The Blech of Baseball

It only took five minutes for the Fox broadcast of tonight's Yankees-Angels game to drive me to drink. I am not a Tim McCarver fan. I remember liking him before he hit the big time, but I think that he has been on cruise control for years now and now gets most of his stories from pre-game bull sessions with Joe Torre instead of research or hard thinking. He has become part of the Old Guard. At his worst, you get the idea that he thinks that he is doing all of us a favor by announcing the game. I am sure that Yankees' fans disagree. And so does Roger Angell, undoubtedly, who wrote a love song to him in the New Yorker a couple of years ago. I love reading Roger Angell -- discovering him added a new dimension to my love of the game -- but he is off-base on McCarver, I think. At least Joe Buck isn't doing the game as well -- with those two egos at work, I'd rather listen to the game in SAP. And I don't understand Spanish.

Moreover, courtesy of Fox, I'll have the pleasure of all sorts of cartoon characters, sounds effects, and bizarre camera angles that confuse more than inform. Plus, lots of promos for "Prison Break."

Yes, I'm 268 years old.

P.S. -- McCarver just quoted Mae West. I am now switching to the Hard Stuff and going to start re-reading some Roger Angell. I know that my fellow baseball fanatics in the blogosphere love to ride Joe Morgan’s anti-stathead stance. But doesn’t Morgan bring more to the table than McCarver? At least with Morgan, you usually get Jon Miller, as opposed to one of the Fox Fun Bunch. Although with Morgan, there is always the chance that Chris Berman will be along for the ride, and I think we all know how painful that can be. Were McCarver ever to work with Berman, I might have to turn off the television. And I think that we all know how painful that would be.