2021 MLB Regular Season thread

It's not shutting it down, it's restoring some fucking decorum and restraint to our culture.

It's OK to say no to a shitty joke. It's not wokeness. It's not softness. It's saying GTFOH with that shit.

 

He's not a great analyst, but he's occasionally somewhat informative.

The Tigers are in kind of a weird situation with their teevee color analysts, where Morris and Kirk Gibson have been rotating the last couple of seasons along with a cast of thousands doing it on a one game basis here and there.

Gibson has been working with Parkinson's disease the last several years. The first couple years of that, before his diagnosis became public, Gibson sounded strangely sluggish, muted and monosyllabic -- a real snooze fest. Frankly he sounded like he was on downers or ludes.

Then his diagnosis became public and according to some reports he went on a new treatment and medication regimen, and his on-screen persona noticeably perked up.

He certainly wouldn't be confused with any experienced on screen entertainer, but he did get better. But his Parkinson's situation limits his availability somewhat; I think he's only supposed to work three or four games a week and take a week or so a month completely off.

Morris of course has also been doing commentary for both the Twins and Blue Jays, which allows him to slot in with the Tigers for 3-4 games at a time around Gibson.

I'm sure the COVID circumstances of game commentary being done from the studio rather than live from the ballparks have actually made this easier to pull off.

Neither Morris or Gibson is a knockout great analyst; I'm sure the Tigers would love if some other former player would step forward and be a no brainer pick for that role, but nobody has.

A lot of people thought they'd make a big push for Curtis Granderson, but apparently they got outbid by TBS -- or, maybe Granderson didn't want to commit to a full season 100+ game gig.

 

No longer allowed to use that term.

 

Star Man-

This has happened with Tigers TV announcers a little more than it has with other teams. Rod Allen? Is that the right name of the guy? Got in an on-air fight with his broadcasting partner?

About a decade ago the D-backs sacked both their announcers (Daron Sutton and Mark Grace) and it later turned out both of them had a ton of personal/legal problems.

With the former jocks, if they suck they suck and get some other former player to do it. It's not like they're hard to find. Jack Morris and Kirk Gibson were so long ago to the young fan they might as well be George Kell. Get somebody younger.

 

Sportrac says he's earned more than $108M so go figure why he'd wanna work a day even!

 

Tying a couple threads together, on the radio side of the broadcasts, Jim Price, 79, backup catcher for Bill Freehan on the 1968 World Series champions, who has been the "color" analyst on the radio side for a decade or more, and has been carrying on a battle with cancer the past several years, recently left the air without any formal announcement. So the Tigers probably need fresh voices on the radio side as well.
They tried Lloyd McClendon for a few games, and let me tell you, he's not the answer.

 

That happened with Skip Caray as I recall. He'd had a stroke or such and sounded very bad on the air, and was dead a year later. It wasn't flubs, he just couldn't speak. Hearing Skip trying to say Jair Jurrjens was heartbreaking to this old fan who'd listened to Skip bust on the TBS programming lineup for 30 years.

 

Mike Shannon and Denny Matthews, two of the voices with which I grew up in Missouri, are both painful to hear now.

 

To be clear, I wasn't saying that laughing at it was unhealthy, I was saying that censoring/not filming a similarly offensive scene was not necessarily a healthy response to them. Sometimes holding things up to the mirror makes a point that might otherwise be missed.

 

For what it’s worth I thought Morris was fun to listen to when he did radio colour for the Blue Jays 10-ish years ago. I thought he was the best the Jays had had in that role. I was sorry he left, anyway. I’m disappointed to hear others think he’s bad.