Broadcast Blues (2024 Version)

I have a buddy from high school (and college) whose son is a budding baseball broadcaster. He went to school at Mizzou and learned the ropes. He has spent summers calling collegiate league games and has honed his craft with the hope of making a career of it. I have listened to many of his calls. He’s great. Green, inexperienced, maybe a little too excitable, but great nonetheless. 

When my son was younger, I coached his travel ball team. One of his teammates went on to play in college, but has since hung up his spikes and grabbed a mic. He, too, is hoping to make it as a broadcaster. I recently watched an interview he did with former big league pitcher Jake Peavy, and he more than held his own. With more reps and given the right opportunity, I see success in his future.

I relate these two stories because these are just two of the hundreds, if not thousands, of prospective baseball broadcasters climbing into dilapidated press boxes all over our great country, calling our great game, to anyone within earshot or with a radio/internet connection. The Newhouse School at Syracuse has a program for this. So does the Cronkite School at Arizona State University, just to name two. We are developing broadcasters at a faster clip than we can use them. But use them we must.

Unfortunately, the old boy’s network keeps serving us, the baseball viewer/listener, crap. Tune into a game on any day on any network, and you are certain to hear dead air, trite analysis, inane observations, homerism, and just plain boring game-calling. I have written about this again and again.

To be sure, there are still great booths out there. The Mets’ triumvirate of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez is terrific. Jon Miller, Duane Kuiper, and Mike Krukow calling games in San Francisco is an embarrassment of riches. Jason Benetti got out of the south side of Chicago just in time, and is now making fans in the Motor City excited to tune in even when Tarik Skubal isn’t pitching.

But, just as often, you find yourself disappointed. A few Saturday afternoons ago, I was watching FOX’s Game of the Week. Mind you, this was a nationally televised game. This, in fact, was the only game on FOX that weekend. It was a matchup of heated rivals who, at the time, were close in the standings, and thus the game had real meaning.

For purposes of this article, I will not divulge the teams or the broadcasters to protect the (not so) innocent. At first, I thought I was being overly critical of the announcers. Sure, their banter caused them to miss a pitch or two, but at least they were trying to make it interesting. Okay, maybe it is not that important to tell us when a runner is going – especially when the result was a foul ball.

But after less than an inning and about ten annoying happenstances like those listed above, I began a running tally. It was astonishing. And, once you start hearing them, you can no longer not hear them. Now I was stuck.

After a while, the list grew too long and my fingers got too tired. The pace of their errors, misstatements, missed calls, and genuine failure to care about the quality of their broadcast exceeded my ability to document them. But, just to provide a glimpse into my perturbation, here are a few examples:

Since the beginning of last season, there has been a pitch clock. Everyone reading this knows that. But not everyone watching FOX on a Saturday afternoon does. And even those who do don’t necessarily understand the intricacies or the strategies around avoiding violations. And if you watched the game that day, you still wouldn’t. A pitcher stepped off the rubber with less than a second to go. No mention of the impending clock or the reason for the step off. Just another break in the action to continue their banter.

Another rule implemented last season was the limit on the number of disengagements allowed per at-bat. In this game, with a speedy runner on first, the pitcher had two disengagements (in this case, two tosses to first). Most seasoned fans were then saying to themselves, “the runner now has the upper hand because any throw over must result in an out, or it’s a balk.” But not everyone tuning in to the Game of the Week is a seasoned fan. And now that the cat and mouse game had higher stakes, it was incumbent on the announcers to make us aware and explain the situation. Did they do that? No and yes. No, they did not … at first. The moment passed and the runner ultimately made his way to second base on a groundout. Two or three pitches later, they brought up the potential for a stolen base after the pitcher threw over twice. But that was too little, too late.

At one point, the broadcasters were so busy chatting amongst themselves, they literally did not reference any of the first seven pitches of an at-bat. With each pitch my anticipation grew higher – would this be the one? After three balls, two called strikes, and two foul balls, the lead announcers finally told the viewers it was a full count. Nothing more.

Keeping with a theme, after the pitcher had walked two batters and was struggling with his command, on a very close 3-2 pitch, the batter took ball four. There was no mention of either a good or bad call or a good eye. They simply said, quite matter-of-factly, “that is his third walk of the inning.” 

My favorite moment may have come a little earlier in the game. There was a duck snort behind second base. Three fielders converged, and it fell for the third hit of the inning, plating a runner. As the ball was descending, the color guy said it was the center fielder’s ball. And then he misstated who was playing center field. After the ball fell and the run scored and the pitcher expressed his frustration, the color guy continued to misstate the name of the player who should have caught the ball. Now, mind you, this was in the third inning; there had been no defensive replacements; the same guys who took the field after the anthem were still out there. But, for whatever reason, he just kept at it with the wrong name. Inexcusable. 

I could go on and on (and on). Suffice it to say that if this broadcast was a final exam at the Newhouse School, these guys would have received Ds. They probably would not have failed, as they did get the score and the innings correct. But the bar has to be higher than that. We, as fans, deserve better than that. And better is available. 

There are great announcers pouring out of college and shouting out of press boxes from coast to coast. Minor Leagues, summer leagues, collegiate leagues, bush leagues, and beyond, have men and women dying for the chance to tell us how that 1-1 pitch in the ninth inning of a one-run game was pivotal to the at-bat. How the umpire calling it a ball changed the rubric and the leverage towards the batter. But, on this Saturday, all we got was, “ball two,” with no context, no analysis, no excitement. Nothing to make the game more interesting to the viewers who don’t eat this game for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

It was recently announced that Nic Cage is going to play John Madden in a movie about the broadcaster. Madden “cracked” and “boomed” his way into the public conscience and made football more exciting and more interesting to the average viewer. We have a steady supply of young broadcasters who are capable of doing the same for baseball. And yet, we are repeatedly stuck with guys who – because of their names and/or their longevity – have neither the want nor the ability to do so.

That needs to change.

PLAY BALL!