The Sports Truth

Imagine a world without sportscasters, where fans tuning to games on TV hear the game — and only the game. That’s right, the sounds from the stadium or arena and little else. No chatter. No promos for other programming on the network.

You don’t have to go too far to imagine it. Just go to Canada.

As one of sports’ marquee events, the World Series, hopefully resumes tonight with Game 4, CNN.com published an article questioning whether sportscasters are even worth keeping around.

North of the border, The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. recently locked out its unionized staff, including the announcers who provide play-by-play and color commentary on Canadian Football League (CFL) games.

The reaction of fans? A big jump in ratings, with one game posting the best viewership of any regular season CFL game there in eight years.

The critics of John Madden and Tim McCarver here in the U.S., of which there are millions (including one particularly irate staff writer on the Sports Truth payroll), out there will be disappointed to know that the lockout has ended, and the announcers have returned.

McCarver, perhaps the most maligned announcer in sports, is in the middle of his 17th World Series broadcast this week. With these recent events in Canada, the question is worth asking — are the networks wasting millions on big-name announcers who fans would rather do without?

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When the New York Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs a few weeks ago, I (along with many other non-Yankee fans) thought, “Thank the Lord I can watch baseball in peace, without the agony of hoping the Yankees don’t win, and can simply enjoy the baseball games.”

For a while, this was true.

I had the luxury of being sent by my editors at The Sports Truth to Shea Stadium to cover Game 1 of the NLCS. As my friend Fischer and I sat down in our seats 45 minutes before the first pitch, soaking in the sights and sounds of nervous anticipation from the Mets faithful, I thought to myself “there’s nothing like the baseball playoffs” even if my beloved Red Sox were long out of the pennant chase.

From the cheers of “Yankees Suck!” when a wayward Yankee fan, confused that his team was still not playing baseball, stood up in a Robinson Cano jersey, to the absolute explosion of the 54,000+ when Carlos Beltran hit his two-run homer and watching the crowd go bonkers, I thoroughly enjoyed my first Shea Stadium and NLCS experience, even if Shea stinks.

I’m not a Mets or Cardinals fan, but the experience, along with Fischer’s excitement, had me rooting for the Mets and excited to watch. With the Yanks out of it and Fox stalwarts Tim McCarver and Joe Buck left without a bloated franchise to all but openly root for on national TV, I figured my abhorrent distaste for the Fox broadcasting duo couldn’t quell my baseball enjoyment.

I was sorely mistaken.

The following day, I went over to Fischer’s to watch Game 2 of the NLCS, fully expecting an easy Mets win en route to a World Series birth. During the course of the game, I didn’t pay much attention to Buck or McCarver, instead keeping the volume low and conversing with my friend about our two favorite second basemen — “the thug” Ronnie Belliard and “el Presidente” Jose Valentin (’cause he looks like he could be the president of Mexico with that iron jaw… that or Kevin Federline) among other inane topics.

Guillermo Mota imploded in the eighth inning, Scott Spiezio did his best Derek Jeter impersonation (much to McCarver’s delight) and the room went silent. Fischer was livid and didn’t want to discuss. Suddenly I’m forced to listen to Buck and, far worse, McCarver. It all came streaming back, like a nightmare.

The man is truly an unstoppable force. Think about it. How can a guy like McCarver, who does everything short of wear a Yankees cap in the booth, or, when not calling Yankee games, spews verbal diarrhea about baseball, keep his job? He has the pinnacle of all baseball color broadcasting jobs and he’s horrendous.

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