Now I don’t mean to overdo it with all this baseball blogging. I’m planning on writing a column on Obama v. Hillary this weekend, so I’ve not completely checked out of the political sphere.Oo, and I have another Austan Goolsbee themed post coming up too (we might be getting to full fledged man-crush territory).Anyways, I was reading Bill Simmons’s latest effort on ESPN this morning and he had this to say about ESPN not covering the MLB playoffs:
People love piling on ESPN. Hell, I even did it once upon a time — then they hired me, brought me to a remote location and had me “cleansed” by the Haitian guy from “Heroes.” With that said, you can’t tell me that you didn’t miss the Worldwide Leader during the first round of the playoffs. Red Sox fans, did you enjoy getting stuck with two National League announcers who seemingly hadn’t seen an American League game in eons (I knew we were in trouble in Game 1, when Ted Robinson sounded legitimately excited that there were seats on the Green Monster), or watching a home playoff game that was miked so quietly that you couldn’t hear the crowd and it sounded like a Wimbledon match? I bet you missed the Worldwide Leader. I bet you did.
Actually, Bill, I didn’t miss the “Worldwide Leader.”I didn’t miss Joe Morgan make a fool of himself, nor did I miss even the remote possibility that Chris Berman would make a cameo. Last time I checked Steve Phillips was complete failure of a GM in New York and thank god we weren’t subjected to hearing a single word from Jon Kruk.Now, I didn’t actually watch the ALDS games, so maybe the guys doing those games were particularly worse. But Steve Stone was a well known as a great commentator and Ted Robinson seems to be legit too. I don’t know where Simmons gets off calling them “NL guys.” Sure Stone was the Cubs commentator…3 years ago! Since he’s gone on to actually call ESPN games and White Sox games and Ted Robinson’s been involved with a laundry list of AL teams.Apparently Simmons has redefined NL guys to mean anyone other than Joe Morgan and the NESN guys. Furthermore, the only evidence Simmons gives us regarding the announcers inexperience is that they were excited about the addition of seats to the top of the Green Monster. Obviously this is Simmons watching the Red Sox for the first time this season on a network other than NESN. I’m sure this must have been shocking for him given that he seems to exclusively watch about 1/4 of the Red Sox game, but this is par for the course. When I’m forced to watch Cubs games on FOX or ESPN I’m subjected to the indignity of hearing how great the fans are, how cool it is that there are apartment buildings behind the outfield that people watch the games on, and a ton of stupid crap about Bartman. But you know what? I get over it (actually I just listen to the radio broadcast) and I certainly don’t claim that ESPN would have done it better.
