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| TMC... |
 Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:57 am |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/sports/baseball/03sandomir.html?_r=1
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: November 2, 2009
If Facebook, blogs and other inventions of the Internet age had
existed in the 1950s, would someone have created an IHateVinScully.com
Web site to grouse about his bias as a Dodgers announcer during the
Yankees-Brooklyn World Series that he called? Or how about a site
called ShutUpMelAllen.com to gripe about his supposed pinstriped
preference when he was calling some of that same series?
Fox’s Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are in their 12th World Series
together — time enough to become Exhibits A and B in the culture of
complaint, postseason edition. No announcer goes unscathed, not with
myriad outlets existing to help fans vent their belief in the biases
and mistakes of those who call the games.
One can only imagine how Howard Cosell would react to being an object
of derision by Tweeters.
•
Comments on one of three anti-Buck and McCarver Facebook groups — and
reader responses to a post I wrote on The Times’s Bats blog about
their insistence that they have no bias — describe a loathing for the
two announcers that focuses to some degree on the perception that they
are largely anti-Yankee. These include:
“You can obviously tell that Tim McCarver hates the Yankees!!!”
“McCarver can deny it all he wants, but he has clearly been biased
against the Yankees since he left their broadcast booth.”
“McCarver has STATED on National TV — I heard him — ‘I hate the
Yankees.’ ”
McCarver and Buck have said that their only preference is for long and
exciting series, and I believe that. Fans tend to listen with their
hearts and have their heartfelt sentiments supported by their local
announcers throughout the season. Then, the national announcers enter
and cannot satisfy anyone: if you are excited about great plays by one
team, fans accuse you of rooting against the other. Or if you’re from
St. Louis and played for the Cardinals, as NBC’s Joe Garagiola did,
you are thought to favor teams from Missouri.
When Kansas City played the Phillies in the 1980 World Series,
Garagiola said that a disc jockey in Philadelphia stoked fans into
believing that he was anti-Phillies — before the first pitch was
thrown.
“He called me up and asked if I wanted to defend myself,” Garagiola
said Monday from Arizona. “And I said, ‘For what?’ and he said, ‘For
rooting,’ and I said, ‘Get out of here, I just want this series to go
seven games.’ ”
Garagiola and his partner Tony Kubek recalled that the perception of
anti-Phillies bias got so bad that they needed a police escort to get
to and from Veterans Stadium. “It was absolutely ludicrous,” Garagiola
said.
When Philadelphia won the series, Garagiola said that the mother and
the wife of the Phillies’ owner, Ruly Carpenter, came into the NBC
booth to gloat. “I just bit my tongue,” Garagiola said.
When Milwaukee played St. Louis in the World Series two years later,
Kubek dealt with those who thought that a Wisconsin native (who played
for the Yankees) would favor the Brewers and that Garagiola would root
for St. Louis. After the Brewers’ 10-0 win at Busch Stadium in Game 1,
they walked to a nearby parking lot to pick up Garagiola’s car. “The
attendant looked through the driver’s side and it looked like he was
going to crawl over Joe to assault me for pulling for the Brewers,”
Kubek said Monday from Appleton, Wis.
Bob Costas said that during the 1986 World Series, the NBC switchboard
received 1,000 calls convinced that Scully, an apostle of Red Barber’s
evenhanded style, was anti-Met, and 800 convinced that he was anti-Red
Sox. “The difference accounted for by the larger New York population
and that it was a toll call from Boston,” he said.
A remark by Costas praising Oakland reliever Dennis Eckersley during
Game 2 of the 1989 American League Championship Series between the
Blue Jays and the Athletics earned him enmity when the series shifted
to Toronto.
With Eckersley’s statistics on-screen as he entered the game (which
Oakland won, to put the A’s ahead, 2-0), Costas said, “When you
consider that, Elvis has a better chance of coming back than the
Jays.” He meant in the game, not the series.
•
But the notion that he was pro-Oakland or pro-American prompted a
Toronto newspaper headline writer to give life to a photograph of
Costas arriving in the city before Game 3: “Jays Hater Costas
Disembarks in Toronto.” A radio station distributed 50,000 Costas
masks to fans at the game with his comment on each.
“I got into an elevator at the hotel with four or five burly Canadians
who recognized me and started jostling me and issuing death threats,”
he said. “But they’d had too much Labatt’s.”
Still, he got police protection.
McCarver did not respond to requests for comment before Game 5 of the
World Series on Monday night.
But last month, he said, “Quite simply, the bias comes not from the
voice, but from the ears.”
E-mail: sandor at (no spam) nytimes.com |
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| Dale Hicks... |
| Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:39 pm |
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In article <cb3afd13-0767-4099-b6cd-726a2460dcc1
at (no spam) m33g2000pri.googlegroups.com>, tmc1982 at (no spam) gmail.com says...
Quote:
=3FYou can obviously tell that Tim McCarver hates the Yankees!!!=3F
Wha wha wha? The same McCarver that fellates Jesus in Cleats? He's
finally seen the light?
I guess I've been watching the games on mute too long.
--
Cranial Crusader dgh 1138 at bell south point net |
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