IF YOU didn’t know bet ter, last Sunday – if you didn’t know the Jets were rallying to take the lead at home late in a regular-season game against a bad Chiefs team – Jets’ radio play-by-play man Bob Wischusen made it sound as if he were calling a Super Bowl. Or if it suddenly began to rain pre-paid PSLs!
Otherwise a reliable provider of nuts and bolts, Wischusen wasn’t simply loud – a reasonable response to a comeback and then when the Jets stopped a counter-comeback – he became hysterical, screaming until his voice cracked and the speaker vibrated.
Unless he had never before seen something so exciting, so unusual, his hysteria had to be in large part forced, obligatory. But to whom is he obligated? How many genuine football fans, Jets fans, demand overly cooked food instead of hot food?
Is this what teams want? Is this what sports audiences want? Is this what the broadcasters want? What has happened to play-by-play in this town that such a transparency is becoming the dominant style?
New York’s legacy as harbor for the greats – Red Barber, Lindsey Nelson, Vin Scully, Merle Harmon, Bob Wolff, Spencer Ross, Marty Glickman, Mel Allen, Marv Albert, Bob Murphy – is being threatened by indiscriminate screamers and those given to hear-through artificial additives.
That John Sterling has for 20 years been the “Voice of the New York Yankees” is an irreversible shame. He’s a smug vandal let loose in ballparks to spray-paint his name on and over everything and everyone.
But Wischusen, Chris Carlin (Rutgers radio), and Gus Johnson (Knicks’ radio and TV) show up at every game prepared to scream and holler at anything, as if that’s our preference. Gary Cohen (Mets’ TV) would have us think that all Mets home runs are worthy of the same hysterical application, as if he and we don’t know better.
Yet, we know that they must be better than this, so why treat as us dopes? Is this what it now takes to make it here? Is this the advice they would give to career aspirants? “Scream as loud as you can whenever any opportunity to raise your voice arrives, fall all over yourself whenever ‘your’ team succeeds at anything.”
When Red Barber, who rarely hollered, hollered, “Oh, doctor!” it became a keeper because it was a genuine response to a big moment, Al Gionfriddo’s catch off Joe DiMaggio’s shot in the 1947 World Series. Listeners knew that Barber, at a special moment, had witnessed and described something special, that he wasn’t exaggerating.
Where do screamers go when they want us to know the absolute truth, that what they’re screaming about is truly worth screaming about?
Chris Russo‘s kids must be at that age. Why else would he spend so much time on his Sirius/XM show, the past two weeks, complaining about late starts and finishes to postseason games, and how MLB sacrifices kids for TV money?
This issue is 20-plus-years-old. Yet Russo, for years on WFAN, dismissed and ridiculed such issues as non-issues. Welcome, brother. Better late than never.
While on the subject of sports talk radio, some day a host will be secure enough to insist upon two things from pre-conditioned callers:
1. Don’t preface your questions/statements with, “Thanks for taking my call” – especially when the caller has been on hold for 15 minutes.
2. Don’t preface questions/statements with “I love the show” or anything close. That’s either a given or a lie, and there’s no way of telling which.
Thanks for the memory: Sweet between-periods feature on MSG’s Isles-Flyers, Thursday, about how in 1968, the tail end of the Flyers’ first NHL season, the roof blew off the soon-to-be-demolished Spectrum. Mention was made that one of the Flyers’ home games had to be moved to Madison Square Garden.
Stop the music! I was there! Sunday afternoon, March 3, 1968, the NHL’s first doubleheader.
That Flyers “home” game was against the Oakland Seals. The “New” Garden, which had opened a month earlier, allowed free entry if one could produce a ticket to that night’s Blackhawks-Rangers. This high school kid had one.
With just a few thousand in the building for Flyers-Seals, the Garden allowed open seating. I sat right behind one of the goals. I had never been that close to any big league anything! Doug Favell played great goal for Philadelphia in a 1-1 final. Then I walked around until the start of the Rangers game. Back to the blue seats for me. But what a day!
And thanks for taking my call.
For years, experts’ estimates as spoken on PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow” have failed the smell test. Many Holy Cow! appraisals have seemed ridiculous, especially those attached to sports memorabilia.
A Monday re-run featured a man who had the No. 28 jersey Willie Mays wore with the 1951 Minneapolis Millers. He said he had paid 50 bucks for it. He was told that it’s worth “conservatively, in the $60,000 to $80,000 range.” Yeah, give or take $20,000 – conservatively.
Of course, the desired result was achieved; the man nearly fainted.
In Antiques Roadshow’s 11 years, no recipient of a mind-blowing estimate has ever been heard to provide a natural response to an appraiser, something like, “Really? Then give me half that, and you can sell it for what you claim it’s worth.”