Baseball Playoffs and Baseball Announcers

The Yankees were listless and disappeared quickly, but the Mets are still solidly in it.  I prefer pitchers' duels but it was something to see the Mets explode for runs last night, especially after what happened to Tejada when Chase Utley took him out to prevent a double play on Saturday.  Ron Darling, announcing the game for TBS, was correct when he said that thirty years ago such aggressive play was common, just as the catcher blocking the plate was.

Speaking of announcers, Darling is one of the better ones in this year's playoffs, which may be because he is better educated.  Most of the former players who become announcers hardly know that nouns and verbs should agree or that there is a difference between a transitive and a non-transitive verb.  This year the announcers have mostly said that the fielders were "great athletes" and that the hitters were either "seeing the ball well" (if they were getting hits) or "not seeing the ball well" (if they were striking out).

I highly recommend Jacob Silverman's piece in Sunday's New York Times, about Vin Scully.  Silverman correctly says that "today's broadcasters, with a few notable exceptions, are awful," never offering an insight for three whole hours or more.  Scully, who has been a Dodgers announcer since the Truman administration, not only does not utter platitudes, he also knows when not to talk, silence sometimes being more eloquent.  One can read Scully's intense and beautiful description of the last inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game; it's available on the internet. I do slightly disagree with Silverman's contention that most games are better enjoyed on mute.  The problem with this is that baseball is so poorly televised, dependent as it is on the ads projected behind the catcher, that without the announcers one would have difficulty figuring out what was going on. I remember watching one game where there was an attempt to steal home and we saw none of the drama, just the pitcher going into a jerky motion; the announcers had to tell us what was happening; long gone are the days when TV showed the whole field.   I prefer to listen to the games on radio, where one can "see" more, and we are lucky in New York to have the excellent Howie Rose and Josh Lewin announcing the Mets games (we are not so lucky with the Yankee announcers).  In the playoffs, however, not all the games are even on the radio, even though ESPN announces that they are!  If you can't afford cable TV:  good luck, since none of the games are available over the air.  I guess baseball doesn't care about radio listeners or those too poor to pay for over-priced cable; they probably couldn't afford to buy the cars advertised anyway!