Baseball announcers

Why does the play-by-play guy on radio broadcasts often take the middle innings off?

I know in some cases, they'll go over and do local TV broadcasts of the game. But I was listening to State U's game on the way back to the office and the main pbp guy gave way to another dude at the top of the fourth.

Is doing baseball pbp that taxing? Moreso than football pbp?

 

You gotta run out of material at some point. Maybe this just helps them stretch it out?

 

Some of them have to drink. See Shannon, Mike or Uecker, Bob.

 

Years ago, well before the Yankees employed two hundred broadcasters for one single game. each team had two broadcasters. There was the main play-by-play guy, and then there was his understudy. If a team was on multiple stations (say the New York Giants or the Yankees), then there might be four. Some teams had an analyst, especially once television became a part of the game, and as TV became even more crucial, the teams would expand to include more broadcasters.

However, the concept goes back to those days with one broadcaster and an understudy. The broadcaster would be the "voice" of the team, while the understudy would do primarily stats and research. Sometimes, the understudy would pitch in thoughts throughout the game - think Harry Doyle's assistant in "Major League". But usually, the second broadcaster would get a couple innings in the middle of the game. It was a way to break in and have some innings under your belt so you could get a #1 job somewhere. In the days before tapes and CDs made it easy to ship recordings off to prospective employers, you needed someone to take a chance on you and give you a couple innings per game for a year.

That tradition has held through to today, mostly for games that are radio only for that particular team. For example, the Pirates have five broadcasters - two play-by-play guys (Greg Brown and Tim Neverett, who took over from the retired Lanny Frattare) and three analysts (Bob Walk, Steve Blass, and John Wehner). Four work every game, with two usually on the television broadcast on FSN Pittsburgh and two on the radio side. However, if FSN doesn't have the game, the four will split time on the radio.

Basically, it depends on the contract and the status of each broadcaster. It's usually designed, though, to make sure each broadcaster does all 162 games (unless otherwise stipulated in the contract, like Blass, who does just home games. Or Vin Scully, who doesn't work east of the Rockies).

 

Pat Hughes skips one inning every night to take a dump.

Or at least I think that's why he does it. Might be just to get away from Santo.

 

I've always thought he skipped an inning because that's when Santo finally blew his wad to the craven images of Ryan Theriot (or any other Cub, past or present) that no doubt run through his mind.

I'm glad Cory Provus escaped to Milwaukee to avoid that mess.

 

People don't escape to Milwaukee, they escape FROM Milwaukee.

 

Cubs wins also escape Milwaukee.

 

As long as Kevin Fucking Gregg is the closer they do.

Are you taking requests for your dead team o' the day?

 

I'm pretty sure that John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman go on the air half in the bag. It's the only possible explanation for that continued debacle of a "broadcast team."

 

Absolutely ... though I have a bit of a pre-arranged rotation.

 

Pittsburgh Maulers