Dear Madams or Sirs,
Tim McCarver was once a great announcer. The year was 1985. His earthy wit and funny analyses easily out-distanced the Bob Gameres of the broadcast world, and TV baseball was never the same.
McCarver moved onto broadcast for the Yankees. The years were 1999-2001. Usually, Yankee broadcasters are hired for life. (See Sterling, John.) This time, something happened. For whatever reasons, McCarver left, and he has never forgotten the breakup. You hear the resentment whenever he calls a Yankee game.
I am not the first person to recognize this.
But last night, there was an incredible example:
Arod crashes into the catcher at home plate and is called out, though video stills later suggest he was never tagged. One stop-action shows his foot touching home plate with the catcher's glove apart from his leg. Tim's analysis: It's a vicinity play; the catcher has the ball, and the umps always call that way, so he's out.
OK. Fine. I can buy that. It hurts, but - hell - I'm biased. I'm a little put off at how McCarver repeats six times that Arod ran through the coach's stop sign, a knock that -- for whatever reason -- does not show up on replays. But OK, fine. I can buy it.
Except 10 minutes later, Torii Hunter drops a bunt. Sabathia fields, out at first. This time, McCarver takes to the stump. This time, video stills show Teixeira's foot either touching the bag, or too close to call. But McCarver has no doubt: SAFE. BLOWN CALL. YANKS GOT AWAY WITH IT. They run the video five times. Joe Buck isn't sure. In fact, when Joe finally concludes that Teixeira's foot seemed to be pulled off the bag after the play, Tim has the perfect comeback: (I swear I'm not making this up.)
Torii Hunter had the best view of it, and he was sure he was safe!
Unbelieveable.
Tim McCarver covering the Yankees is like hiring Lyndon Larouche to report on the White House. (Wait. I better not give Fox any ideas.)
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Open Letter to Fox Sports: Tim McCarver? Why not just hire Theo Epstein to do color commentary?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
14 comments:
When he said Torii Hunter, he probably meant Laz Diaz. This is the same guy that confused Mariano Rivera with Ramiro Mendoza for 3 seasons.
Then. THEN! He kept repeating himself: "His foot was off the bag. Clearly, his foot was off the bag."
Meanwhile FOX is showing the P-in-P of his foot ON the bag and the ball IN his glove.
Clearly, his foot was off the bag.
The toe bone's connected to the...foot bone.
Vin Scully is the only decent announcer left. All the other good ones are dead.
And we get stuck with drama queens from the high school drama club.
A year ago, Torii Hunter is standing on 2nd base after that bunt because there's NO way Giambi could have caught that ball. Pretty play by Teixeira that was completely overshadowed by McCarver's commentary. Yankee fans should have been able to tune it out while they thought about how blessed they are because its not 2008.
Tim McCarver actually died of alzheimer's 7 years ago.
Fox still trots him out because of contractual obligations. These comments are really just air escaping from the corpse. You cant hold him accountable for anything he says.
The best was when Mariano came out and walked the lead off guy
"You know, watching him warm up, I was SURE something just looked very wrong with him!"
and then he retires the next 3 batters. McCarver tries to pretend he never even mentioned it.
I can't believe Davey Johnson hasn't strangled him yet.
It's not too late.
I just noticed the Lyndon LaRouche culty picture. Very funny.
According to Red Sox fans, McCarver is a Yankee homer. I would think that, if anything, he was a closeted Cardinals booster.
If Chip Carey was paired with Tim McCarver, the heads of fans across the country would simultaneously explode.
I find listening to my ipod while I watch the game to be less stressful. He used to be one of the best in the game but the Moe and Larry combo on fox is just a joke.
MUTE works pretty well for me. I watch the game and talk with my family about other things.
There they go again on the play where Aybar didn't step on second before throwing to first. It was a very cagey call by the ump, but somehow Buck and McCarver determined it was an abomination to the game.
Dadlak:
Yeah, he won't shut up about it. Here's the thing: It wasn't a bad call. Yeah, you get the call if you're "in the neighborhood" but when you look at the replays, Aybar wasn't even close to the bag. He needed a GPS unit to find the neighborhood from where he was.
Post a Comment