Norman Chad doesn’t mince words on Tony Kornheiser.

He clearly wanted to get off baseball, which is funny considering it's where he built his credibility. If he stayed at Fox, this was going to be his last year on MLB.

 

But see, that's the central reason why I can do without Buck on baseball. He strikes me being obsessed with the narrative-oriented, star-fucking side of announcing. It works better for football, but it doesn't work very well in baseball, where the stars don't always shine. (None of that has anything to do with how good of a guy he is. I'm sure he's a mensch.)

Plus, that devotion to narrative doesn't grasp the fact that a baseball audience wants respect paid to them as baseball fans. It's why someone like Jason Benetti or Dan Schulman when he worked for ESPN works/worked very well. It's why someone like Buck or the ESPN Sunday crew doesn't because they're trying way too hard to appeal to a generic audience. These days? Audiences for almost everything apart from the NFL are rarely a wide berth of the general public. They're there because they like that sport.

 

I felt the same way about Dan Le Bartard’s show. As an occasional listener there were times I was greatly entertained but mostly I felt like I was at a party where I didn’t know anyone or get their inside jokes.

 

Exactly. Tard's radio show quickly devolved into a clown show.
Especially if you were in your car. A silly yuckfest going nowhere every day.

I like Tard. He's a good guy. But his best work was as a devoted print columnist.

 

Le Batard is really good on the radio if he's actually discussing something. Unfortunately the show became 90% about the show, which is tedious as hell. I don't want segments devoted to a bet between two staffers. I stopped listening years ago, but occasionally there's something good on one on the podcasts and you don't have to wade through all the bullshit.

Kornheiser is completely unlistenable. I have no interest in hearing an old man riff on news events he knows absolutely nothing about. Mentally he retired at least ten years ago.

 

Hard to pinpoint these things, but for me Kornheiser's disastrous season on Monday Night Football was something of a before-and-after moment in terms of the quality of his effort.

 

"If you're out on your bike tonight, do wear white."

 

His radio show was pretty good after his MNF career ended. The last 4-5 years have not been good though.

 

When I was on the road a lot more, I would see Norman Chad's Couch Slouch column in some TINY papers. The type of paper that didn't have Dear Abby or a brand-name crossword, and only had 8 comics (none of them the heavy-hitters), but there would be the Couch Slouch.