There is no accounting for taste. I find McCarver very unpleasant to listen to. He's so judgmental and often just wrong on top of it.

McCarver just hasn't been the same since they got rid of Scooter the Talking Baseball

I think we take a great deal of pride in getting things right,

I like that.

I started my career and did a ton of baseball early on and when I stopped doing it I missed the hell out of it. We stopped in 89 and we got back into it in the mid 90s with the Baseball Network and they shared the world series with at that time Bob Costas on NBC. We went back and forth from NBC to ABC and that’s the last time I did baseball.

I can't recall any special Al Michaels broadcasts. Even his style eludes me. I guess that can mean he was like a very good umpire - if you're not noticed then you did a good job - or that my memory is fading.

From a broadcaster and production point of view, what’s the best stadium to work in?
Al: From the announcers’ point of view, the Meadowlands, and Kansas City second and why because they were built at a time when the architects and the teams paid attention to the fact that the broadcast booth should be in a position where its easy to see the game because you are sitting at the 50 yard line and you’re close to the field.

Now they’ve build these gigantic stadiums where they would rather sell a luxury box in that general location. In San Francisco, you might as well be calling the game from a blimp. Even with 20/20 eyesight you still can’t read the numbers on the players’ jerseys when you look down.

That's interesting, but not surprising when I think about it. At least baseball broadcast booths are still behind home plate, where you can see everything that happens from as far away as you can get.

I can't recall any special Al Michaels broadcasts.

He's best known for the Miracle on Ice.

In terms of baseball, he's probably best-known for broadcasting live during the aftermath of the '89 Loma Prieta quake, which was very good ad-hoc journalism.

Michaels was the #1 play-by-play man for the Giants in 1974-76 on both radio and TV, and he was exceptionally good: unusually intelligent, insightful, articulate, and witty, all without making his "personality" the theme of the show. He was tremendous, and it was obivous that bigger stages, and major nationwide stardom, shortly awaited him.

He isn't perfect; no one is. But Michaels has been as consistently outstanding as any broadcaster can ever be expected to be, particularly given the breadth of sports he's handled. He's what Bob Costas, a major-but-flawed talent, would love to have been.

I still remember Al Michaels' call of Dave Henderson hitting the homer off Donnie Moore when the Angels were one strike away in game 4 of the 1986 ALCS. He didn't add any extra words to his call. What sticks in my memory is the power of the shock in his voice when he finished the call and said " . . . and it's GONE!"

The way he said that one syllable word, "gone" had tremendous power. See if you don't remember the same thing.

He was tremendous, and it was obivous that bigger stages, and major nationwide stardom, shortly awaited him.

It's only a matter of time before Dave Flemming and John Sciambi shuffle off to those "bigger stages" too, unfortunately. What happened to the beloved Voice of a franchise, we ask? Well, aside from the fact that most organizations seem to fire any play-by-play man who turns 50, there's the idea among everyone--and equally unfortunately, it's the truth, at least monetarily and publicity-wise--that broadcasting for a national network is a promotion from broadcasting one team locally for many years. Even locally, television is now the big chair, which is an icredible mis-alocation of talent, since anyone can host a TV show but few can actually do good radio play-by-play. But if that aspect of the culture was different, we could have Al Michaels in his 34th year with the Giants, Dick Enberg longer that that with the Angels, Costas with a team, Dick Stockton with a team. . . not to mention guys like Harry Kalas and Dewayne Staats on radio, where they belong. Hell, those of you who weren't in the midwest in the '90s won't believe this, but Joe Buck was actually good on the radio!

Who would you say is the most underrated sports broadcast personality right now?
Fred: A guy who does it for me that really doesn’t get enough acclaim is John Miller, who does baseball. I love the way he makes it fun, he know the game inside and out. He knows the rules and is always on point. So for me, he’s the guy who doesn’t really get the acclaim for someone who is doing a national game.

I'm as big a Jon Miller fan as the next guy. However, having listened to Duane Kuiper's call of 756 and Miller's (and O'Brien's), Miller struck out. He failed to capture the excitement of the moment. Kuiper was, per usual, truly outstanding at that moment.

FP Santangelo mentioned on his (Sacramento) radio show the next day that Kuiper stood up during the radio call and literally rose to the moment. FP said Kuiper's veins in his neck were throbbing as he made that call... Also, the next morning on The Rise Guys, FP's radio show, Milo Hamilton called in and said much the same thing -- Miller's call was inadequate. Kuiper really captured the moment for history.

By the way... I don't know who 'the most underrated sports broadcaster' is right now. However, I might suggest that Ken Korach, who does the A's, and I assume he's completely unknown nationally, is underrated and excellent. Korach doesn't have too much talent around him now, but he nonetheless makes A's broadcasts (when I get the chance to hear them) very good. He always captures the excitement on exciting plays. Korach is somewhat of a homer, but not anywhere near the midwest and east coast homers.

Unfortunately, I think Miller's problem was that he just wasn't all that excited by the moment. For one thing, the breaking of a record like that is a foregone conclusion by the time it happens, not something that nobody expected. Kuiper's being an ex-player may have been what made the difference in this instance, actually.

I agree completely on Korach. He's an excellent, excellent broadcaster.

Wasn't Michaels with Cincinnati before his stint in San Fransisco? Anybody know where he started his broadcasting career? I seem to recall a story about him broadcasting into a tape recorder from the bleachers in Brooklyn -- any verification?

Seems everybody's forgotten that Michaels was the one who did the Denkinger call in the '85 World Series game 6. I think McCarver argued that Orta was safe -- have to watch the tape again.

Hell, those of you who weren't in the midwest in the '90s won't believe this, but Joe Buck was actually good on the radio!

I believe it. The only time I ever liked Joe Buck was during the 2006 All Star Game in Pittsburgh, where he did a half-inning from the stands, only with a microphone and a scorecard.

Television gives otherwise good announcers incentive to joke around and waste time on-air. Here in Utah we get mostly Rockies games on FSN, with the occasional D-Backs game. The Rockies games are watchable, at least. I can't sit through a single one of those D-Back TV broadcasts. Too much monkeying around.

For what it's worth, my favorite MLB radio broadcast team of all time would have to be the Cardinals of the mid-to-late 50s. Joe Buck, Joe Garagiola and Harry Caray, all young and fresh. I've only heard one game with all three, though, and it was just the last few innings of a regular season game against the NY Giants. Still, you can't beat that combination.

He's what Bob Costas, a major-but-flawed talent, would love to have been.

So true. I remember Costas being asked what his dream job would have been and he said..."To be a play-by-play baseball announcer for 25-30 years...for one team"

Unfortunato, he became Bob Costas.

9. Rich Rifkin Posted: August 10, 2007 at 09:54 PM (#2480687)

Who would you say is the most underrated sports broadcast personality right now?
Fred: A guy who does it for me that really doesn’t get enough acclaim is John Miller, who does baseball. I love the way he makes it fun, he know the game inside and out. He knows the rules and is always on point. So for me, he’s the guy who doesn’t really get the acclaim for someone who is doing a national game.

I'm as big a Jon Miller fan as the next guy. However, having listened to Duane Kuiper's call of 756 and Miller's (and O'Brien's), Miller struck out. He failed to capture the excitement of the moment. Kuiper was, per usual, truly outstanding at that moment.

FP Santangelo mentioned on his (Sacramento) radio show the next day that Kuiper stood up during the radio call and literally rose to the moment. FP said Kuiper's veins in his neck were throbbing as he made that call... Also, the next morning on The Rise Guys, FP's radio show, Milo Hamilton called in and said much the same thing -- Miller's call was inadequate. Kuiper really captured the moment for history.

Sunday at 8 p.m. (ET), more likely after the Nats-Arizona game ends, since it will start at 4:40, MASN is scheduled to rebroadcast the Nats at Giants game from Tuesday. Bob Carpenter did a great job with the Bonds call -- "That ball is history!" He and Sutton are a pretty solid team and have fun together...not quite Kalas and Ashburn in their prime, but better than a few other teams I can think of.

The Cardinals gave Costas that chance in 2002. His failure to take it cost him my respect.

FP Santangelo mentioned on his (Sacramento) radio show the next day

FP F. Santangelo hosts a radio show? Who's next, Bob Brower?

Here's a good example of the nickel and dime-ing that goes on these days:

The Los Angeles Daily News reports Angels' TV man Steve Physioc's contract expires after this season and the team and FSN West could be looking at all options next season.

FSN West will give radio play-by-play man Rory Markas a shot at doing some TV work, having him call the Tuesday-through-Thursday games in Toronto while paired up with Mark Gubicza. On KSPN-AM (710) radio, where Markas has been doing games since 2001, Terry Smith will likely team with Jose Mota.

The Angels would like to see Mota succeed as a TV play-by-play man on FSN West and KCOP Channel 13 games, where he and Gubicza were hired to do 50 games this season. However, sources say that it was FSN, not necessarily the Angels, who pushed more for Mota and Gubicza as replacements on a third of the 150 local TV games that would have gone to Physioc and Rex Hudler.

And a key reason was that Mota and Gubicza cost the network a combined $2,000 less per game (they each receive $2,500 per broadcast vs. $3,500 for Physioc and Hudler), meaning the company saved $100,000. Physioc and Hudler have said publicly they enjoy the extra time off during the grind of the season, but the fact is, it cost them each about $175,000 in salary.

Now, none of these broadcasters is anything special. But the White Sox dumped Jon Rooney over money, too.

Wasn't Michaels with Cincinnati before his stint in San Fransisco?

Yes, Michaels was the Reds play by play man for a few years before going to San Francisco. At some point in his career he did radio in Honolulu because I remember reading an anecdote where Michaels talked about doing high school sports there and having to deal with all of the Samoan names.

Yesterday, I happened to watch Games 1 and 3 of the 1987 World Series on DVD. Al Michaels made McCarver surprisingly tolerable simply because he was bright and willing to needle McCarver. Also, Jim Palmer was the third guy in the booth and he really cut into McCarver's time substantially by pretty much keeping him away from all of the pitching aspects of the game. There were a few times when McCarver would start babbling about pitching strategy and Palmer would cut in and pretty much contradict what he was saying.

Perhaps the greatest moment was in the 8th inning when Gary Gaetti was batting against Todd Worrell. McCarver spent at least a minute highlighting how the Cardinals kept shifting third baseman Jose Oquendo closer and closer to the line before each pitch. He was just railing on it and the fact that "Gaetti will never be able to pull a Worrell fastball like that anyway". Then, Gaetti smokes a line drive directly at Oquendo - WHO DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TO MOVE - and McCarver spends the next half-inning talking about how bad the positioning was and how the Cardinals got lucky. You could audibly hear Michaels rolling his eyes.

Anyway, Michaels had a much better grasp of baseball history than Joe Buck does, so he was better able to put things into context without over dramaticizing things.

I was surprised by how frequently the production included a "SABRmetric" tilt. For example, in a discussion of the "HomerDome", they brought out stats showing that from 1985-87, more homeruns had been hit in road Twins games than at home as well as the league average for both. They also had stats about the percentage of times a batter was able to drive a runner in from third base compared to the league average. Anyway, my conclusion is that while lots of good stuff has been added (always having the count, the runners on base, etc.), announcers now just expect the truck to provide them with the info rather than actually thinking and grasping what the info means before the game and coming off knowledgeable during the flow of events.

You could audibly hear Michaels rolling his eyes.

Wonder what that sounds like. Must be gross.

Steve Physioc makes Hawk Harrelson seem like Vin Scully. Physioc sucks more than words can ever express.

I was surprised by how frequently the production included a "SABRmetric" tilt. For example, in a discussion of the "HomerDome", they brought out stats showing that from 1985-87, more homeruns had been hit in road Twins games than at home as well as the league average for both. They also had stats about the percentage of times a batter was able to drive a runner in from third base compared to the league average.

Wasn't this kinda the stuff that ticked the pissjangles out of Bill James?

A few years ago the Giants hired McCarver to do Sunday games. He was so hideous, so insulting to the intelligence of the viewer, and his style so grating compared to Krukow, Kuiper and Miller, that, as I recall, he was gone before the season was over.

Wasn't this kinda the stuff that ticked the pissjangles out of Bill James?

I remember him complaining about stats in small sample sizes ("he's batting .438 since this morning"), cherry picked stats that don't necessarily go togther ("first guy since -- to hit 30 doubles and steal 50 bases", without mentioning that so-and-so hit 29 doubles and stole 60 bases last year...), lack of context, etc.

The stuff Will Young mentions sounds pretty good.

A few years ago the Giants hired McCarver to do Sunday games. He was so hideous, so insulting to the intelligence of the viewer, and his style so grating compared to Krukow, Kuiper and Miller, that, as I recall, he was gone before the season was over.

The low point was when, after Benito Santiago got a walk-off somethingorother to win the game, McCarver announced how appropriate it was for Santiago to be the hero that day since, after all, it was Cinco de Mayo....

I have a book McCarver wrote sometime in 1987. Can't remember the title, but it sure is a laugh. He goes on boasting about his ability to predict plays before they happen. Remember, McCarver was with the Mets in the mid-80s, including 1986, when he also covered the NLCS for ABC.

I remember him complaining about stats in small sample sizes ("he's batting .438 since this morning"), cherry picked stats that don't necessarily go togther ("first guy since -- to hit 30 doubles and steal 50 bases", without mentioning that so-and-so hit 29 doubles and stole 60 bases last year...), lack of context, etc.

That was Vin Scully's only weakness during the Eighties on NBC, IMO. He would broadcast the most meaningless stat what appeared to be every 5 seconds.

As for McCarver, I have a soft spot for him from his Met days. Yes, he was just as opinionated and just as wrong (though I wasn't as sure about the latter as much back then), but he was easily the most fun broadcaster I had ever heard up to that time. He never sounded bored and could make a dull game sound exciting.

He also worked very well with Ralph Kiner, who sounded like a zombie with the extremely boring Lorn Brown announcing the games in '82 (the year before McCarver came to the Mets), and extremely well with Steve Zabriskie.

I have a book McCarver wrote sometime in 1987.

I won that book and a Jack Lang 25th anniversary tome on the Mets for a trivia contest on Howie Rose's show on the Fan in 1987. Not really a bad book, but he does come across as a little pompous.

I think Michaels called games for the Hawaii Islanders (AAA) in the late 1960s. I remember watching a rerun of Hawaii 5-0 once and seeing him in the episode, guest-starring as an attorney...

A few years ago the Giants hired McCarver to do Sunday games. He was so hideous, so insulting to the intelligence of the viewer, and his style so grating compared to Krukow, Kuiper and Miller, that, as I recall, he was gone before the season was over.

I am not sure which was worse, McCarver for those Sunday games or Physioc as the main PBP guy with Ron Fairly as color man after Hank Greenwald left in the early 90s. Physioc is indescribably bad, and pairing him with Rex Hudler exponentially increases the grating, awful pain inflicted on the viewer. I am not sure if there is a worse broadcasting team out there, and with mlb.tv I catch some awful, awful ones.

Joe Angel and Tim McCarver is the broadcasting team from hell. Joe wasn't bad, but boy was Joe ever the master of the obvious. I only barely remember Physioc with the Giants (as well as Wayne Hagin) which is a good thing because both of them are god-awful. I'm just going to forget those guys existed and draw a line from Greenwald to Miller. It's a shame Greenwald seemed to have lost the fastball when he did TV for the A's. Greenwald with the A's and Greg Papa with the Giants was like bizarro TV broadcasting. It'd be like Bob Murphy doing the Yankees or Vin Scully doing the Angels - it just sounded wrong.

Joe wasn't bad, but boy was Joe ever the master of the obvious.

Put that one ... in the WIN column!

He's just about perfect for the current incarnation of the Orioles, though. I mean that in the nicest way.

It's unbelievable to me that Joe Angel still has a job broadcasting major league baseball... just horrible.

The low point was when, after Benito Santiago got a walk-off somethingorother to win the game, McCarver announced how appropriate it was for Santiago to be the hero that day since, after all, it was Cinco de Mayo....

It was a walk-off single (though had the winning run not scored, it would have been a double). Bottom of the 10th, scored tied 5-5, Luis Pineda was pitching for Cincinnati at Pac Bell, JT Snow led off with a walk, Reggie Sanders walked, and Benito Santiago ripped a 1-1 pitch into the gap in left center field. The only question as to whether the Giants would win that game on that play was whether Sanders, who had casts on both legs and a spinal cord injury, was going to pass JT Snow before Snow finally scored the winning run.

Speaking of Puerto Ricans on steroids... When I was a graduate student at UC San Diego and Benito was still a Padre -- this was probably the 1990 season -- I saw him at a nice outdoor eatery in Solana Beach (just north of Del Mar). He was not just incredibly ripped, but he was sporting a size extra small buttoned up black shirt, which was mostly unbuttoned, exposing his muscular Mr. T-starter kit gold jewelery. He also brought along with him two surgically enhanced women and a guy who looked like an accountant.

It's unbelievable to me that Joe Angel still has a job broadcasting major league baseball... just horrible.

Well, his voice sorta sounds like Jon Miller's.

From Bill Simmons' recent column:

I just got the 1987 World Series DVD collection for my birthday, and while watching Game 1, I heard something I thought you might appreciate. Announcing the game: Al Michaels, Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver. During the third inning, with Tony Pena batting, McCarver said, "If you're a contact hitter, you have to make contact if you want to hit in the major leagues." It's just good to know that some things never change.

It's unbelievable to me that Joe Angel still has a job broadcasting major league baseball... just horrible.

Well, his voice sorta sounds like Jon Miller's.

That is kind of uncanny, and it wouldn't surprise me that it was at least part of what got Angel that job with the Orioles the first time around. Maybe Angelos thought that the fans wouldn't notice the difference.

#34 -- Is Will Young Bill Simmons or is Bill Simmons Will Young?

Is Will Young Bill Simmons or is Bill Simmons Will Young?

Actually it was an email to Simmons from a guy named Tim.

Is Will Young Bill Simmons or is Bill Simmons Will Young?

It's Young Will Simmons.

It's Young Will Simmons.

So long as it ain't the Guns of Young Will Sonnet.

Repoz, I believe my father mentioned that show to me a few times (I never saw it before myself, unless I saw it as a toddler). I think Walters Brennan's repeat line in each episode was "No brag - just fact!"

"No brag, just fact. Jimmy here is second best!"

Ah, I remembered correctly. Thanks, Bob!