Thom Brennaman, welcome to the unemployment line

Brennaman is out here playing Bad Apology Bingo: "Man of faith," check. Apologizing to the "people that sign his paychecks" first and foremost, check. Apologizing to "anyone he hurt or defended," check. "Talk to my friends about me," check. I wouldn't wish that kind of public embarrassment on anybody, but I don't feel sorry for him in the least. As a previous poster spoke about, these situations are fascinating given the climate in 2020. It's easy to play armchair quarterback in these situations while the dude's career, his family's name and all that is swirling down the drain at breakneck speed. But, however unfair, these situations are a true litmus test of a person's character.

The apology started going downhill fast after the home run. From this perspective, those seconds were his one last opportunity to save face, to admit his mistake and prove to the world he's a decent human being.

It's not, "I don’t know if I’m going to put this headset on again,” it's, "I will not be putting on this headset again. I don't deserve to after what I said. I am ashamed of what I said and I need to take a long look in the mirror and realize why I thought that way, because it's not who I feel I am as a person. I'm sorry to the viewers, my family, friends and co-workers and especially those who I have marginalized with my comments. Thank you for all the years of support, I am thoroughly embarrassed for letting you down, but I will become a better person for this."

 

This is no defense of Brennaman, but you couldn't be more wrong about the business. Working without a script is damn difficult.

Live play-by-play or ad-libbing or even pulling off a regular DJ shift without sounding like a bumbling, rambling idiot is a lot harder than you might think. Consider a normal conversation. How many times do you pause, stammer or correct yourself because you get tongue-tied? When you write a story on deadline, how often do you erase a word, a sentence, or reorder your thoughts? You don't get a second chance to do that when you're live. Whatever comes out of your mouth when the "on air" light is on is what the audience hears.

I've had friends tell me how cushy it must be to "just sit there and read the sports scores for a living." Until I handed them a list of scores and recorded them mangling them, and suddenly it wasn't so cushy after all. We had a televised community roundtable in Vacaville and the two local newspaper editors admitted live TV was the hardest thing they had ever done, because you're constantly trying to self-edit your thoughts and express them out loud in real time.

The art of being able to sound coherent live requires practice and skill. How many local TV reporters have you watched who can read from their notes just fine, but when asked a folowup question, can't spit out a response to save their lives? And I'm talking big city markets like Atlanta and San Francisco. Half of CNN's staff are terrible at ad-libbing. I just watched a reporter from the San Francisco ABC affiliate stumble through a live shot yesterday from the LNU fires.

Just like I wouldn't expect Joe Blow off the street to put together a solid gamer, the average person doesn't realize that top talent radio/TV is the result of a lot of practice and experience. Al Michaels gets paid a lot of money because he's incredible at composing his thoughts -- just look at his amazing work from the World Series earthquake game, or even coming up with "Do you believe in miracles?" on the spot.

Contrast that with some of the people working at the minor league level or on the ESPNU games. They're just not at that level, even if they may have the potential of getting there some day. It's not easy because not everyone can make smooth transitions and quick, clean summations.

I was better at sounding comfortable talking off the cuff at 33 than I was at 19, but by then I had done Shuttle launches, elections, earthquakes, fires, hurricanes and call-in shows (and at 19, Florida News Network trusted me enough to send me to cover an execution). I started doing play by play in high school and it's embarrassing but enjoyable to pull out those recordings and see how raw I was.

 

Everyone should try to read anything of more than 2 paragraphs out loud and see how long they can go without a hiccup. It ain’t as easy as it sounds.

 

Now imagine being the Grateful Dead and playing live shows for many decades.

Very difficult.

 

And do it, knowing perhaps 50,000 people are listening to you at any given time during a morning show. No pressure!

 

While keeping an eye on the clock and, if you're at a small station, while running the board and cueing up the next break on the computer system.

 

Mr. Friedman and Mr. Maumann, with all due respect to your broadcast experience, there really isn't any possible outcome other than dismissal. But you're right, the process has to play out. First, this is nothing like what happened to Mr. Friedman. That was an honest mistake. Embarrassing, yes, but something we all have done at some level. And yes, Mr. Maumann, there is a lot of pressure in live broadcasting. I've done it some, and yep, some odd stuff can come out of your mouth. But there are a couple of huge differences here. One, Brennaman made the rookie mistake of not treating all mikes as hot. That meant his true feelings came out. Saying what he said was no slip of the tongue, it was airing his homophobia for what he thought were only his colleagues within earshot. As one poster noted with the old news story, Brennaman's LGBTQ views have probably been well-trenched for years. That is not something you can just explain away, no matter how grovelling the apology. And we really saw what kind of dick he is with the "apology."

 

Oh, definitely. Brennaman rightly deserves to see his career end. Totally agree on that issue.

 

I saw this blowing up on Twitter and flipped over to the game and there was Brennaman calling it like nothing had happened. I thought, if I know about this in suburban Toronto, certainly someone on the TV crew knows about it too.

And I will echo what others have said about working live TV and/or radio. I never thought it as easy but after a stint doing colour on radio and community TV for junior hockey it is much much much harder than it looks, especially with someone talking in your ear.

 

COMPUTER SYSTEM!

I'm from the generation of slamming carts in the multi-stack cart rack (and hoping the last guy cued them up), cueing up the turnable (and making sure it's set on the right speed), handling the incessant phone calls from irate sponsors/radio groupies/crank callers and getting yelled at by the music director/program director/engineer for not filling out the ASCAP report/program log/making the daylight-night pattern change.

 

The only move Brennaman should have made last night...

... was to resign on the spot. Apologize to everyone. Say “I was wrong and I don’t want the Reds or Fox Sports Ohio to deal with this. This is on me.”

He wouldn’t have his job but he might have a smidge of respect for owning it. Also doing that might crack a door for a future return.

His CYA approach sealed any hope of him keeping his job. Now it’s just a matter of working out the details on his termination. Sometimes that takes a few days.

Brennaman will be fine. Dude has landed on his feet his entire life.