We all have our opinions of “national” announce teams. From the guys at ESPN to FOX, ABC, NBC and CBS. Now we can add the announce teams that covered the four division series for TBS.
I think it’s time we take a look at the crews and the TBS production as a whole.
First the production or what you see as you watch a game. It has been very subpar especially from a network that has covered baseball for 30 years. There doesn’t seem to be enough cameras to cover the action, I’ve heard that ESPN and Fox used a minimum of 10 cameras in this round of the playoffs in the past. To me it looks like TBS may only be using 6 or 7. They totally missed the flight of Johnny Damon’s home run in Game One and had a poor replay angle of the home run in the one game playoff between San Diego and Colorado.
They’re way too busy pushing they’re own agenda whether it’s coming back late from a break and missing plays or bombing you with wrap around promos about “Frank TV”. I think part of the problem is they don’t seem to have many advertisers and they are using the Frank TV promos for filler. By the time that show actually airs no one will want to watch it.
They had a power outage during Game Three in Colorado on Saturday night. There was a fourteen-minute delay because of a computer glitch shutting down some to most of the field lighting at Coors Field. So they decided to throw it back to the studio in Atlanta and talk with Ernie Johnson, Cal Ripken, Frank Thomas and special guest Curtis Granderson. When the lights come back on at Coors it takes a few good minutes for the light to get to the point where the umpires will let play continue. They come back to the game and almost miss the first pitch. There is no excuse for this, the people at the field know the umpires are getting ready to re-start the game, they need to let the pitcher and the players get in a few tosses so why didn’t someone say hey we need to come back here now. No they were too busy yukking it up with the Big Hurt. Then when they do come back it’s not to the game announcers in the booth its to the sideline reporter. Who the hell does that?
The quality of the product seems to be really off, in Cleveland it was like they had a mic on everyone of the fans in stands as the background noise was so loud you couldn’t hear the announce team at times. They’ve also had a lot of audio bleed over with other voices in the background either from an off camera boom mic or something bleeding through from the truck.
Shot wise I am far from impressed with TBS, many times during my broadcast the picture on a standard definition TV actually pixelates or digitizes and gives you the digital pixel squares. It’s like they’re using inferior equipment and a digital zoom on a pocket camera.
They also carried some in game interviews on way too long that served no purpose the perfect example is the Indians fan with the drum, John Adams, in the bleachers. They almost missed a homerun because the guy was telling Craig Sager what year he bought his second drum and what he paid for it with the tax. Then instead of saying, “thanks we’ll see ya later” they go back to the drummer boy after the home run for more.
I’ll start the announcing team reviews with the studio crew of Ernie Johnson, Cal Ripken and Frank Thomas. At first I didn’t think either would be able to hang with EJ but Cal seems to have come around. In fact the other night he started to ask Granderson, who plays for the Tigers, questions about what it was like to face the Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez. He had a couple really good questions and Curtis had a good answer. Frank Thomas just adds nothing. It’s as if his wife didn’t want him around for another two weeks and told him to go find something to do or someone to hang out with.
Chip Caray, Tony Gwynn and Bob Brenly. I just don’t know where to go with these three. Sometimes they are so brutal I want to cut my ears off like Van Gough. Other times I feel like Gwynn isn’t so bad but then I feel as if I’m listening to one of the chipmunks break down baseball. Bob Brenly hasn’t said one thing to add to the games and is a waste of space that with the size of Gwynn has a better use. As for Chip Caray, he is grandson of the late Harry Caray and son of Skip Caray, and I just don’t get what TBS saw in this guy. Does he have pictures of Ted Turner naked with hookers snorting coke off of his chest? This guy is a bigger tool than Joe Buck, who only surpasses Caray in sense of entitlement. He is openly rooting for the Yankees and he just can’t hide it. With statements like “And the Yankees come roaring back”!!! Now mind you this was because Alex Rodriguez got his first hit of the series with no one on in a game they’re losing 2-0 at the time. I think my eardrum just popped and I’m gonna send Caray the bill.
Don Orsillo and Joe Simpson. I’m going to be honest here. I find it hard to say anything bad about Orsillo being a Red Sox fan and hearing him call all the games on NESN. I’ve always felt Don was a good announcer, even better with out the silliness that over come him and Jerry Remy at times, and he showed it on a national stage. I think he is the least experienced of the guys in the four groups calling the games on a national stage. He’s made some mistakes on name pronunciations of guy’s he hasn’t seen play much, if at all, but he’s been better than average. Joe Simpson did okay he wasn’t great and he is far from a good baseball analyst but I don’t think TBS thought they would get much from this team and anything good that came of it was a bonus. I’d have liked to see Orsillo with a stronger second guy. It’s also very difficult to have camaraderie on the air with someone you’ve never worked with and this goes for all the groups.
Ted Robinson and Steve Stone. I could hit these guys harder than the Diamondbacks hit the Cubs pitching staff because they called the series that involved my team. 
Being a Red Sox fan and an American League guy I know a lot about those teams. In fact I think I know more than those two in the booth did combined. They constantly mixed up David Ortiz for Manny Ramirez calling the one by the others name all the time. The constantly mixed up who was where on the field like today when they had Mike Lowell chasing the ball down the rightfield line when it was obviously Kevin Youkilis. I will say this though, Stone knows the ins and outs of the game and I was pleasantly surprised with the former Cy Young award winner. I will say this on their sideline reporter Jose Mota. I understood about 28% of what he said. Is “ahdoajaaaahxlahit” even a word? The only thing I understood 100% of the time from Mota was “And back to you”. They should have never have gone to him in the first place.
Dick Stockton and Ron Darling. Stockton is one of those broadcast legends, like Dick Enberg who you always loved but he’s past his prime and he doesn’t quite understand it. But when he hits it on the head it’s as good as it gets. But those times just don’t happen as much as they should. Darling, did from what I watched of that series a good job. He was better than Brenly, more consistent than Gwynn and did a better job on the players than Stone.
I guess when you look at the big picture some aspects have been better than what we usually have. We didn’t have Joe Morganisms, the obvious from Tim McCarver, the pomposity of Buck or the stupidity of Chris Berman with the nicknames.
One of the problems I think TBS had in putting together the announce teams is all the other people who would have been good are under either contract elsewhere, like FOX or ESPN or were already schedule for football coverage.
Overall TBS needs to improve drastically if they expect to do this on a regular basis and starting next year they are going to have a weekly Sunday afternoon game. It’s time to get some quality equipment, top-notch technical people to do the games and quality broadcasters in the booth. If that doesn’t happen they’re going to have Frank Caliendo impersonating announcers and doing the game solo.
