MLB '24 Regular Season Thread

Haha Gubicza seems like a really nice guy (the anti-Randazzo) but employing for decades a guy who played in TWO games for you is truly a uniquely Angels thing.

 

Mark Langston is their radio commentator and they use Tim Salmon and Garret Anderson on pre and post game shows, so at least there's that connection. Bobby Valentine too, who was an Angel when he suffered the injury that basically ended his playing career.

For some reason, Denny Hocking has shown up on broadcasts the past couple of seasons. He has no connection to the team and isn't very good.

 

How are Salmon & Anderson? I remember them being dreadfully dull as players.

 

They are as good as any ex player is on pre and post game. None of them have any real insight. The few times I've heard Salmon on game commentary he's been awful. He brings nothing.

 

The Angels' TV announcers are at the road games. Radio guys aren't. It was odd last weekend that Gubie went to Seattle for just one game because the Angels were on Apple on Friday (with Randazzo anyway) and Fox on Saturday. Normally, since Randazzo isn't available on the weekend, they bring in Matt Vasgersian on the road and have O'Neill at home.
I think Gubie has really grown into his role, except for being stuck on every play being a "tough play."

 

Well, that's two more games than those Barber or Scully guys played for the Dodgers and they did OK.

 

Scully did play baseball at Fordham. Barber, all of 5-8 and 165 pounds, played football at Sanford High School and was an ag major at UF. However, he was working as a janitor when he got called to read a scholarly paper on the school's radio station. He was smart -- he quit school and concentrated on radio!

 

All TV crews are ahead of whomever that new asshole is calling White Sox games. What an absolute free-fall from Jason Benetti. He might be worse than Hawk, which is well nigh remarkable.

 

I realize it's a common thing, but I don't remember it being etched in stone that a team's commentator had to have spent a majority of his playing career with the team.
When I started following baseball, the Angels had Don Drysdale, who didn't spent a single day in a Halos' uniform, as Enberg's partner, and it didn't seem like a big deal to me. Since then they've had guys like Ken Brett, Harmon Killebrew, Joe Torre, Jerry Reuss, and Sparky Anderson, among others, in the broadcast booth, all with little or no time spent with the team during their playing days.
When I was in San Diego, the Padres had Rick Monday and Rick Sutcliffe in the booth at different times, and Tim McCarver (Mets, Yankees) and Ron Fairly (Giants, Mariners) had substantial stints with teams they never played for.
That's just something I never really cared about, as long as the people in the booth were competent.

 

I just started the Hiltner/Walker bio of Red Barber. Every baseball fan in America owes a debt to the University of Nebraska Press.

 

There a box score floating around the innertoobs of Scully playing against George Bush's Yale team.

 

‘Bush-Scully Box Score’