Wow, once again I’m glad I taped the game so I could watch it later. Kenny Albert sure made me miss the SNY guys. Kenny must have a famous father or something because there’s no way he earned a national play by play baseball gig. He is terrible. I know I’m supposed to genuflect at the Altar of Albert but I’m not. I wonder if that is his real speaking voice or if he puts on a Marv-lite impression?
What was the point of showing me Manny Ramirez at bats. It was his second game back, and good job out of McCarver on calling out Fox on hyping the return of someone from susupension. I wanted to watch lots of Manny at-bats this season but Omar wouldn’t let me.
I’m glad baseball hyped the Gehrig thing – I tuned into the Yankee radiocast at 1pm to not hear it. Maybe they aired it in the pregame, but I sort of expected to hear it. Did they do it later?
I hate the way Sterling sits there in silence making Suzyn vamp right before first pitch. He will not say a word until the first pitch is on the way and she does her genuflecting before him. Truly nauseating. Put on the game today right at 1pm to see what I mean. You can switch over to Howie right at first pitch.
Finally, the Media Goon asks if the Toronto (Canada) Blue Jays were happy to wear the Stars & Stripes? It really makes no sense if you think about it.
I’m pretty sure the red hats are universally hated, no?
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You know I'm a fan of yours, but I am also a Kenny Albert admirer. The man often does numerous sports in a week and still brings it as far as information is concerned. I'd rather listen to him over Joe Buck's self-referential snarkfest any day. Fox is the real culprit here, with the non-stop network promotion, intrusive and uninformative graphics, poorly matched broadcasting teams- the list goes on. Of course the Manny spotlight was ridiculous – especially since it came without any real reporting on how he was being received.
And oh – those hats.
the whole idea of FOX (or any national network) even showing ANY Manny at bats is a self-inflicted shot at their own credibility. But then again, FOX wants eyeballs. Me, I listen to Howie and Wayne on WFAN when the Mets are on national TV. I need to listen to them more (I love hearing Howie's cracks about wanting the Philly Phanatic to smash all of the Mets black batting helmets). I do hate that I missed McCarver being right about something (what you noted about him calling out FOX over Manny's at bats) – it happens so seldom.
The red hats are good for a team like Philly who wears red normally. Our nation's colors are RED, WHITE, and BLUE – use one of those colors to make the best patriotic hat possible for each club (i.e. Mets and Dodgers using a blue hat with the colorful logo). The Jays maybe should have gone with a Maple Leaf alternate hat, or red and white (Canada's colors) on the blue hat.
I avoided Fox AND the red hats by simply not turning on the TV. As for the hats, you know… we describe America as "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie (and Chevrolet)", among other things. We already use baseball as a defining national icon. So why is it necessary then to turn around and start reflexively defining baseball in terms of America? It's not necessary. Go watch "Field of Dreams" again. Baseball honors and reflects the culture and spirit of America by definition. The red hats are nothing but a cheap publicity stunt. They might as well have said "Bud Selig" on them.
There has not been a good baseball broadcast on an over-the-air TV network since NBC lost the MLB contract in 1989 (or was it '90)? CBS was horrid (I actually wrote an essay on that once in freshman composition class in college), and Fox is carrying their torch. The non-stop graphics, the cross-promotion, crappy announcers–all simply awful. Don't even get me started on that stupid "Fan Cam" business.
Between the commentators babbling on about nothing and half the screen covered with meaningless stats and pointless graphics, they ruin it. Seriously, I don't tune in to a baseball game to hear Tim McCarver sing. Hell, I don't even like hearing that jackass talk! (Oh, and Tim, if you're reading this, I'm sure someone out there in the market for a manager if that's what your really want to do. Send in your resume and be done with it. Yes, you're there to provide commentary, but nobody wants to hear you drone on for 3 hours about how you're right and everyone else in the stadium is wrong.)
Anybody who's not old enough to remember NBC's Game of the Week on Saturday afternoons just doesn't know. Costas and Kubek were their "B" team. Chew on that a while.