Off Topic. The Blass is 3/4 empty.
- Thread starter Saboteur
- Start date
So I moved to South Carolina many years ago. And we were sitting around the pool, all of us displaced Yankees, drinking some beers and someone had a radio on. I asked him, 'hey buddy, what are you listening to?" His answer "the race". Like I would immediately know what "the race" was. But I responded "isn't that like listening to the traffic report". He was less than pleased with me.
That's how I'm able to keep track of the Pirates, since I haven't lived in Western PA for nearly 20 years. The absolute worst is a guy named Ted Lightner who does San Diego Padres games. HIs patter would work well for a DJ on a jazz station, but it's absolutely horrible for baseball play-by-play, "McCutchen leads off second " . . . hey Ted, you never told us how McCutchen ever got to second in the first place!
As is seen by some of the posts in this thread, Bob Price is beloved in this town and he was the king of that kind of thing. Never let the baseball game get in the way of the story you are telling.
I was one of those who criticized Prince for his storytelling myself, but he did manage to intersperse updates on the action on the field while he was spinning his yarns.
People said the same of Vin Scully the last couple years, but I'll disagree. Sure he might've slipped a bit, but up until the end he was still able to mesmerize radio listeners.
Compare that to Dick Enberg at the end. I watch a decent amount of Padres games and Enberg was an embarrassment the last couple years. Whenever games would drag on late or go extra innings it was all he could do to stay awake. Multiple times it seemed obvious that he had actually dozed off between pitches.
Scully was very good at mixing his stories in with the game.
“Two down, second inning, and no score. First pitch. Fast ball. First strike. They say, way back to the dawn of humanity, beards evolved because, number one, because ladies like them, and number two, it was the idea of frightening off adversaries and wild animals—Here’s the one-strike pitch. Swung on and missed. Strike two—In fact, it was so serious, if you look it up, there's a divine mandate for beards in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.”
“Two down, second inning, and no score. First pitch. Fast ball. First strike. They say, way back to the dawn of humanity, beards evolved because, number one, because ladies like them, and number two, it was the idea of frightening off adversaries and wild animals—Here’s the one-strike pitch. Swung on and missed. Strike two—In fact, it was so serious, if you look it up, there's a divine mandate for beards in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.”
