Baseball announcers

Not anymore, I don't believe. I think the first three innings on radio are a solo Scully (which is simulcast on TV), then the middle three innings are Steiner and the color guy, and Scully comes back and does the last three innings on radio.

 

No, Vin does the first three innings on simulcast, then Steiner and Monday stumble through the rest of the game on radio with Vin on TV only.

 

My bad. I wasn't sure what the deal was. Haven't been home at night long enough to see Scully do a full game on TV in about two years. Good to know.

 

If I recall, Harry Caray did the 1st 3 on TV, middle 3 on radio, and final 3 back on TV. When Harry didn't have to do the radio for the middle 3, would it be wrong for me to assume that he strolled over to his bar, had a couple, then stumbled back to Wrigley to do the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings?

 

It would be very wrong to assume that.

When are people going to realize that Caray was an 80-year-old stroke victim in his last years on the Cubs' broadcasts? Being that old and enduring a stroke will affect a person's speech. So, no, he wasn't drunk on the air.

 

I remember one time during a rain delay when they played the 1984 division clincher. I couldn't believe that Caray used to be a really, really good announcer. I'd assumed he'd always been sort of a character, wasn't young enough to know him from his prime.

 

One of the best things about Jim Brosnan's "Long Season" were his frequent discourses
regarding Caray during the early portion of the book, before Broz was traded from the Cards to the Reds. They weren't flattering . . . I was around to see and hear Caray during that time . . . and I broadly agree with Brosnan's conclusions.

 

IIRC, there are similar sentiments shared in Halberstam's "October 1964," no?

 

Harry did do TV for 3, radio for 3 and then TV for the last 3.

The radio pxp man would do the opposite. It was Milo Hamilton for his first few years in Chicago, then Dewayne Staats, then Thom Brennaman. At some point, they went ahead and hired a full-time radio person (who eventually became Pat Hughes) and the "understudy" did the middle 3 on TV.

 

The players mostly hated Caray in St. Louis because he ripped them. He feuded wth Chuck Tanner in the White Sox days because he second-guessed Tanner on the air.

Caray promoted the shit out of the clubs he worked for, but he was always exactly what he said he was: A fan with a microphone. And he'd get on the players when they fucked up. And, like a fan, he was sometimes irrational. But I'd take that over the velvet glove treatment of, "I'll bet Joe Shortstop would be the first one to tell you he should have made that play. He's going to make that one 99 times out of a hundred and this was the one time he missed" when a player makes an error.

The younger Harry Caray was a pisser and he made enemies along the way.

 

Brosnan hated the hypocrisy of Harry playing kissup face to face, than going into the booth and taking the sheaf off the stiletto.

'Course, the White Sox broadcast curse is right up there with the paucity of truly
great Bear QBs. Bob Elson was beyond awful, Caray was . . . well, Caray, and you
can take the old Hawkeroo and shove him where it doesn't shine. When you remember
Milo Hamilton with a measure of true fondness, you know you've got trouble. I don't mind Farmer, though too often, you know exactly what he's going to say before he says it.

 

Well, it's not like a broadcast on a 50,000-watt station is off the record. Harry knew whatever he said would get back to them quickly.

I've never quite understood that quirk that ballplayers have: "He's nice to me when I talk to him, then he rips me." If you think someone is a horseshit ballplayer who should be released tomorrow, does that mean you can't greet him in a pleasant manner? You can be a lousy player and a fine person and, of course, the opposite is true as well.

And let's also remember that some players think a recitation of their stats is a rip, as though no one would know they're 0-for-21 if it wasn't mentioned.

When Marty Brennaman retires in a few years, there won't be many Reds players sorry to see him go. But he's done fans a service by hacking through the bullshit to give them a realistic picture of what's going on.