Down The Tubes
With due respect to the limited efforts of the National League, nothing derails the Diamondbacks quite like putting them on TV. Bob Melvin's teams have played with their tubes tied for years now, and after quietly fashioning a 13-7 mark in the relative cocoon of the Cactus League, electromagnetic waves from today's FSNAZ telecast apparently proved too much for our shy and retiring Scarlets, who were zapped by the Los Angeles Heiligenschein, 8-3.
We braved but half an inning of this...this "telecast" ourselves, hardly sufficient to fully critique the new broadcast team, but between errands and FSN power outages, enough to note first impressions. On a humorous if somewhat rehearsed note, Daron Sutton briskly mocked his own "long drawn out story that no one enjoyed", a welcome departure from Brennaman's ponderous comedic forays. His Stevestonian nasal twang, though, was an unpleasant jolt - and made Daron sound whiny even when he's desperately cheerful - which appears to be most of the time. He talks too fast and too much, as if selling uninspected meat door to door from a van. And that grating voice isnt going away anytime soon.
Colorman Mark Grace has successfully transitioned from semi-interesting ex-player to shameless company shill, gushing about the look of the new Diamond Club one minute, and volunteering "I haven't seen it yet" the next.
It's going to be a long year, and the only thing that might salvage it for both the team and their fans, is radio.
Watch the game with the sound off. Since you are a local, you can even put the radio on, too.
Those of us watching from afar have a syncing problem. I was in a restaurant at the end of game 7 of last year's NLCS. The game was on the restaurant TV but without sound. I had a radio with me. The radio announcers were ahead of the picture by a significant margin. Who says light is faster than sound?
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Part of the fun of watching games on TV (for me anyway) is screaming at the TV about what idiots the announcers are and how they don't know what they're talking about. I have trouble doing that now because, I'm pleased to say, the Mets crew of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez are all excellent and insightful. And you know how cantankerous I can be when dealing with idiocy. Luckily Michael Kay is on the Yankees broadcasts and Suzyn Waldman and John Sterling are on Yankees radio--they provide all the ammunition for screaming one would need for a month in five innings or so. Darling and Hernandez are both insightful and add things that I didn't know or think about before.
On another note, Jim Rome was talking about Kirk Gibson and his possible effect on the D'backs as their bench coach. He played an old interview with Gibson and talked about how the D'backs players had better keep their heads in the game and play hard, etc. I don't buy it. If Gibson starts telling war stories of his playing days, the players will tune out; if he starts getting in their faces, they're just as likely to say with a sneer, "Who the are you to be telling ME anything old man?!?" Just watch.
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I wrote "Who the b--l--e--e--p are you to be telling ME..." Are they filtering out such innocuous stuff now? Jeez.
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