Aiming Some Chin Music at Major League Baseball Announcers

There’s a downside to writing columns at home instead of at a newspaper. To many people that means you’re not really working and have time to schmooze on the phone.

The very idea.

When several of these thoughtless, gabby types called one day last week, for example, I gave each the same terse response: “Can’t talk, I’m watching baseball.�

Well ... somebody has to do it.

With Friday’s strike deadline looming, I spent hours absorbing baseball the way a squirrel gathers nuts for winter and a bear fattens up for hibernation. Taking no chances, I was storing memories to see me through a potentially barren fall, for no one knew then if the game’s obscenely rich owners and their kadzillionaire slaves would break their impasse.

Their window of opportunity narrowed Friday morning, their Rolexes winding down suspensefully as cable’s news channels awaited the results of their talks, even staking out Wrigley Field in Chicago to see if the St. Louis Cardinals would arrive for their scheduled game with the Cubs.

By now you know what happened. A strike was averted. So the baseball season goes on, along with the joy in watching much of it on TV.

What I would have missed most are those sweetheart telecasts of the Atlanta Braves on TBS. What I would have missed least are ESPN’s bobble heads. Don’t care much for some of the Great Vin’s patter, either.

TBS is cable’s idiot savant. It’s freakish that Atlanta’s Superstation would execute baseball telecasts so expertly, because the rest of its TV schedule is utterly mundane. For a true view into its rerun-laden soul, observe that vast library of violent, smash-’em-up, police-chase footage that it draws on incessantly to fill time during Braves rain delays.

Years of watching the Braves on TV, though, have made them my favorite, and the likable, refreshingly unslick TBS broadcast crew of Pete Van Wieren, Skip Carey, Don Sutton and Joe Simpson my favorite announcing team. These low-key mavens are not only smart, funny and chatty, but effortlessly so, with ex-major leaguers Sutton and Simpson notably astute about baseball’s finer points without being repetitive or arcane.

They avoid irritating gimmicks and wear extremely well. They also call games fairly despite their acknowledged Braves bias and, as a wonderful bonus, never usurp play on the field. The purpose of a baseball telecast is baseball, right? On TBS, the game, not the announcing team, is star.

Compare that with the personality-driven credo at ESPN and ESPN2 that--surely a management decision--often requires that extraneous shtick be used to eclipse what happens on the field. The offenders range from Chris Berman, who often treats baseball as Muzak for his monologues, to even Jon Miller, whose ample talent is compromised in his role as point man for ESPN comedy routines inside the booth. If only his sidemen were as amusing as he.

In this loopy universe, even former Reds great Joe Morgan, one of TV’s best baseball minds and an able communicator, is cast as comedian. The problem is that Morgan is as funny as a bean ball. Even more painfully awkward is Tony Gwynn, still a work in progress behind the mike after his magnificent career with the San Diego Padres.

What’s more, ESPN too often is where the action isn’t. Its announcers recently became fixated on the spiky hairstyles of one team’s players, and for half an inning the cameras devoted more time to these guys in the dugout than to the game.

When ESPN telecast a recent Braves loss to the Dodgers, moreover, it missed Atlanta shortstop Rafael Furcal starting an extraordinary double play by knocking down a hot shot behind second and feeding Keith Lockhart from the ground. Where was ESPN? Showing viewers a Vin Scully retrospective.

Remember, it’s the game, stupid.

As for Scully, the Dodgers’ widely adored radio-TV voice is unquestionably as meticulous at his craft and as knowledgeable about baseball as anyone in the business. Like the Braves announcers, he’s also extremely fair and as apt to praise opposing players as Dodgers.

But c’mon, haven’t you had it up to here with those cutesy cutaways to kids in the stands, on Fox Sports Net 2 and UPN 13, so that Scully can coochy coo them from the booth? As in, “Oh, bless your heart� or “Oh, yes, it’s thumb-sucking time on the old plantation.� Aaarrrggghhh!!! All right, he likes kids. Message received.

Although his veteran radio partner, Ross Porter, is renowned for pouring on meaningless trivia, Scully is equally guilty. He just packages it more elegantly.

But be honest, don’t you find his celebrated glibness with literary references more than a little mannered, as if he had written down and numbered them for use in specific situations?

When I first moved to L.A., I wondered why Dodger announcers worked solo, when so many other teams used twosomes in the booth. The answer, of course, is that farce would result should Scully and Porter ever work together. Just imagine:

Vin: Shawn Green really hammers it, and it’s gone! Or as Margaret Mitchell would say, “Gone With the Wind.�

Ross: Did you know, Vin, 17 major leaguers have mothers named Margaret?

Vin: And Green crosses home, as if told by Thomas Wolfe, “Look Homeward, Angel.�

Ross: A wolf has never bitten a Dodger, Vin. No wolverine bites either.

Vin: I’d like to take a bite out of that little darlin’ sitting with her dad eating her ice cream cone. Isn’t she great. As great as Gatsby.

Ross: Only three National League southpaws have eaten ice cream in West Covina, Vin. Not one of them has a brother named Hercule.

Vin: Agatha Christie wouldn’t like that, as the pop-up will end the inning.

Ross: A few National League umpires call their dads pop, Vin, but interestingly, not one of them says papa, poppie or popsie.

Vin: Speaking of Papa Hemingway ...

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at [email protected].