Castiglione Takes A Break

One of the baseball blogs I frequent on a regular basis is 38cliches.com, it’s a blog devoted to the downfall of the Red Sox radio broadcast. Downfall you say? Well 38cliches is a big fan of Jerry Trupiano who called Sox games for many seasons with Joe Castiglione. “Trup”, who was known for his “way back” calls on HR’s and even some near misses, didn’t have his contract renewed after the 2006 season. The Sox and WRKO replaced him with ESPN announcer Dave O’Brien, who in my opinion does a great job. BUT when “Obie” is gone due to his ESPN commitments he is replaced with former Red Sox and Padres PR guy, Glenn Geffner. Here is where the broadcast falls off.

Geffner you see is very amateurish in his calls of the game before him. He relies heavily on the media stats he used to once create and has no camaraderie at all with Joe. In fact in a lot of cases it seems as if Joe just tunes him out. Geffner, who is referred to in 38cliches.com as “3×5”, just cannot function in the broadcast booth and the broadcast suffers immensely in the days when O’Brien is absent.

Now that I’ve laid the ground work, let’s get on to the basis of this post. With three days off for the All-Star break , Castiglione has decided to take a little extra time off and will not be on the air when the Sox resume the season with a four game series against their AL East foe Toronto. Instead we be hearing O’Brien call the games with Geffner. Like I said personally I love “Obie” calling the games with Joe, Geffner I can do with out. It should be interesting to see how O’Brien meshes with Geffner if at all for four days. Geffner hasn’t learned anything from sitting next to Joe for half a season so I hold little hope he will learn something from Dave in four days.

I just hope Castiglione isn’t using this time off to contemplate retirement or leaving the post he has held for 20 years. It would surely be tragic if he decided to leave the broadcast because Double L (Sox CEO Larry Lucchino) continually force-feeds him Geffner and his 3×5 note cards on a regular basis.