McCarver and Fox Strike Again

Tonight, in the third inning of Game 3 of the Angels-White Sox Series, McCarver narrated a video montage of sloppy play from the series. He once again showed Vladimir Guerrero throwing the ball past Adam Kennedy and Orlando Cabrera and said that Guerrero "overthrew" both fielders. Yet when I watched the play live, and then watched the replay several times, it seemed clear that Vlad didn't overthrow Cabrera. He overthrew Kennedy, but Cabrera, the secondary cutoff man, simply missed the in-between hop.

The play ended up not hurting the Angels, but what bothers me about this is McCarver's (and Fox's) laziness. (And this isn't limited to McCarver and Fox. You see it on NFL telecasts on all networks.) It's fine to not notice what really happened when you are announcing it live. McCarver just keeps repeating what he thinks he saw instead of actually watching the play again on replay, however, because he is sticking to a storyline that he assumes applies and never takes the time to look closely again. He has already decided in his mind what happened. Are you going to believe McCarver or your own lying eyes? Moreover, Buck and Piniella just sit there and agree. They "know" what happened because McCarver said so. Had McCarver said instead, "Let's take a look at this replay and see what happened on that throw," they would have noticed.

I compare this to Jon Miller and Joe Morgan on ESPN. I don't think that both of them would keep repeating something that, once they saw the replay, was inaccurate. Morgan has his obvious liabilities as an announcer, but he is strongest when analyzing something that happened on the field -- I have heard him many times say, "Well, you know, looking at it again, I think I was wrong." And if he doesn’t, Miller will. (Part of this may come from having better people in the truck who tell the announcers, “Hey, look at the replay again – I think something different happened.”)


P.S. -- Read King Kaufman on more baseball love from Fox -- as the Salon subhead says, "Fox hates baseball, exhibit 3,442."