Broadcasting Laziness

The big buzz around the Motor City tonight was the awesome comeback the Detroit Tigers laid to the Chicago White Sox.  Down 8-1, the Tigers clawed their way back into the game... 8-5 as the teams were taken off the field in the bottom of the 8th inning for what would be a 36 minute rain delay.

Fast forward slightly to the bottom of the 9th, with the score 8-6, Ryan Raburn at the plate as the tying run, Fox broadcasters (and MLB Network talking heads) Matt Vasgersian and Mitch Williams become part of 2 of the worst HR calls in recent memory.  Raburn crushes his 2-run, game tying shot to left, only to hear Mitch (the color analyst) mutter "It's gone" before Vasgersian gives a rather spirited HR call.  Not to be outdone, Vasgersian takes Miguel Cabrera's HR call and erases his pretty good call from the previous blast and offers up this broadcasting gem:

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=18781581

Vasgersian

Williams

 Now, I know for a national audience, there needs to be a good balance of objectivity and good play calling.  While the former was there, the latter sure wasn't.  The bigger problem was, neither one of these guys were deep into what has really happened with either club in recent weeks, making them sound rather ignorant when it came to talking about the clubs and their tendencies.  Which leads to the next problem, this wasn't really for a national audience, more for the regional crowd instead.  Fox's three broadcasts today included the actual national broadcast, which feature the Red Sox and Rangers from Fenway Park, the Cardinals and Reds from St. Louis, and the Tigers and White Sox.  As you might imagine, the Tigers/White Sox game was delivered to the smallest audience, which begs the question, why not mix and match?

In this case, it's my assumption that Fox and Comcast Sports Net aren't at all affiliated with each other, so you wouldn't see a possibility of Ken (The Hawk) Harrelson or Steve Stone working with the likes of Mario Impemba and Rod Allen.  But it really needs to be fixed like that, because if you're going to suck the emotion out of what should be the most exciting play of the game, why the hell should anyone watch?  Vasgersian's HR call was boring, worse than "matter-of-fact" like, with he and Williams sounding like they were both at home on the couch drinking a couple of cheap beers instead of actually doing "play calling", which is what they were being paid to do.  At least if you bring in the local talent for the regional broadcasts, you're likely not going to cheat the fans who know that the people who are calling the game actually know a thing or two about how their team operates.  Except the egregious thing here is, these clowns actually work for the MLB Network, and they still called the game like they did little to no research whatsoever.  Fox would have been better off bringing in long time announcer and play-by-play dinosaur Dick Stockton to call the game.  At least for his stuttering and bouts of forgetfulness, he probably wouldn't have been any worse that the two talking heads we were forced with today.

Fox has to get this right, for the love of baseball and humanity.  If you want people to watch your sport in October, especially when those people don't necessarily have a rooting interest for who's playing, they'll need to find someone who can call the game with passion, knowledge, and a genuine love for the game.

Vin Scully comes to mind...