|
Guest
|
http://www.enterprisenews.com/opinions/x1659493843/OPINION-World-Series-misses-home-team-announcers-on-national-broadcasts
By David Maril
Enterprise staff writer
Posted Oct 31, 2009 at (no spam) 08:36 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BROCKTON — Baseball purists complain about the World Series being
played too late in the cool-weather autumn season and often reminisce
about the mystique of fall classic day games.
Television, which feeds the game’s profits, is the driving force
behind multiple layers of playoff rounds and prime-time programming.
However, one of television’s greatest influences on the World Series
game is overlooked these days: The removal of home-team announcers
from the network coverage of the competing teams.
If this year’s World Series teams were playing in the golden era of
baseball, you’d turn on the TV and hear Mel Allen, legendary voice of
the Yankees, paired with the Phillies’ Byron Saam. These two Hall of
Fame announcers would add special insight and the hometown flavor from
having covered their respective teams all season. More importantly,
they would be team voices, reflecting the personality and character of
their ballclubs. With rooting interests, they would do a natural job
of conveying the excitement and pressure of World Series games. The
only thing today’s network announcers pull for is for the series to go
seven game series so they get more national air-time to fatten up
their egos.
In 1965 when the Twins played the Dodgers, you had the great stylist
Vin Scully doing the Los Angeles home games with NBC’s Curt Gowdy.
Minnesota voice Ray Scott, a concise, immortalized NFL legend, worked
the games at old Metropolitan Stadium. In 1966, when the Orioles swept
the Dodgers, it was Scully and Baltimore’s golden’ voiced Chuck
Thompson. For the Red Sox “Impossible Dream” season, Boston’s familiar
pitchman Ken Coleman and the Cardinals’ Harry Caray, a bombastic
genius, were Gowdy’s partners. In 1975, Ned Martin and Dick Stockton
received national air-time. If the Pirates were in the spotlight,
you’d hear Bob Prince, whose deep, coarse voice epitomized the tough,
blue-collar nature of the team and its fan base. When the Tigers
played, you’d be entertained by the eloquent southern tones of Ernie
Harwell.
In 1969, while the Mets were upsetting the Orioles in five games, New
York fans were thrilled to hear the piercing southern twang of the
effervescent Lindsay Nelson, decked out on NBC with his brash, bright-
colored sport jackets.
Although some of these guys were recognized as partisan homers, they
were extremely fair professionals when they were broadcasting over the
network airwaves. And the great part was that there still was that
extra hint of excitement in their voices because you knew they had a
rooting interest.
Sadly, this all came to an end in 1977 when ABC gained the rights to
televise the World Series, The network made the decision that since it
had paid a lot of money for the prime-time telecasts it had the right
to use its own announcers. All the other networks have followed this
practice ever since.
Thanks to this change, the World Series means we must listen to the
monotonous ramblings of Tim McCarver, making doubleplay grounders
sound like brain surgery. When McCarver isn’t babbling away, his
partner, Joe Buck, provides smooth, but uninspired play-by-play. He
lacks the classic deep, smoky baseball voice of his father, Jack Buck.
Whether the Cardinals, Yankees, Red Sox or Phillies are playing, Buck
sounds the same and could be mistaken for a number of other generic
network voices.
The World Series radio broadcasts on ESPN are not much better. The
drama of the game is overshadowed by Jon Miller working overtime to
produce non-stop humor and chatter. Perhaps he is trying to shield
listeners from too many self-serving and meaningless comments by Joe
Morgan, his partner.
In the end, when it comes to baseball broadcasters, there’s no place
like home. |
|
|
