to make the next step in assumptions. And no matter how much research he does, you can’t really understand a team or its fan base by cramming for a week. You have to live through the ups and downs and understand the team’s problems and strengths based on something other than whatever grabs the national headlines.
So his problem isn’t a lack of baseball knowledge, it’s (well, in addition to being annoying) that he doesn’t know who these teams are particularly well (at least compared to every other team), nor does he know the fanbases.
Well, you know who does? The teams’ regular color announcers. So, here’s a solution to make your broadcasts more enjoyable, TBS: Even if you want to force some boring announcer like Chip Caray down our throats (or Joe Buck, Fox), fill your three-man booth with a color announcer for each team.
Grab Remy, or if he doesn’t want to do it, grab a radio guy. And then add whatever two-bit lounge singer the Rays employ to do their games. Then when Chip says something general like “this isn’t the Josh Beckett we’ve grown accustomed to seeing,” Remy could pipe in that this is what we’ve seen all year, so it’s not that much of a surprise, you ridiculous douche.
