King Kaufman's Sports Daily
TBS playoff report card: The low-key, anti-Fox approach is working nicely, but dopey, bunt-obsessed top voice Chip Caray is hard to take.
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Oct. 10, 2007 | The first round of the baseball playoffs, has ended, and with it TBS's excloo on the broadcasts. The Turner network will carry the National League Championship Series, while the ALCS will be on Fox, which also has the World Series.
After a week's worth of broadcasts, I'll stick pretty close to my initial assessment of TBS, which is that it's doing a refreshingly solid job of presenting baseball games, as opposed to the special-effects-laden, gadget-happy, storyline-riding extravaganzas Fox foists upon a suffering baseball public every year at this time.
Also, Ernie Johnson is to Jeanne Zelasko as Honus Wagner is to Neifi Perez.
Fox does do some things better than TBS. It brings about 400 cameras to every game, which leads to those annoying 50-cut sequences between every pitch, where instead of watching, say, the catcher flash the sign or, heaven forfend, getting a glimpse of how the fielders are arrayed, we're treated to shots of the pitcher's nose, some boys in the stands, the batter's ear, some girls in the stands, the manager's face, some player wives, the other manager's face, the pitcher's nose again and a shot from the blimp. Before every pitch.
TV networks are so averse to showing the defensive alignment that if I didn't sometimes go to games I'd think all the fielders stripped naked between pitches.
But all those cameras also provide a pretty good replay angle on just about any play that might happen, and usually two or three pretty good replay angles. TBS has often been unable to come up with just the right shot for a crucial replay, most notably on the deciding play at home in last Monday's National League wild-card play-in game.
Fox also has a super slow-mo thingy that's interesting, especially when it's used to show a pitch being thrown, which really displays the incredible violence that an arm goes through on every single toss.
The announcing teams have been, as I thought they'd be, so-so at best. Don Orsillo and Joe Simpson are a dull pair, and the teams of Ted Robinson-Steve Stone and Dick Stockton-Ron Darling pair good analysts -- great, in the case of Stone -- with bad play-by-play men. Stockton, who's 65 but sounds older, seems to be in a permanent state of confusion. Robinson's just an annoying lightweight.
But the real problem is the A-team of Chip Caray, Tony Gwynn and Bob Brenly, who will be doing the NLCS. Caray is a disaster, and while Gwynn and Brenly are pleasant, they're nothing special, and they don't come close to making up for the many shortcomings of their partner.