Most biased baseball announcer ....

is Hawk Harrelson, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Pirates guys (Greg Brown and Steve Blass) are third.

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB10000872396390444180004578016652376246198.html?mod=WSJ_Sports_threeup

 

Employed by the team . . . calling the game leaning to one side over the other . . . shocked, I tell you. If you want unbiased announcers, watch the game of the week or ESPN. Well, not really. I mean, they would never put Terry Francona on a Red Sox game, right?

 

Did you read the article? There are plenty of team-employed announcers who manage to not gush like fanbois.

Hawk Harrelson is a fucking joke and an embarrassment. And he's extremely popular with White Sox fans. What does that tell you about them?

 

Much like Larry Bird in the first NBA three-point contest everybody else is playing for second in this survey.

 

Look at the chart and just how wide the margin between first and second is. That's the (slight) revelation here.

 

It would be interesting to see where the Yankees would rank in a radio survey.

 

Missed the point . . . I just expect it out of an employee of the team. Unless you are an announcer of the Cubs, or the Braves or Mets back when they were national, I see no entertainment value out of guys who call it down the middle. 90% of the fans who are listening or watching on local TV are fans of the team, and want to hear that. I love listening to Scully, but that time has passed.

Ron Santo, who I know wasn't on TV, but he was an embarrassment as well. Doesn't matter, because he was only trying to appeal to Cubs fans, as is Hawk to White Sox fans.

The NFL is full of 'impartial' national announcers, and all people do is bitch and moan about how bad they are. Even the guys with shticks, people are 50/50 on them whether they are horrible or fantastic.

Impartiality on games where the majority of the audience is fans of the team is overrated and hardly worth devoting resources to write an article about.

 

In Santo's defense he'd occasionally provide some analysis - usually by accident - and he was funny but not always intentionally. And his homerism was toned down by the fact he worked with a real pro in Pat Hughes.

Hawk's just a fucking piece of shit.

 

As a White Sox fan myself, I wouldn't say Hawk is extremely popular in a way that reflects poorly on the fan base. It's similar to Santo. He's an idiot, but he's our idiot. Most of us roll our eyes when the stories begin about how Tony Conigliaro was the best Hawk ever saw at driving a 2-1 pitch against small-framed left-handers to the opposite field in West Coast ballparks. And he talked to five other people who all agreed with him. He's our crazy uncle. All things being equal, we would all prefer professionalism in the booth. And I'd also like a million dollars.

 

I'm a huge fan of Hughes work. Even he lets a bit or homerism slip. I don't see a problem with it, though. Santo was horrible with a capital H, at least for the last five years or so before his death. And he provided very little by way of analysis.

 

It's not the anecdotes that make him suck. It's the churlish, pouting reactions, and sometimes dead silence, that occur when the "Good Guys" are losing. Jesus, at least try to be professional.

 

Thus the "by accident" comment.