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07/17/2005: Gem o'the Day:
Ok. More like "Gem o'Friday", but I'm catching up with my baseball reading, OK? Over at the Hardball Times, John Brattain nails one of the reasons why listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver call a ballgame is such a pain (though yes, BuckCarver is but a part of John's complaints...):
So … where are we people? The All-Star break is mercifully over. I’m not sure whether to blame FOX or MLB or commissioner Bud Selig or any combination of the three but geez, can we get rid of the technological bells and whistles and mindless, meaningless in-game interviews? Why were fans subjected to an interview with Texas starter Kenny Rogers while NL reliever Brad Lidge’s fireworks were relegated to a small window? We tuned in to watch a ball game which allegedly has baseball‘s best and brightest, not listen to some 40-year-old pitcher with behavioral problems. The whole Buck/McCarver/Chevy/H-H-R-Y-A sign idiocy was beyond pathetic.
This is baseball’s showcase? It was more like a "Price is Right" showcase—a testimony to rampant consumerism. I wish the suits at FOX would require a word limit on announcers. You get to say a certain number of words during the telecast and when you hit your limit you have to shut up for the rest of the night. Just show the ballgame—what fans tune in to see—and not Tim McCarver and Joe Buck’s verbal diarrhea, in-game interviews with cliché-rattling athletes, or special effects that make one think that there’s a 12 year-old computer genius with ADD running amok in the production truck. If FOX and MLB ran a dog show, the “best-in-breed” segment would feature dogs dropping a dookie or puking up carrots in the middle of the floor.
We just want to see baseball’s best doing what they do best.
Len on 07.17.05 @ 11:23 AM CST
