Tim McCarver ruins the 2009 playoffs

There’s no other explanation for it.

Like you said, diehards will tune into any live sporting event and fight through all this crap because their love for the game or team supercedes any disgust they have for the guys calling the game.

Thing is, I don’t necessarily agree with the networks that focusing their attention on one player is what the casual fans want, as evidenced by the continually low ratings.

Grade A bitch-fit right there… congrats

Yes, it gets overdone, but it’s better than the fawning I hear over someone like Ray Lewis.

i think they assume that the casual fans do want to hear their on air blow jobs of said players

Tim McCarver ruins the 2009 playoffs any baseball game he’s near

Fixed that for you.

Or don’t try and diagram all the complexities of defenses. They only worry about the casual fan. Or the woman who is watching it with her husband. Tebow and Jeter are great stories and make it easy on the production crew to make these fluff pieces that they show. You may have turned the game off last night when its a rerun but if that was being shown live you wouldn’t have. You may have muted it or whatever but you wouldn’t miss it because its a sport you love. Why would the networks care about a guy like you?

They have a choice between doing a bunch of legwork to come up with thoughtful analysis and research. Or they can rehash how awesome Jeter/Tebow/Favre/etc are. It’s not a decision made solely by the commentator. Most commentator’s aren’t doing all of their own research; it’s coming from the directors that the fans want inane talk.

Not everyone loves sports, but everyone loves a gritty superstar and/or a good human interest story. The announcers aren’t fawning over these guys so much as they are building them up and using them as a bridge to reach the people who need something other than the game or the team to watch and root for.

I’m sure being Jack’s son got Joe the gig, but he wouldn’t have kept the job this long if he wasn’t at least passable.

Personally, I think Joe Buck is very good at baseball and okay at football.

McCarver is annoying, but just about every former player from the 60s/70s/80s is pretty much the same. They over-value batting avg, RBI, scrappiness, and pitcher’s win totals. And they under-value OBP, FIP, and every other important stat.

Tim McCarver, Joe Morgan, Rick Sutcliffe, Tom Grieve, Ron Darling, Jim Kaat, etc. They are all the same.

Who’s voice do you associate the most with each sport? It doesn’t have to be a broadcaster. It could be a player / coach / etc…

then again, you could have Mike Tyson call a Ranger ALDS game and I would still be happy

Sports. Movies. TV. Business. Cooking. Porn. Vid games based on individual accomplishment and demeanment of the opponent.. Idolization has crept into just about every facet of public attention. Hell, if Nero were alive today, he’d outdraw Jascha Heifitz in a violin popularity survey, simply because he “did it on the big stage” (Rome burning, while poor Jascha had the help of the Vienna Philharmonic, not nearly as exciting).

I’m a great deal more interested in Adam’s patrons opinion of the best Ranger plays from 2009 than how “great” any individual performer or competitor is said to be by the talking heads. Am I saying here that priorities are all screwed up? Yes, hopefully not terminally. Hell, Wall Street idolized the biggest cheats and liars (and some in the core money business still do). And if Elin has spent so much time around golf, why didn’t she use a sand wedge instead of a 9-iron? (heavier, better grind in the leading edge)

All that is pretty rambling, I know. But it spells out why my genuine interest is the play on the playing field. And know what? It isn’t the random great plays that in the end, matter so much. It’s the ongoing goodness and execution of the team. Sure players can stand out. In the accounting, it’s just another out made or run scored. A special joy comes with the exceptional play, but it’s fleeting. And idolizing any player above the game itself is just wrong. It’s the game that makes the arena, the arena that makes the patrons, and the patrons that enable teams (and businesses) to gain (including paying the players) and provide us with the pastime.

9:45pm EST: “Reply to McCarver” appears in the subject line. This guy has a gift. I’m interested. Let’s keep going with this thing.

9:45pm EST: “Nice rant but I still think McCarver is one of the better baseball announcers out there.”

9:45pm EST: I’ve stopped reading.

…but I never jumped on the bandwagon of announcer critics. I agree McCarver doesn’t add much value, but it doesn’t bother me to the point of muting the TV or claiming that he RUINS baseball games.

The only time an announcer really gets under my skin is when their voice/tone is annoying, such as with Dan Fouts, who insists on screaming everything he says.

AJM used all players he doesn’t like as examples.

When the guys most fawned over by the media are Kobe, Rodgers, Arod, etc.

They’re broadcasting to the casual fan as opposed to the hardcore junkie. I remember during the draft the NFL Network spent most of the second day still going over the Stafford vs. Sanchez debate or looking at projected starting lineups of various teams. I realize that not many people care about the 225th player selected in the draft but hardcore fans want to hear what the “so-called” experts have to say about how they’ll fit into the system or why that pick makes sense. Needless to say I think I felt the same way after watching the draft as you did watching this game.

Nothing embodies McCarver’s unwillingness to accept reality more than the 2008(?) all star game, during which in a Manny Ramirez at-bat, an infographic was put up on the strike zone, and Manny’s batting average in each of 9 equal quadrants of the strike zone. I can’t remember exactly what it said, but it I believe it indicated that Manny’s BA on low and away pitches was lower. McCarver started saying that we all know Manny hits balls better in those areas than that, and Buck says, “So you’re saying that this graphic is incorrect?”

McCarver: “Yes. The graphic is wrong.”

McCarver’s one of the worst but how many announcers do hard core fans actually like? A very small percentage. When Jaws was brought to the MNF, people initially liked him now hate him. Same with Gruden. Why is this? Two reasons:
1) Hard core fans believe they know more than the announcers. The ones we tolerate are the ones that don’t get in the way of the game.
2) Hard core fans are homers. I’d say most of the LSBers are OK with Josh and TAG but Angels and Mariners fans absolutely hate them. Same with us and their announcers. When there’s a nationally broadcast game the announcers aren’t going to talk most of the time about your favorite team with praise.

Basically, hard core fans won’t be satisfied so why try? Might as well try and bring in the casual viewer.

Of course, there are exceptions. Objectively McCarver really does suck and all he can talk about are the Yankees since he lives in NY. And although he announces for just one team, I could listen to Vin Scully talk about a crap he took for two hours.

If say, Kobe and Mike Leach got in a fight. People wouldn’t know who to root for. Both are politically correct.

It’s like how I love it when politically correct corporations battle. Like Apple and Google, or Apple and Nintendo. People dont know what to do. Everybody knows Microsoft is the bad guy.