Searching for the Mute button…

October 24, 2008 at 2:36 am | Posted in Baseball, World Series | 15 Comments

We’re in the middle of the World Series, America’s oldest and greatest sporting event.  It’s a time when all baseball fans unite in the annual tradition of watching the games to see a new champion crowned.  What should be an entirely positive experience for the fans is unfortunately diminished every year when we have to endure the broadcasting of Tim McCarver and Joe Buck.

There are many talented analysts and play-by-play announcers working for every team in Major League Baseball.  Many of them would do a great job broadcasting nationally televised games.  So why is it that we are forced to listen to McCarver and Buck at every single All Star Game, World Series, and one of the league championship series every year?

Let me start by ranting about Tim McCarver.  As far back as I can remember, going back more than 20 years, McCarver has been the analyst for every All Star Game and World Series.  He’s been on ABC, he’s been on CBS, and he’s been on Fox.  No matter what network buys the rights to broadcast baseball nationally, they hire McCarver.  I am baffled by this because I have never heard McCarver provide any interesting insight during a baseball game.  He constantly spews meaningless platitudes and makes obvious points.  He frequently launches into lengthy explanations about mundane things as if his audience has never seen a baseball game before.  Worse, he always seems unprepared to discuss the teams that are playing.  I think he memorizes a few points about each team and then repeats these points throughout each game.  From listening to him, it’s obvious that he hadn’t watched any Rays games this season and he probably never watched the Phillies before the NLCS.  For example, he seemed amazed by the Rays infield shift against Ryan Howard after they’ve been doing the same thing against David Ortiz and other left-handed pull hitters for the last few years.

Unquestionably, my favorite memory of Tim McCarver is when Deion Sanders dumped buckets of water over him after a game in the 1992 NLCS, which prompted McCarver’s helplessly hilarious comeback of “You’re a real man, Deion”.  It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving idiot.

I was hoping that I could find a video of McCarver’s humiliation on YouTube to post here, but I couldn’t find it.  Instead, I found a very funny song about McCarver.  Why is it that it’s always Red Sox fans who post great YouTube videos:

Now, on to Joe Buck.  I was never very impressed by Buck as it seemed that his only qualification to be the play-by-play man for national baseball broadcasts was that he was Jack Buck’s son.  Jack Buck was an extraordinarily good announcer for the St. Louis Cardinals and for CBS.  Joe Buck, on the other hand, has never had anything interesting to say during any broadcast that I’ve ever seen.  I’ve also never heard him show any enthusiasm or passion for baseball.  This summer, we found out why.  He admitted on a radio show that he hates watching baseball and actually prefers watching The Bachelorette.  Seriously.  He thinks baseball is boring and he thinks the games are too long.  That’s funny since he seems to love the NFL, which has even longer games.  You can listen to his appalling comments and read about it here.

It is not good for Major League Baseball to have such useless, unenthusiastic announcers broadcasting the most important games every year.  Tim McCarver and Joe Buck certainly do not help attract new fans and they infuriate the current fans.  They should be replaced before next season.  If Fox won’t get rid of them, then MLB should try to find a new network once its current deal with Fox expires.

It shouldn’t be hard to find good replacements.  I wouldn’t mind seeing Bob Costas doing play-by-play again.  Sure, we’d have to put up with hearing him talk about Mickey Mantle every other minute and listening to his diatribes about how horrible he thinks the DH is, but at least he actually likes the game of baseball!  There are plenty of other candidates who are currently announcing for individual teams.  Josh Lewin of the Texas Rangers is one who I think would do a really good job.  The Rays radio announcer, Andy Freed, would be another good choice.  Let’s face it, anyone would be better than Joe Buck!

Likewise, there are many analysts out there who would do a much better job than Tim McCarver.  However, I don’t think that just one should be picked to replace McCarver.  My idea is that for every postseason series, the analysts from both teams that are playing would both participate in the broadcast.  So, for this World Series, it would be Joe Magrane of the Rays and Gary Matthews (I think) for the Phillies.  This way, fans would get insight from guys who have been following the teams all season.  I think that setup would work very well.  I want to actually learn information that I didn’t know from the analyst, and again, pretty much anybody would be better at doing that than Tim McCarver.

What do you think?  Can you tolerate listening to these buffoons during the World Series, or have you been hitting the mute button on your remote?