John Jackson wrote a column yesterday where he ranked the announcing teams, TV and radio, for each of Chicago’s five major sports teams (yes, even the Blackhawks). Now, I’m sure that when an editor gives a guy a story idea like this, and the writer has to actually work around the announcers he’s going to rank, it gives the writer pause.

Well, true to form, Jackson takes his nuts and stuffs them in a purse. He does rank them, but he uses “controversial” categories like “Best and Brightest”, “Average”, “Could Be Better” and “Jury’s Still Out.”

Guh. What is this Johnny, Little League? Everybody gets a trophy? Did you bring orange slices and Sunny D, too?

Fine, if you’re not up to it. I’ll do it for you.

Pretty, Pretty Good
Chicago Cubs TV – Len Kasper and Bob Brenly
Fine, I’ll admit it. Len Kasper has bought me dinner. But I made up my mind on Len and Bob long before that. You know what makes them good? Watching Cubs games on TV isn’t a chore anymore, and it has nothing to do with the product on the field. Even when the Cubs were good in 2003 and 2004 I wanted to shoot myself between the eyes with a nail gun because of Chip Caray. Even now, just tune in one of TBS’ Sunday afternoon games and you’ll be reminded of what a hack Chip is. He just never shuts up. What did George Carlin say about baseball, that it’s a “nineteenth century pastoral game.” It’s meant to be leisurely. There are long periods of inactivity punctuated with frenzied action. Chip was all frenzy. Nonsensical frenzy.

Len and Bob let the game breathe. You actually hear the murmur of the crowd sometimes, maybe even a beer vendor yelling in the background. They get excited when something exciting happens. The Cubs supply the drama, Len and Bob supply the information about it.

It is true that the better the team, the better the broadcast in most cases. Two years ago, the Cubs were dreadful and nobody could make them fun to watch. But now they’re good, and the broadcasts are better for it.

What sporting venue in the world is better than an excited Wrigley Field? The sights, the sounds, it’s all perfect. On TV or on radio, there’s an electricity that comes through. We’ve all been there in moments where if the dump had a roof, the roof would come off, and it comes through again on the broadcast. The sounds of the fans going nuts aren’t competing with a blabbering idiot screaming to hear himself scream.

That’s not to say Len’s not capable of memorable calls. All of us can think back to Alfonso Soriano’s extra inning game winner against the Rockies and “see” the play with Len screaming, “It’s gonna drop down!” or Matt Murton somehow finding home plate from third base (never an easy chore for Ginger) on the wild pitch against the Phillies the night the Cubs passed the Brewers and hear “The Cubs win, the first place Cubs win!” and I don’t even need to set up the infamous “Ohhhh baby!”

You spend more time with your favorite team’s announcers in baseball than in any other sport. If you actually like listening to them, it just makes it that much better.

It’s that much better.

Unorthodox, but it works
Chicago Cubs Radio – Pat Hughes, Ron Santo and Cory Provus

Honestly, the fact that it’s fun to listen to the Cubs on the radio has everything to do with Pat Hughes. Some day, when he’s at Cooperstown getting the Ford C. Frick Award, I want the world to pause to recognize the yeoman’s work he did with Ron Santo. Every bit of useful information you glean from a Cubs’ broadcast comes from Pat. He’s play-by-play man and straight man all in one. He’s simply great at it. He’s the best play-by-play man, TV or radio, in any sport, this side of the brilliant redhead at Dodger Stadium. As Ron would say, “Believe me.” I’ve heard them all from Dave Niehaus to Franchester Brennaman to Howie Rose to everybody in between, on XM radio and the DirecTV baseball package. There are a lot of good ones, and even more who are abominable. Vin Scully is still the best. I watched an hour of the Dodgers-Rockies on Sunday afternoon for no other reason than to listen to Vin. I do that quite a bit, actually.

Pat’s the next best. He’s got it all, the voice, the knack for giving you the pertinent information as the play is going on, and then the ability to quickly summarize the whole play so that Ron can analyze it. Or whatever Ron is going to do with it.

So what do we make of Ron? Not all Cubs fans are the sappy, dopey, pollyannas that most of the America thinks we are. There are a good bit of hardbitten, cynical, ready to be disappointed at a moment’s notice, fans too. And you know what? We all know Ron Santo’s a terrible baseball analyst. He adds nothing to your knowledge of what’s happening on the field. In fact, he likely detracts from it. So what do we have in common with the happy dopes? We all love him.

If he wasn’t a great former Cub would we put up with his propensity for saying “Believe me,” moaning through Pat’s calls, constantly asking Pat to catch him up on what happened so he can update his scoresheet or acting like a 3-1 deficit in the second inning of a game in May is the end of the world? Of course not. But he is, so we do.

Ernie Banks is “Mr. Cub” but he’s not the most popular ex-Cub anymore. That’s easily the case with Santo. His battles with diabetes, his incomprehensible inability to get enough Hall of Fame votes, and his assortment of bad toupees only make him more likable. So when you tune into a Cubs radio broadcast you do it to hear Pat tell you what is happening and for Ron to just be Ron. The game hasn’t changed much in the last 132 years since the Cubs started playing it, if you need baseball strategy explained to you every day, Ron’s not going to be able to help you.

As for Provus? He’s only there to keep an eye on the “Square D scoreboard and to broadcast the fifth inning so that Pat can take a steamer and catch a break from Ron. It’s a good thing, because he’s hardly capable of even that little task he’s asked for.

Maybe he’s just there to warm up an Acapulco Taco Pie for Ron?

Is it dry in here?
White Sox radio – Steve Stone and Ed Farmer

Both guys were the “other” half of two of Chicago’s best baseball radio tandems, Stone with a Caray (Harry not Chip) and Farmer with the rotund John Rooney. Together they are knowledgeable and dull as dirt. When you wish they’d add Wayne Nordhagen to add some electricity to the broadcast you know they’re on low wattage. Hey, maybe Ron Kittle could stop by for…on second thought, forget that. With Stone you get good analysis, even if he has a fetish about the visibility at all times, and some really bad puns.

Farmer is…there. Steve holds a mirror under his nose every half inning to make sure he’s still capable of fogging it up.

Competent, but who’s listening?
Bulls radio – Neil Funk and Bill Wennington

I’m sure there are Bulls fans who actually still listens to games on the radio. I’m not sure I know any of them. Funk is a longtime pro and good at his job. He and Derrick Dickey were a good team, before Derrick suffered a stroke and eventually died. He and Harvey Catchings did not make a good team. Harvey’s “analysis” consisted mainly of him laughing uncomfortably at everything. Wennington is Canadian and tall and has some Bulls’ championship rings. He always seemed like a nice enough guy. So that’s aces! Congratulations.

All schtick and no substance
Bears radio – Jeff Joniak and Tom Thayer

They’re just awful, really. It’s mostly Joniak who is completely overmatched in the booth. He can go several minutes without bothering to give you the score, the down, the distance or how much time is left. You know Jeff, it’s radio. You kind of have to tell us that. Not everybody listening to you is watching on TV or sitting in the stands. He also gets excited at odd times. He’s got a whiny voice, so he does a fake basso profundo (I have no idea what that actually means) to make him sound manly. What he sounds like is a cat who got hit by a car in mid “meow.” If only. He tries to give cute nicknames to the players, all of which are lame. He’s tried to hang “Windy City Flyer” on Devin Hester, which really makes Devin sound like a little red wagon.

As for Thayer, he’s OK. As a former offensive lineman he thinks we, the home (or car) listener want to hear him break down line play. We don’t. Here’s a little secret. We all know that a good offensive line is important, but we don’t want to hear about it. I know it’s important to keep the eaves on my house clear of leaves in the fall. I do not want to listen to a bald guy with a Hawaiian beach house talk about it for three hours once a week. And he’s got a high voice, too. Half the time it sounds like the real announcers went to have a smoke and their sisters are sitting by the open mics.

You can watch the game on MUTE, yeeee-sssss!
White Sox baseball – Hawk Harrelson and Darrin Jackson

There are a lot of reasons I’m glad I’m not a Sox fan, and here are two of the primary ones. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have these twits calling every game. Hawk pretty much spends every game trying out new nicknames for the guys, yelling for no reason, reminding us he invented the batting glove and trying to work in a reference to the Red Sox so he can call them the “Carmines.” And he’s the good one. Jackson is so dreadfully dull that the State of Illinois has liquidized his personality and has implemented it as a more humane way of killing death row inmates via lethal injection.

It wasn’t all that long ago that when the Cubs and Sox played that the home announcers would do those three games and that was your only choice. The lesions on my brain have only now begun to heal.

I do not choose my own pick to click and I don’t play along at home and I don’t understand the scoring. What I do know is that I wish The Jesus from The Big Lebowski would pick up a gun and pull the trigger until it goes click on that bit. That’s my pick to click.

The long and the horrific of it
Bulls’ TV – Tom Dore, Stacy King, Red Kerr, Wayne Larrivee

Let’s start with the Comcast trio of Dore-King-Kerr, easily the worst announcing trio since OJ and Joe Namath got kicked out of the Monday Night Football booth and had to leave the Giff. Dore is horrendous and has been horrendous since day one. I’m partial to homers, but I can’t take him. I do know why the Bulls’ attendance stayed strong even in the Tim Floyd years. There are 25,000 hard core Bulls fans in the world and all of them went to games, paid exorbitant prices and watched shit basketball in person to avoid having to listen to Tom Dore.

As for Red, he used to be a lovable old coot. Remember when MJ would start every game by taking the rosin bottle and filling up his hands and burying Red in a white cloud that would have made Tony Montana jealous? Neither does Red. One thing Chicago teams love to do is to trot out old announcers far beyond their primes. There are times when I’m sure Red’s chair has gotten turned around and he’s actually facing the crowd, but hasn’t noticed.

You know what I love about Stacy King? He either thinks every Bulls fan was born in 1994 or that we all have developed Alzheimer’s. To listen to him talk about hustling and playing defense and sharing the basketball is ironic, considering that he did none of that, ever. Here was a guy who was a talent coming out of Oklahoma. He was 6’10 he could run, he had a few nifty post moves and an erratic jumper that you figured he could refine from about 12 feet in. Instead, Stacy got fat, and lazier. After a promising rookie year he just got fatter and even more lazier and became useless. He changed his number from 34 to 21 because he claimed he was getting too many of Michael’s fouls by accident. Of course this made no sense to anyone, considering 34 looks about as much like 23 as 21 does, and more importantly, since your fat ass never played any defense you could never actually get into foul trouble and even if you did, nobody would care. Stacy used to rent a limo and drive to DeKalb to try to catch some NIU tail on weekends at Amnesia. Hey Stacy, there are fat white girls in Lincoln Park, you didn’t need to head 60 miles west.

Wayne’s still really good, even if I make sure to stuff his tailpipe with cheese curds every Saturday night at the UC as payback for heading to Lambeau and sticking us with Joniak. (Not only that, I’m still trying to forget Gary Bender.)

I’m not going to pretend I watch hockey

I’m sure that the guys who do the Blackhawks games are fine, and white and Canadian. Good, eh?

So there you have it. One good team, one that is enjoyable to listen to if not overly analytical and not much else. Wow, we really deserve better than this. Don’t we?