Likes and dislikes on the microphones

Richard Deitsch has weighed in with his 2011 sports media awards,  and the readers of Awful Announcing have listed their best and worst in sports media.

As for me, I have my own favorites and people who make me cringe. Like the old All-Madden teams, these are based on people I see or hear, so while I have a general idea that Colin Cowherd is an insufferable doofus, I don't have the "privilege" of listening to his show, so he's not on my lists.

Let's start with the positives, shall we? (By the way, with the exception of my favorite or least favorite, who are listed last, these are in no particular ascending or descending order.)

LIKES

English soccer announcers - I know people who can probably provide more of a clue as to the quality of individual announcers' work, but what I love about them is their honesty. If someone makes a bad play, they say it. If a ref blows a call, they say it. If someone can't play, they say it. The closest thing most of them have for a euphemism is "That was optimistic" if someone skies a shot into Row ZZ from 40 yards out.


Jeff Van Gundy (ESPN/ABC) - He looks and acts a bit comical at times, especially when he's talking about referees, but don't be fooled. The guy knows his stuff, and he's really good at explaining it. He gets extra points for respecting the game enough to ask for the UConn-Baylor women's game because it shaped up to be a good one and he wanted to be there.

Don Orsillo (NESN) - He must be good for a Yankees fan to put him on this list, but he's a pro and gives a good call. There's a reason why TBS puts him on its postseason coverage and tried to get him full-time before he signed a new deal to stay in Boston.

Michael Felger (98.5 FM, Boston) - There's a really crappy sports talk radio station in Boston, full of blowhards who worship loudly at the altar of all the local sports teams while only having the advantage of knowing what they're talking about or actually being interesting once in a while. Felger and his partner, Tony Massarotti, have a show that's not on that station, and actually have a take that's sometimes ... the horrors! ... contrary! And he's arrogant enough in a good way to pull it off ... if you've ever heard him pronounce "fact, not opinion," you'll know what I mean.

Doris Burke (ESPN) - Smart, articulate, knows the game, great at explaining what's going on, funny at times, so good that she can go from women's to men's games or booth to sideline without a problem ... am I missing anything? The only quibble I've had with her is that she would sometimes get carried away ("We see you!" is the dead giveaway), but I think she has calmed that down since she started doing men's games from time to time. It's like she realized she wasn't in her usual sandbox, so she knew she needed to throttle down a little bit, and in so doing, found her correct speed.


Dan Shulman (ESPN) - He's good at everything, with everyone. Even Bobby Valentine couldn't drag him down.


Jim Lampley and Max Kellerman (HBO) - Lampley's forgotten more about calling sports than most of us will ever know, and I love Kellerman's style on HBO boxing. I'm not as wild about Larry Merchant, but this was pretty cool.



Sean McDonough, Bill Raftery and Jay Bilas (ESPN) - Individually, they're all really good, and Bilas' Twitter feed is outstanding, but when you put them together, their chemistry is incredible. I'm not sure if it was their idea to get together, a happy accident thrown together by ESPN or the result of someone thinking "these guys could work well together," but they make Big Monday a lot more entertaining.

Jack Edwards (NESN)/Tommy Heinsohn (Comcast Sports Net New England) - I'm not crazy about homers, but I can deal with them. However, I really don't like yahoos who think everything that happens against their team is some sort of conspiracy, especially referees' calls. But if you're going to be a yahoo, be so over-the-top that it's hilarious like these guys do on Bruins and Celtics games.


Vin Scully (I don't know the network, but it's the Dodgers on TV) - He's the second-best thing about my MLB.TV subscription. Once the Yankees game is over, I check the West Coast games to see if there are any that interest me. Unless there's an intriguing pitching matchup (Roy Halladay against Tim Lincecum in San Francisco will likely get my attention, for example), if the Dodgers are home, that's where I'm going. He's in his 80s, and I hope he keeps coming back until he physically cannot do it any longer.

DISLIKES

Brent Musburger (ABC/ESPN) - The guy's a legend, and for the life of me, I have no idea why. The best term I can think of for him is "carnival barker," and some of his banter with Erin Andrews on ESPN's Tuesday night Big 10 basketball games has nearly made me physically uncomfortable. (Yes Brent, we get it. She's pretty, and college boys like her. I'd be interested in hearing what the coach told her at halftime, if you don't mind.)


Joe Buck (FOX) - We all know somebody who's not nearly as smart, funny or interesting as they think they are. (Perhaps some of my friends feel that way about me. Guilty.) That's Joe Buck.

Tim McCarver (FOX) - What, did you think I wouldn't include Buck's partner on Fox's baseball coverage? Not only does he use 9,000 words where 25 will do, it's often for something he really doesn't even need 25 words for.

Meghan Culmo (Connecticut Public Television) - CPTV picks up the UConn women's basketball games that aren't on national TV, and people who live outside Connecticut can subscribe for $59.95. That's cool, but what's not cool is having Culmo, a former Connecticut player and assistant coach, call the games. She's hampered a little bit by having mostly blowouts, but her analysis consists almost completely of what UConn coach Geno Auriemma has told her and what she read in that day's Hartford Courant. When she talks about the other team, it's completely condescending in a "Look at those girls try so hard!" kind of way, punctuated by a surprised "Ha ha!" if one of their players hits a shot. What's sad is that all this still doesn't completely describe how unprepared and terrible she is. She's one of the main reasons we didn't renew our subscription this year.

Darrell Waltrip (Fox) - While he was still an active driver, Waltrip would sometimes call truck races on the former TNN on his off weeks, and he was really good. We all know he can talk, but he was really good at analysis and quite funny, so I was excited to learn he would be joining the Fox NASCAR broadcast team. And he was great ... for about six weeks. Then he morphed into "Ol' DW," with the singing and "boogity, boogity, boogity" at the start of every race. Instead of being a character, he became a caricature, and is almost unwatchable.


Ken Harrelson (Chicago White Sox TV) - This one makes me sad. During my younger days, I loved Harrelson on White Sox and later Yankees games. He was insightful, intelligent and taught me a lot about hitting. He once did a riff about "giving yourself a chance to hit a home run" that I found enthralling. But in recent years, when I watch White Sox games on WGN, he's nothing more than a yahoo, filling time between "He gone" and "Put it on the board ... YES!"

John Sterling (WCBS) - A couple years ago, Mike Pesca gave a scathing review of Ali Velshi's "Gimme My Money Back: Your Guide to Beating the Financial Crisis" on "Planet Money," featuring the following:

"One bad stock pick doesn't make this a bad book. The cliches which frequently begin each chapter ... that doesn't make it a bad book. The charts from Morningstar which are so small and are shaded so poorly that they strain both your eyes and your patience, they don't make it a bad book. But, you know what, overall, it's a bad book."

That's a bit how I feel about John Sterling. His silly catchphrases ("Tex message," "Robinson Cano, doncha know?" "An A-bomb...from A-Rod!) don't make him a bad announcer. His sometimes only being aware of what's going on doesn't make him a bad announcer. His desire to turn every game into "The John Sterling Show with Yankees Baseball" ... that makes him a bad announcer.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE


Dick Vitale (ESPN) - In small doses, he's OK. In larger doses, he'd make we want to throw my TV off a bridge.

Michael Kay and the cast of thousands (YES Network) - Fairly inoffensive on Yankees games. They're just kind of there.

Gus Johnson (Fox) - He's known for his enthusiasm, but if the Big 10 football championship game (in which I turned the sound off midway through the first half) is any indication, he's at high risk for Garces/Brown Syndrome.

Maurice Jones-Drew may hide concussions, but not cluelessness

Yes Maurice, the NFL is now worried about concussions because it's getting sued, and serious injuries are just an "occupational hazard."

Why don't you ask Ted Johnson about that "occupational hazard," while you still can?

Because you can't ask Andre Waters, or Dave Duerson.

And I don't know if you watch much hockey, but wouldn't be great to see Sidney Crosby on the ice?

Using numbers to hide

I'm a little more than halfway through Sheldon and Alan Hirsch's "The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball."

In spite of the second half of the title, it's not a strict takedown of Michael Lewis' "Moneyball," although the authors do a pretty good job picking apart what they see as the flaws in the book, including the same criticism that Tony LaRussa had of the movie (which hewed pretty closely to the book, as I recall) ... namely that in the desire to paint Billy Beane as a genius, it ignores the main reasons the A's were successful, in particular Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito.

But not only are the Hirsches not LaRussa acolytes -- they're no fans of his approach to closers -- their book isn't strictly an anti-sabermetrics screed. Their view is considerably more nuanced, as this passage on page 62 states:

"The problem that animated Bill James's revolution was colossal ignorance pervading the baseball world. He helped cure it. The problem he inadvertently ushered in was excessive faith in a particular path to knowledge and insufficient appreciation of how much can never be quantified."

As does this on pages 110 and 111, after the authors have given credit for sabermetric advances in the understanding of on-base percentage and closers, imperfect though those advances may have been:

"It is one thing to recognize a deficiency in baseball tactics, quite another to correct it, particularly without unleashing unanticipated negative consequences. Focusing on numbers, while overlooking the nuances and subtle forces that can't be quantified, sabermetricians fail to appreciate the complexity of the game they seek to transform."

It points out much more eloquently than I have in arguments with friends the main problem I have about those who worship at the altar of numbers -- they have a tendency toward absolutism.

In their world, batting average and RBI are virtually useless statistics, as are pitching wins. There's also no such thing as "intangibles," "clutch" or "chemistry," and Derek Jeter can't field. (One thing we agree on ... David Eckstein is highly overrated.)

But before I came to the first quote noted above, the Hirsches spent some time on Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series. The numbers said Red Sox manager Grady Little should have taken out Pedro Martinez after seven innings, given his tendency to tire after throwing about 105 pitches. Little's gut said otherwise, so he left him in. You know how it ended up ... the Red Sox blew the lead, Aaron Boone happened, Little got fired. (I enjoyed all of this tremendously.)

From page 62:

"You follow your gut, or your best guess, and then you watch the game unfold in its unpredictable glory. Unless you're a devout sabermetrician, in which case you think the decision is made for you by the numbers. If you take the latter approach, you may sleep easier (win or lose), but you misunderstand messy reality and shortchange the beauty of the game."

Would Grady Little have been fired if he took Pedro out and the Red Sox lost, anyway? Well, consider this nugget from the story about Little getting fired:

"The Red Sox have insisted that Little's future will not be determined by the one decision, but according to the (Boston) Herald, the team was concerned about Little's lack of reliance on stats."

If Little's situation is any indication, relying on the stats means never having to say you made a mistake (or getting fired for it).

If only the Chargers had a unicorn that shot ice cream out its nose

A friend of mine had this question on Facebook this morning:

"I ask this of any San Diego Chargers fans out there -- how much would you give to have Drew Brees and Darren Sproles back in San Diego?"

He later added "with Sean Payton as your head coach?"

Given where we both live, I'm going to assume by "San Diego Chargers fans," he meant me.

In a way, what he says makes sense, since the Saints are going to the playoffs with Payton as coach, and Brees did set the single-season yardage record last night on a pass to Sproles. Of course, if a runner gets thrown out stealing and the batter then hits a home run, it also makes sense in a way to cry out, "If only he hadn't gotten thrown out stealing, it would have been a two-run homer!"

In other words, it makes sense if you're into overly simplistic thinking.

First, Brees. After the 2005 season, Brees was a free agent, and Philip Rivers was waiting on the bench for a chance to play after having been acquired in the Eli Manning trade during the previous year's draft. Brees was also injured, having torn his labrum in the final game of the season.

So the Chargers let Brees go to the Saints, and made Rivers the starter.

Before Brees left, I would have been OK with the Chargers auctioning off Rivers in order to maximize the Manning trade, which also netted Shawne Merriman and Nate Kaeding for a whiny child with a whiny father who never wanted to play in San Diego, anyway. But what would have happened if the Chargers kept Brees, traded Rivers and then Brees couldn't come back?

Yeah, that would have been a disaster.

Side note: How much would Dolphins fans give to have Brees in their lineup? They were interested, but traded for the washed-up Daunte Culpepper instead, although you have to give them a certain benefit of the doubt because of Brees' bad shoulder.

As for Sproles, I loved him for what he was -- a terrific return man and pass-catcher out of the backfield. However, in spite of moments of brilliance, he was never going to be the lead running back, but if the Chargers kept using the franchise tag on him, they would have needed to keep paying him like one. So they let him go to New Orleans, where he plays pretty much the same role he did with San Diego.

Turning to Payton, he got the Saints job after the 2005 season, a season in which the Chargers finished 9-7. It wasn't great, and they missed the playoffs, but it's not usually the kind of record that causes a team to fire its coach (who, by the way, was Marty Schottenheimer, not Norv Turner).

Furthermore, the Brees/Sproles discussion misses an important point.

The Chargers lost both of them (along with running backs Michael Turner and LaDainian Tomlinson), but are doing OK at those positions now.

Granted, Rivers hasn't had a particularly good season this year (in spite of the Pro Bowl selection), but he has been a high-level NFL quarterback. Ryan Mathews has also had an excellent year, Mike Tolbert provides another quality option at running back.

What I would give, however, is to see Clay Matthews in a Chargers uniform. It could have happened, but he fell to the Packers with the 26th pick in the 2009 draft, 10 picks after the Chargers chose Larry English, who has the grand total of seven career sacks playing the same position.

But Matthews didn't do something exciting on "Monday Night Football" last night.

Brad Radke won't go to the Hall of Fame, but there's no shame in that

I came across an article on the Baseball Hall of Fame website about how former Minnesota Twins pitcher Brad Radke is on the ballot for the first time this year.

The idea seemed laughable, but I kept reading, and Samantha Carr. who wrote the piece, sold it pretty well: already a member of the Twins' Hall of Fame, the 20 wins in 1997, a mainstay of three playoff teams, including in 2006 with an injured arm, the kind words from teammates.

"It's pretty amazing to watch him make these picture-perfect pitches time after time," said Twins second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. "He's getting some well-deserved recognition for what he's done, especially with the team we have."

For a brief moment, I thought that maybe Radke was one of those guys who did enough in his career that perhaps he had statistics relatively close to someone who had been enshrined or was at least in a conversation about it.

Then I kept reading.

"Finishing his career with 148 wins, a 4.22 ERA, 10 shutouts and 1,467 strikeouts, Radke was one of the most consistent pitchers in the game. When he retired, he ranked fourth in Twins franchise history in strikeouts, third in wins, second in games started and fourth in innings pitched."

Nope, that's not going to get it done. It may not even be enough to stay on the ballot by getting more than 5 percent of the vote. Frankly, it would shock me if he got a single vote.

And in his time, Brad Radke was a really good pitcher. It just goes to show how good someone has to be to even be on the outer fringes of Hall of Fame discussion.

Maybe you once wanted to hit an umpire. It's still wrong.

I actually have a Yorvit Torrealba story.

Actually, it's not so much a Torrealba story. After all, how many people have stories about journeyman semi-regular catchers?

This is more of a Vin Scully story, about the time Torrealba came up to bat while playing with the Rockies and Scully told the story of how the name Yorvit came to be. I don't remember all the details -- if memory serves, his parents had different ideas and so there was some kind of merger -- but what I remember is how smoothly Scully told the story, complete with imagining a little Yorvit asking his parents where his name came from, without missing a pitch.

That, and the way he said "Yor-vit Tor-re-al-ba." It was lyrical.

But even if my Yorvit Torrealba story isn't actually about him, he'll probably prefer it to this one.

If you think her face is pretty, check out her jumper

Over on ESPN's website, Scoop Jackson writes about Skylar Diggins of Notre Dame, in particular about how, as he puts it, she's one of those people who "defies the sentence that condemns the rest of us. Every now and then, someone shows up with sovereign skills and supreme attractiveness, and it's unfair."

"The hard thing about beauty is that it can't be ignored," Jackson writes. "Especially when it's so hard to ignore that it obscures something deeper, something that in this case is the attempt to out-ball damn near every yet-to-turn-pro female basketball player in the world.
Beauty, in Skylar Diggins' case, should come secondary. I said should ."

While I'm not so naive as to think that Diggins' looks don't get her extra attention (and some of those 131,000-plus Twitter followers), I'm going to guess that she's not the only attractive woman on the Notre Dame campus. I've never been there, but I feel fairly comfortable going out on that limb.

But it's because of basketball that Scoop Jackson, I and basketball fans know who she is.

Scoop gets it.

"Skylar Diggins will tell you that, for her, it's ball above all. It's on us to look past her beauty to see that."

Indeed it is. Can we?