Into the Woods

I’m not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last baseball fan to blast “The Hawk”, an exceedingly obnoxious announcer for the Chicago White Sox local TV broadcast. His most notable crime against humanity is his exclamation “He-gone” whenever an opposing batter strikes out. It doesn’t sound so bad until you have watch a few games with him at the mic. You can read all about his atrocities at Heave the Hawk.

This fellow is only one of many local TV announcers who do little more with their important charge than cheer on the home team. The Seattle announcers are pretty horrible as well. Why do I bring this up now? I have been enjoying watching the Yankee games for several summers in Boston on MLB.tv, the subscription service for watching games over the internet. Generally speaking, the Yankee home games are shown with the Yankee announcers on the YES network, and for the away games I’m at the mercy of whichever network is covering the game. The MLB games have been available on satellite, digital cable, and Internet for several years now, and announcers have to realize that even though they are broadcasting to primarily a local market, they are also broadcasting the game to viewers around the country, many of whom are not rooting for the same time as they are. The Seattle announcers, in particular, provide very little interesting analysis of the game or of the season for either team. It’s just about what hit or strikeout the Mariners need at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not hoping for the normal one inch from retarded announcers you get on the National broadcasts on ESPN and Fox. However, a little bit of unbiased commentary would be appreciated. Some of the bigger market announcers, like the Red Sox announcers on NESN and the Yankees announcers on YES seem to understand this a bit better. I don’t find myself wanting to strangle the Red Sox announcers when the Yankees are losing to the Red Sox. They call the game as it is, and seem to get excited when both teams do things well. Michael Kay of the YES network, says his infamous “track–wall–See-Ya” whenever anybody hits a home run, not just the Yankees. Both NESN and YES announcers analyze both teams in depth and talk about very interesting aspects of the game that even serious baseball fans might not pick up on. Lee might consider this a weak treatment of the subject, but that is all I have.