I am listening to the Cubs play the Diamondbacks right now (on MLB internet radio). The Cubs announcers are awful! One of them is the play-by-play guy, and he’s ok. The other guy, Ronnie, is just a whiner. Oh man is he bad. Complaining about everything! How nothing is going the Cubs’ way. And talk about “Homers”. They guys are so into “their” team. They don’t refer to the team as “the Cubs”. They refer to them as “us” and “we”. As if they are playing on the team. That really bugs me.
Maybe I am just not used to announcers like that. I grew up listening to Vin Scully, Jerry Doggett, and Ross Porter. (And later to Don Drysdale and Rick Monday) All of them are fantastic. They aren’t “homers”, but try to be objective about the game. They applaud good plays on both sides, and are knowledgeable and entertaining enough not to need a sidekick. My only complaint has been that Ross Porter is, as my dad would say, a “computer-mouth”. Every sentence that comes out of his mouth has a number in it. I guess he’s really into stats. Well, I suppose, I don’t mind “computer-mouth” as much these days. I would even go so far as to say that I would miss his style if he ever changed. Hehe, I just remembered that several years ago, I called into DodgerTalk after a game just to egg him on. I asked him how to calculate slugging percentage, and he went on and on… 🙂
Another announcer that I like is Jon Miller who announces *gasp* Giants games, as well as baseball on ESPN. He’s good.