Dear TBS Sports,
Why do you hate sports so much? What did it ever do to you? Did the Rafael Ramirez/Bruce Benedict Braves teams of the ’80s sour you so much on sports that you have to try to torture innocent baseball fans all over America?
Because, to put it elegantly, holy shit does your baseball coverage suck ass.
Then again, how could it have not. Look at the stable of “talent” you assembled for your little role in the month long postseason baseball tournament.
It’s a veritable “who’s who” of talentless jerkoffs.
You had to find four play-by-play guys for the first round of the playoffs. You scoured the earth and came up with the comatose Brewers’ play-by-play man Brian Anderson (and assigned him to work the Brewers series) and the human Sominex that is Don Orsillo (often confused with Otto Pilot from Airplane!
You even arranged for Dick Stockton to work again. Which, logistically had to be tough:
And, of course your “lead” announcer, the supposed “start” of your broadcasts is none other than Chip Caray.
Harry Christopher Caray III. I can think of no greater insult to Harry Caray that this complete douche has his name. For seven seasons, Chip babbled his way through hundreds of Cubs’ games, and we were forced to listen to it. For better or worse, your team’s announcers are your conduit to the club. Ours was making it awfully tough to watch.
His style hasn’t changed, and that’s the problem. His affected voice, the constant need to talk and talk and talk and talk and not really say anything. His inability to stop talking is his greatest, and most annoying weakness. But for all of that narration, you don’t learn anything. He’s just bleating, loudly, for no apparent reason.
He’s never figured out two basic concepts that good announcers understand innately. First, the game is televised, we can see it. Just complement the action, don’t overwhelm it.
Second, stop guessing what’s happening, wait another half second and comment on what’s happened. This is a skill that is completely foreign to Chip. His constant need for attention, his unquenchable craving to fill every silence with his own voice will never allow him to be good at his job. He can suck the life out of any sequence in any game because he’s constantly guessing.
And his hyperbole machine is always running at full capacity.
Every flyball is “towering.”
Every line drive is a “rocket shot.”
His home run call is a mangled mess, and it often starts with “swung on, belted!” It’s a call he stole from his old Seattle Mariners’ partner, recent Ford Frick Award winner Dave Niehaus (who is also a bloviating gasbag), who stole it from the Indians’ Tom Hamilton.
It’s almost perfect that you hired him, though. It’s just another example of a television network with no clue what sports’ fans actually want.
What we want is Vin Scully and Jack Buck. When NBC had the World Series they just called Vin and he stopped by and did the games. He was used to working alone, but if you put him with Joe Garagiola he was just fine. He’d have been better without Joe, but Vin was a pro. Still is. He’s 80, and he’s still the best.
As a Cubs’ fan I should hate Jack Buck because, for no other reason than he was the Cardinals’ announcer for…ever. But I didn’t. Jack, like Vin was just great at his job. No schtick, just him telling you what’s happened.
Back when CBS bought the World Series away from NBC critics and fans panned the broadcasts. But it wasn’t because of Jack. It was because of the stream of inanities coming out of Tim McCarver’s mouth. They still are, and now he’s working with Jack’s smarmy and condescending (two things his dad never was) son. And Fox’s telecast sucks, too.
Vin Scully is 80 years old, and Jack Buck is dead. So we don’t really want them.
But we want to go back to the way the games were announced back then. Less was always more.
Nothing sounds better than the background noise at a baseball game. The stir of the crowd, vendors shouting, a little organ music. That’s baseball. More than whatever you are trying to pass off as it, is.
Then again, fewer and fewer parks ever let you hear the background noise anymore. Every pause in the action is filled with recorded music, or ads.
But we’d never know it anyway, because your announcers won’t shut the hell up. Ever.
That’s what we already miss about the Cubs’ absence from the playoffs. Nothing sounds more like baseball than Wrigley. Game one was a great example. There was an excitement in the air as the game started, then a raucousness to things as Mark DeRosa homered to give the Cubs a 2-0 lead, and then, complete panic and awkward silence the second that James Loney hit the grand slam.
But nobody watching on TV had any idea. Dick Stockton was babbling away, Ron Darling was trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about and Tony Gwynn was just eating very loudly too close to the mic.
The crowd was telling the story, and you all missed it.
Your baseball coverage is abysmal. And you know what, without a team to root for, it’s just not worth it to try to slog through it.
Thanks for continuing the ruination of the most important time of the year of our favorite sport.
I hope you all get hit in the face with a big bag of syphillis.
Love,
Andy
Try listening to the recorded MLB games from back in the 1930’s. I have game two of the 1938 World Series between the Cubs and Joe Dimaggio. (The Cubs were swept) It is interesting at first and then it becomes agonizingly bad. Pitches were either fast or slow. Runners were either safe or out. The announcers spoke in that deep baritone, “this is the most significant baseball game ever to occur” voice. Crowd noise, however, redeems those recordings. You get the feeling that although announcing styles change, the fans remain the same. Long live baseball, in spite of everything.
I couldn’t agree more, though I may not have been as harsh towards Chip Caray. I just feel that all complaints will fall on deaf ears, something to the tune of this:
“Dear Andy,
Thank you for your correspondence. I appreciate the effort you put into this letter and I would like to assure you that I take every complaint and dispose of it in the same way that I dispose of all the money that I get that I deem “unclean” because it has touched the hands of you peasants. So rest assured that your letter will rest at the bottom of a ditch dug by my servants outside of my mansion.
Yours Truly,
Ted Turner
P.S. Have you seen this Frank Caliendo guy? He’s hilarious, you should totally watch him only on TBS.”
Anyway let just hope that sometime in the next twenty years TBS loses its contract to broadcast the playoffs.
I knew that wasn’t Otto!
Kevin Foster has joined Jeremi Gonzalez in the afterlife.
Harold Reynolds has been the only bright spot for TBS’ postseason broadcast team. Baseball Tonight has been worthless since ESPN fired him. Instead we get f-cktards like John Kruk.
Actually, Wrigley was playing loud music (think night out at any of the surrounding bars, or Grand Central, English, etc) during games 1 and 2. This happened both pre-game and between innings. It’s probably the cause of the losses.
Well typed. Chip is still absolutely dreadful. Thankfully? I have XM and have resorted to the delayed hometown Rays broadcast. The whiny Dave Wills (the ex-White Sox postgame guy) is the analyst and some guy who sounds exactly like him does the play by play. They suck slightly less. Why doesn’t Len Kasper get any national work? Josh Lewin’s pretty good too. But Jesus Christ, a monkey could have assembled a better group of broadcasters than the jerkoffs at TBS Sports.
Perfect.
As a Cub survivor, I found solice in radio: WGN. I listen to the home radio version of the games. It is the only way to keep from throwing things at the thing. and Josh Lewin does indeed suck. the only time he’s quiet is when he has to turn over the page of written schtick and nuances. the only sounds of the game he ever paid attention to were the high-lights, when he was recorded saying, “does the crack of the bat have to be so loud, I mean really?”
I don’t see what was so bad about Anderson or Orsillo. No, they weren’t spectacular, but they made all the right calls and didn’t say anything idiotic.
And say what you will about Joe Buck, but at least he lets the crowd speak for itself in big moments. (Unless McCarver immediately leaps in with a needless, obvious comment)
Count Dracula and Chip can burn in hell, though.
Man I am clutch. You Cubs fans still pine for me? I throw hard (albeit not accurately) and generally suck at fielding. I am already playing like I am on the Cubs!
Andy,
We love your words. Always have, and always will. Your wit is consummate. Your insight is singular. But enough is enough. Buy a thesaurus. Take an English class. Do ANYTHING to make your articles more readable. PLEASE. We’re pained to read through the shabbily constructed sentences, the haggard descriptions, and the absence of knowledge pertaining to comma usage.
All we want is to see you evolve into the writer you can be. All we want is to see Desipio.com achieve the renown of which it is worthy. Make us proud.
Much Love (Honest!),
The Grammar/Punctuation Police
Nerd Alert!
I’m a Rays fan (yes, we exist). After watching tonight’s debacle, TBS might have to clean out the love stains from their broadcast booth before heading down to St. Petersburg. Ol’ Chipper was so infuriating in his constant, loud rooting for the Sawx that I had to watch the ninth inning on mute. Not having to hear him have an orgasm on live TV actually made the loss less painful, if you can believe it.
They must have paid him a cash bonus every time he worked the words “Red Sox” and “comeback” into the same sentence.