Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
January 21, 2009
Three Man Booth

ESPN adds Steve Phillips to the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast booth. That should be enough to bring Fire Joe Morgan out of retirement. It's unfortunate that this move likely means more idea discussions of issues and less calling of the game.

I believe I'm a rare person in the baseball blogosphere who likes Joe Morgan better than Jon Miller. Miller brings the great voice to the game, but he's an impressionist and comedian at heart and has no feel for statistics. When ESPN pairs Joe with someone who taps Joe's strengths, Morgan speaks with more intelligence about the game.

I understand ESPN feels they need their national broadcast to cover more than just the game (despite 12 to 14 hours a week of studio shows devoted to baseball). Maybe they feel that Phillips's management experience brings a different view to those stories. I just want to watch the game, however.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:04 AM | Broadcasts | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Actually, I find both announcers are horrible. Worst booth in baseball. In addition, does anyone else ever note what a lower case racist Joe Morgan is? A couple of people I know mentioned this a few years ago and then I started listening carefully to what he says about white and black players/mamagers, etc-its biased but he does it such a stealthy way that its not readly apparent.

Posted by: dch at January 21, 2009 09:56 AM

It's pretty apparent.

Posted by: bandit at January 21, 2009 10:19 AM

I'm not sure there's anything that Steve Phillips "management experience" should be considered a positive, except possibly enriching other franchises with his best prospects for pennies on the dollar...

Posted by: Aaron at January 21, 2009 10:29 AM

One more reason to use the mute button.

Posted by: Casey Abell at January 21, 2009 10:57 AM

I think the White Sox booth is the worst. But having Hawk Harrelson in with anyone would make it the worst.

Maybe Philips' job is to make Joe Morgan look, er, sound good.

Posted by: rbj at January 21, 2009 12:54 PM

Three people is too many, no matter what. When any if them is Phillips, that is intolerable. Someone tell ESPN that I will not watch any broadcast wi 3 people in the booth. If they tink no one will watch and they will lose $$ maybe they will listen. They have such promise as a network and are so poorly run.

Posted by: Luis at January 21, 2009 08:31 PM

I actually dig Joe Morgan when he is talking about the current at bat.

When he talks about anything else I want to change the channel.

Posted by: robustyoungsoul at January 22, 2009 09:24 AM
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