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Last Friday, Rian Watt stirred up some controversy in these pages by wondering if sabermetrics, as we understand the term, is going to be replaced by intersectional analysis—the study of baseball as it fits into the world at large—as the bleeding edge of baseball writing. As someone who writes and thinks primarily in the style he described, I certainly hope that’s where the future takes us.

But even the idea of the end of sabermetrics as we know it brings up a separate point. The concepts of turn-of-the-century sabermetric analysis have pervaded all aspects of independent media, and empiricism of some form or other is the byword of all 30 front offices. Even among casual fans, there’s a curiosity about the science of the game that just didn’t exist 20 years ago, and the kind of cranks that used to be ridiculed by Fire Joe Morgan, and their disciples, are now consigned to relative irrelevance, the last holdouts defending antediluvian ideals as the state of the art has passed them by.

But one area lags behind: the broadcast booth. Almost everyone hates the local broadcasters, and the sound of playoff baseball is the sound of millions of baseball fans groaning, “WHY, HAROLD, WHY” from sea to shining sea.

The solution to this problem is not to shoehorn framing runs or DRA or whatever new statistic happens to fit in with the state of the art. We already have instances of broadcasters passing along scripted segments from researchers in which they read leaderboards of stats they don’t understand, and it doesn’t work.

Innumeracy isn’t the disease—it’s a symptom. The disease is nostalgia, which makes itself noticeable in numerous ways.

In the 1960s and 1970s, both baseball and television were expanding into something like the all-consuming corporate entities they are today, and dozens of now-iconic sportscasters started being beamed into homes across America. They were plucked not from broadcasting colleges but from minor-league gigs they’d stumbled into after working at a newspaper, or after leaving the military, and they honed their craft in a time when mass media was a one-way proposition, in a sports culture that was far less cynical and far more patient than it is now.

By the time the current generation of baseball writers came of age, Harry Kalas and Dave Niehaus and Dave Van Horne were already local institutions. Their voices and catchphrases were as intertwined with the identities of the teams they covered as the uniforms or the players themselves. They became like communal grandfathers to cities they represented.

But in the past 10 to 15 years, those beloved broadcasters have started retiring and/or dying, and in their place are the hated modern play-by-play guys. They’re interchangeable polo shirt-wearing science projects, like fleshy blanks milled into announcers who all have the same voice and the same haircut by communications departments at colleges across America.

But these play-by-play announcers aren’t hated because they’re bad—though some are—or even boring. They’re hated because they’re not the beloved grandfather we grew up with.

Could these overtrained play-by-play men stand to have some of Vin Scully’s literary quality? Probably. But they’re adequate and professional, for the most part. We just can’t recognize that because we’re overpowered by nostalgia.

That’s less true of the former players who share the booth with these interchangeable, but innocuous men.

Nostalgia is also the reason that color commentators must almost always be ex-players themselves. There’s a comfort to seeing a familiar name and face on the broadcast, and that comfort has turned into a sclerotic, Burkean loyalty to tradition, clinging to the cathartic but unproductive ad hominem: “You Never Played The[1] Game.”

The difference between being a player and being an analyst is like the difference between being an astronaut and designing the Saturn V rocket. The primary qualifications for being a player are athletic, and while over the course of a career many players gain knowledge and insight that might interest a TV audience, the skills of a player are different from the skills of a broadcaster. Some ballplayers have the charisma and the knowledge—and more importantly, the ability to communicate that knowledge intelligibly to non-experts—just as some astronauts are also accomplished engineers.

But some ballplayers don’t, because broadcasting a sporting event is hard and that’s not the job they trained their whole lives for.

Great analysis is based in curiosity, creativity and the ability to be interesting and not monotonous, to say nothing of separating truth from truisms, and meaningful information from trivia.

Smarter baseball commentary doesn’t have to include numbers at all. You don’t need to talk about BABIP if you can explain batted ball luck. You don’t need to talk about catcher framing numbers if you can explain the mechanics. But it requires a curiosity that doesn’t need to be cultivated when you can fall back on “Back in my day, when I played the game…”

On-field experience is still such an overpowering crutch that not only do many ex-players refuse to develop other discursive tools, their co-commentators are often cowed into silence, as are many fans and a disturbing number of media members.

That kind of analysis, in addition to being boring and often not true, also isn’t very fun. It’s mirthless in its self-seriousness. A good broadcast is informative, but it also recognizes that baseball is a game. It’s no surprise that one of the few non-MLB players in a high-profile color commentary role, Jessica Mendoza, is also one of the few color commentators who still has a sense of wonder in her analysis.

To say nothing of the fact that using almost exclusively ex-players as color commentators effectively eliminates a huge percentage of the baseball community from becoming an announcer—not only non-players in general, but women, (so far) gay men and lots of Latin American and Asian players whose input is valuable but whose English might not be good enough.

So what kind of booth should we aspire to?

The best commentary booth I’ve ever seen in any sport, and I’m not joking even a little, is the NBC daytime figure skating team from the 2014 Olympics: Terry Gannon, Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski. It was informative, because Lipinski and Weir didn’t feel the need to talk down to the audience about the intricacies of the sport, and Gannon wasn’t too afraid of looking stupid to ask “Why?” or “What does that mean?” And of course their commitment to having a good time was as infectious as it is now notorious.

Of course, Weir and Lipinski are both former figure skaters, and even Gannon, a former NC State basketball player, is an ex-jock as well, though now he’s just another dark-haired, good-looking middle-aged white guy, like every other play-by-play person. So it can be done with the current tools, but it’s hard enough to find someone with curiosity, charisma and expertise who has natural chemistry with his or her partners without also making it a requirement that that person also be able to hit a major league curveball.

So while fixing baseball broadcasting isn’t really a sabermetric proposition, it does have its roots in similar attitudes: a desire for accuracy, a curiosity about the way things work and a healthy skepticism about tradition. Those attitudes will improve the state of broadcasting. Nostalgia



[1] The sportswriter’s version of playing experience is clubhouse access. Both have value in terms of experience and insight, but touting that as an argument-ender is a tacit admission that whoever’s got access doesn’t have anything else to add.

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mblthd
2/12
I don't know if this falls under "that's odd" or "not surprising," but for whatever reason, kids LOVE Johnny Weir. It's not like a "want to marry him" kind of love, but more akin to what they used to feel about Dora the Explorer or the Wiggles back when they were 3 or 4 or whatever.

If that sounds like I'm trying to insult him (like "he's a cartoon character"), I swear that's not my intent. I mean it as a complement, though I don't know the reason for it. Maybe it's the fancy outfits and hair-do's, I don't know. I'm wondering if it's more like they just perceive a sense of truth/honesty from him.
bhacking
2/12
using almost exclusively ex-players as color commentators effectively eliminates a huge percentage of the baseball community from becoming an announcer—not only non-players in general, but women, (so far) gay men ....
______________________
I'm hoping this just didn't come across properly. You realize there are gay men who play baseball in the major leagues. I'll wait for you to clarify before saying any more.
Ogremace
2/15
My takeaway was that the sport hasn't necesarily been hospitable to it over the years if only for keeping pace with typical all-male athletic culture. Presumably there are numerous ballplayers who are gay but have not come out publicly, but still the sport seems underrepresentative of homosexuaity.
Taldan9
2/12
I'm the only Blue Jay fan who likes Harold Reynolds. The only Canadian, too. Be careful, Harold-the RCMP always gets their man!
elljay
2/12
The Giants' crew is excellent.

Miller, Flemming, and Kuiper do the P by P, and Krukow does the color.

Seamless transition from TV to radio, along with great chemistry suffused with knowledge and a love of the game.

None better.....
toddroll
2/12
I couldn't agree more about the Giants' broadcast booth.

Part of the thrill in tuning into any game is catching those guys. It's seemingly part of the flow of the Giants these days - great ballpark, great manager, and highly competitive teams even in years when the starting lineup between opening day and Game 162 turns over completely, and band-aids are holding the rotation together.
smitty99
2/12
There are quite a few very good announcing teams in MLB. We have a good crew in Seattle. There are many others. I like the hated Mets crew even. Many teams' are sneaking in analytics and other modern ideas. I've had the cable thing in which you can watch pretty much all the games. Also the Phillies games often had the other team's announcing crew. Like in nearly everything, there are some really good, some pretty good, and some not so good. The SF crew IS really good. But there are quite a few others.

msbirt
2/12
Not to pick nits, but the Mets crew is pretty widely respected.

* Exhibit #1: http://bit.ly/1O6KM1u
* Exhibit #2: http://ble.ac/1O6KKXq
* Exhibit #3: http://bit.ly/1O6KS9l
* Exhibit #4: http://bit.ly/1KfFdDf
* Exhibit #5: http://atmlb.com/1KfFiqr
SaberTJ
2/12
The Indians crews are all pretty horrible. TV is stuck in the non money ball type view of baseball despite the franchise being progressive.
Kinanik
2/12
As a Cubs fan I've enjoyed Len Kasper and both Jim Deschais and Bob Brenly. Len made his way up from the minors, and has the curiosity and enthusiasm that I expect will eventually make him into an elder-statesman sort. Plus he's numerate. You could put him on alone and he'd be able to talk about interesting things--not on the level of Scully or Uecker, but maybe someday.

The ex-players... Brenly did occasionally 'talk down,' but not as a daily occurrence. Deschais doesn't do it at all.

Of course, Pat Hughes is one of the grandpas to a fanbase.

I see where you're coming from, though. There's a bit of a vicious cycle--"low quality" announcers can be stepped on by ex-players, which prevents those "low quality" announcers from developing well. No ex-player would talk down to Vin Scully, so it's not just a 'hasn't played' thing.

I'll be honest and say that I don't necessarily want announcers to adopt "intersectional analysis," however good that might be for baseball journalism.
bchenier
2/15
another Cubs fan here who loves Len and JD, but I believe the problems with other broadcasts are as widespread as discussed. Cheers to Hawk being gone soon enough, though.
tearecrules
2/16
JD and Bill Brown were a good duo for the Astros. I was living overseas until recently so I only got about half a season of the new Astros broadcast team, but they weren't terrible.
stevemillburg
2/12
To me, the root of the problem is that baseball announcers seem to think listeners are most interested not in the game but rather in the announcers' opinions about the game, the players, baseball in general, sports in general, current events, etc. Announcing has become a sports talk show, occasionally (often grudgingly) interrupted by descriptions of the game itself

It's especially bad on radio, where announcers ignore "routine" pitches and even entire at-bats in favor of bantering, telling stories, or interviewing a player's wife about an upcoming charity event. Baseball is game of ebb and flow, with tension building pitch by pitch until it's sudden released when bat strikes ball. Failing to announce each and every pitch kills that tension.

The great old-time announcers learned to paint word pictures, noting the placement of fielders, describing exactly how plays unfolded, and allowing listeners to visualize the action. Announcers today do TV as well as radio. I suspect they carry over to the radio booth the habit of not describing what TV viewers can plainly see for themselves.
BrewersTT
2/15
I wish I could + this ten times. The White Sox and Reds crews come to mind but others too, with the interviews of players' wives in the middle of the action, forgetting for several pitches to mention the count, forgetting to say who is coming to bat until several pitches have been thrown to him, local traffic,recounting tales of their high school days, etc etc.
morro089
2/15
The only radio I listen to is the Cubs so it may be different, but I don't mind the stories that overlap the play-by-play at all. In fact, I didn't even notice they did it until last year (I'm in my 20's). Interrupting a story to tell me there was a ball off the plate is just getting in the way of a story.
When you're at a game, do you watch literally every pitch? You're probably ignoring pitches here and there while you talk with your wife/buddy/kids. If you lived and died with every pitch then a 300 pitch game would be exhausting, much less 1,800 pitches a week. I can't imagine you would hold up that rate of interest beyond 4 innings. The announcers will tell you when something important happens or is happening, you have to trust them.
MikePemulis
2/12
Listening to FP Santangelo try and explain OPS+ is like watching an actor speak in a foreign language by memorizing the sounds they hear.
Deadheadbrewer
2/13
Good article. I might add that part of the problem is that there is so much extra time to fill during a game nowadays that announcers have to do much more talking than they used to. In the "good ol' days," the pace of the game allowed for little between-pitch banter and nostalgia. With the slower pace today, announcers are perhaps scrambling to find things to say. If the games are now 20% longer, then the announcers have to talk 20% more, and there probably isn't THAT much to discuss during one baseball game.
jthom17
2/15
A few years ago, it dawned on me why I enjoyed listening to Vince Scully broadcast a game. It was like he was having a conversation directly with me since no one else was in the booth with him.
I wonder why some other teams don't try it instead of sticking three people in the booth. I admit I am of the group that believes "less is better" when it comes to broadcasting.
Harold Reynolds must have a great agent.
TwinsfanTravis
2/15
I feel like relying on one person to fill airspace for 3-4 hours everyday is a scary proposition for most producers...and broadcasters for that matter. Scully is a rare, beautiful bird.
TwinsfanTravis
2/15
I personally think the Twins TV crew of Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven are is pretty good, although I am admittedly biased. But they work well together and Bremer does a good job of being informative when he can but also asking questions to clarify finer aspects of the game and cultivate that wonder referred to in the article. But if you are forced to listen to "Dazzle Dan Gladden" on WCCO radio, you are better off just taking a nap.
hmamis
2/15
Joe Buckof the KC Royals broadcasting team is the best.
jnossal
2/27
Howard Cosell warned of the ascendance of the jockocracy in broadcasting 30 years ago.

If you think baseball has a problem, try pro football.