Our game

I can accept it from Caray. I think the Caray family is established enough to be associated with baseball. Yeah, he's a paid observer, but he's a paid observer for one particular sport and we identify him with that sport exclusively.

I think the "journalistic integrity" arguments have merit in many many instances, but this isn't one of them.

 

You know, I'd have the same type reaction -- though likely not as intensly, because frankly I loathe Chip Caray as a broadcaster (the couple times I met him in person he was very cordial) -- if Reece Davis started referring to college football as "my game" or "our game." It'd be different coming from Kirk Herbstreit or Mark May, because in a very real sense it is their game. If an ex-player turned broadcaster referenced it that way, I'd be more willing to let it go. That entitlement coming from a member of the news establishment (yeah, I know, that might be stretching it a bit) just rubs me the wrong way.

 

I understand where you are coming from. I'm not a big Chip fan myself, but I do know he's baseball.

If it where Vin Scully or Mel Allen or even Jon Facenda would you accept it then? I just think there's some people, who have never played the sport, who you can accept as being associated with the a particular sport.

I've never accepted Caray as a member of the news establishment, I've always accepted him as just an ultra annoying relative of Harry and Skip and a baseball guy.

 

Bingo.

Announcers have always shilled; it's been an accepted part of their jobs since before Mel Allen ever drank his first Ballantine beer. While I like announcers who are more impartial than Chip Caray, I don't consider this a flagrant violation of his responsibility or his position.

 

It's not the impartiality part that bugs me. They are paid and selected by the teams, so I don't really expect absolute neutrality; most viewers/listeners, I think, are accustomed to a home-team slant to the pbp. It's the entitlement part that doesn't really sit well with me. And I guess this is one part of the difference between Caray and a buy like Vin Scully. I haven't heard a lot of Vin, but he just doesn't strike me as the type to assume some sort of higher position in the game than he actually has.

 

I've heard "our sport" more from NASCAR writers/broadcasters than those involved with any other sport.

Broadcasters, expect to hear "we, we, we." Many of them are paid by the team or have paid the team/sport for the rights.

Writers, we hold ourselves to a higher standard. To hear a bunch of writers talk about "our sport" as if they were the France family, is a different beast.

 

I honestly don't get what you are driving at. Chip Caray is basically an employee of the Atlanta Braves. That's why he's able to say "we" and "our." Same as the trainer, the groundskeeper and assistant to the traveling secretary.

I don't think it has anything to do with "entitlement."

 

I never really took it as him claiming ownership of the game. When he says stuff like that, I always figured he was including the listener/viewer in the "our" or "we", including everyone that is a fan of the game, more speaking to the baseball "community" than speaking about a game that he thinks he is a part of.

But on the other hand, I am a Caray fan, whether it be Harry, Chip or Skip.

 

I'd rather listen to Tim McCarver.

 

Maybe he's using the royal "we" and "our."

 

Skip is The Man.

As for McCarver, I'd rather watch Primetime throw ice water on him than listen to him.

 

"our game" bothers me not.