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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Lucha libre bonanza!...Loudmouths vs Michael Kay and his Large Head!
YES does a great job at game coverage minus the fact that their rotating collection of announcers can get annoying. On any given day it can be a combination of Michael Kay or Ken Singleton on play by play with Paul O’Neill, David Cone, Al Leiter and John Flaherty rotating in and out as color guys. It’s hard to hit that rhythm you expect from your broadcast team over the course of 162 game season when every day is a new combination. Neither Kay nor Singleton does the strongest play by play in baseball and they can both be a little bland sometimes but neither makes me want to turn the volume down.
Michael Kay and his large head are not universally loved by fans. He likes to flex his Fordham education by using big words and this turns off much of his blue collar audience. To their credit some of his broadcast partners have done a good job bringing him back down to earth. (Especially Paul O’neill who will make fun of him about his head size, his waist size and his pretentiousness) Almost every partner he has will make a comment like “That’s just my opinion but I didn’t go to Fordham.” It’s these types of light hearted jabs between Kay and the ex Yankees that make me think he doesn’t have as big a chip on his shoulder as some fans think. While the majority of fans like their play by play guys to be some one they think they can go get a beer with: The Vin Scully type who has a good story for every occasion. Michael Kay is more of a game show host. He likes to moderate the chaos of the game and add in a witty line every now and again.
Thanks to Baseball Musings.
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Actually, I think that's "ironically, Scully is also a Fordham grad."
And I've never noticed Kay acting "smart." Most of the time he dumbs everything down.
Their use of second-rate WFAN talent in their original programming shows a tremendous lack of imagination (or probably $$), as was pointed out in the article.
Their facility, by the way, is located outside of the city entirely, and they rarely mention that it's in Stamford, CT. The blogger linked above points out the shortcoming to SNY having an attractive street address at the expense of quality. Well, YES is 100% different.
Their signal looks good on my cable.
Their facility, by the way, is located outside of the city entirely, and they rarely mention that it's in Stamford, CT. The blogger linked above points out the shortcoming to SNY having an attractive street address at the expense of quality. Well, YES is 100% different.
Their signal looks good on my cable.
My dad and I (both non-Yankee fans) have come to the conclusion that Yankee games provide the best HD picture quality of any other broadcast we watch on TV. The same, if not slightly better, than ESPN's game broadcasts.
And I hate the Yankees but as a huge baseball fan I'm constantly watching their games and I almost always find myself having to watch it on mute. Michael Kay can be unbearable. Without getting too much into all the stuff about how he's pretentious (and comes across like he was somehow a contributing member to the Yankees success the last 15 years), the man's voice is just NOT for broadcasting.
I think the greatest strength of their color team is that all of them (minus Murcer) actually played with some of the guys they're covering, and they seem willing to give some clubhouse/dugout insight that you wouldn't get otherwise. It makes me wonder how these guys would age as broadcasters if they stuck to it, as the players they know well started peeling off. In a broadcast fantasy draft I think they would go Leiter, O'Neill, Cone, Flaherty, although Flaherty probably comes the closest to the self-effacing folksy charm that Yankee fans have embraced in guys like Bill White and Murcer.
Another empty former Yankee uni.
To clarify, this wasn't a plug for Flaherty. Just an observation, from my experience, that of the four guys I listed Flaherty is the least assertive, least likely to start a sentence with "You gotta..." I don't know that this quality equates to likeability, but I know Yankee fans have liked it in White and Murcer.
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