QUOTE
\"You're stuck!\" taunted Joe Buck jokingly as he and Tim McCarver announced Fox's new TV deal with Major League Baseball. \"You're stuck with us for the next seven years!\"
Thanks for understanding, Joe. That's exactly how it feels....
Fox dropping half of the League Championship Series is good news because, really, isn't anybody better at broadcasting baseball than Fox? I tried to think of a network that was more annoying in its coverage than Fox during the 43-minute wait for the (All-Star) game, but failed.
We all had to wait because, as always, Fox has way better things to do on a baseball broadcast than to broadcast baseball.
Fox hates baseball, and if it could figure out a way to broadcast baseball without showing any actual baseball, if it could all be sappy music and slow-motion highlights somehow, like that by-the-numbers review of Pirates history, it'd probably pay twice as much for the privilege....
After the fourth inning the game was stopped to present an award to Roberto Clemente for his great play and good deeds. Of course, Clemente died at the end of 1972. The All-Star Game has been played in Pittsburgh twice since then, the first time in 1974, when memories of Clemente's tragic death in a plane crash were fresh.
It's not clear to me why nobody thought of honoring the great man by presenting his widow, Vera, with an award then or in 1994, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that Fox didn't start broadcasting baseball until 1996, and it never would have occurred to anyone before then to stop a baseball game -- one that counts! -- after the fourth inning for a six-minute ceremony of the kind usually reserved for the rubber-chicken circuit....
Did someone say two commercial breaks in one half inning? Plus the chance to create a Very Special Moment during a baseball broadcast that involved something other than broadcasting baseball? I get it now.
Thanks for understanding, Joe. That's exactly how it feels....
Fox dropping half of the League Championship Series is good news because, really, isn't anybody better at broadcasting baseball than Fox? I tried to think of a network that was more annoying in its coverage than Fox during the 43-minute wait for the (All-Star) game, but failed.
We all had to wait because, as always, Fox has way better things to do on a baseball broadcast than to broadcast baseball.
Fox hates baseball, and if it could figure out a way to broadcast baseball without showing any actual baseball, if it could all be sappy music and slow-motion highlights somehow, like that by-the-numbers review of Pirates history, it'd probably pay twice as much for the privilege....
After the fourth inning the game was stopped to present an award to Roberto Clemente for his great play and good deeds. Of course, Clemente died at the end of 1972. The All-Star Game has been played in Pittsburgh twice since then, the first time in 1974, when memories of Clemente's tragic death in a plane crash were fresh.
It's not clear to me why nobody thought of honoring the great man by presenting his widow, Vera, with an award then or in 1994, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that Fox didn't start broadcasting baseball until 1996, and it never would have occurred to anyone before then to stop a baseball game -- one that counts! -- after the fourth inning for a six-minute ceremony of the kind usually reserved for the rubber-chicken circuit....
Did someone say two commercial breaks in one half inning? Plus the chance to create a Very Special Moment during a baseball broadcast that involved something other than broadcasting baseball? I get it now.
[ July 14, 2006, 01:48 PM: Message edited by: Bill W ]