GAME 1, from the top: Fox World Series pregame host Chris Rose last night was so locked into his hip-dude Fox Sports Net act he couldn’t simply say, “home runs,” he had to go with “base flies.” Yeah, baby, like an audition for ESPN!
And was talk-trash White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen added to the pregame for substance or for his, er, style?
Joe Buck, first inning, set the scene: “It’s chilly, but there’s no rain.” Why wouldn’t it be chilly at 8:02 p.m. on Oct 28? Then it began to rain.
Good show and tell early from Fox’s truck and Tim McCarver on Cliff Lee’s “spiked curveball.” And just before Chase Utley’s second homer, on an 0-2 pitch, McCarver mentioned Utley’s “lightning hands, even with two strikes.”
Strong game for McCarver. Last night we got the one who asks us to think about things — to consider the woulda, coulda and shoulda. Sometimes we get the one who tells us what to think.
Nothing unusual, but Utley’s first homer, as described by John Sterling on radio — he called it as if it were a lazy fly to right — was nothing like the shot Utley hit, as seen on Fox. By the way, though we never would suggest that Sterling’s a shill, he picked the Yankees in three.
Good replays and overall use of tape, all game. But good telecasts tend to show up when Fox stays off the crowd and sticks with the game. Go figure. Also, it might have been impolite to note all the empty expensive seats for the first World Series game in new Yankee Stadium.
On one hand, a 6-1 final that included a complete-game pitcher reasonably shouldn’t have run 3:30. On the other, a World Series game between East Coast teams actually ended before midnight!
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Gotta figure that what’s good for viewers is good for advertisers, right? But unlike during its postseason game coverage, Fox likely isn’t to whack the screen in half or into thirds during commercials, making it difficult for us to focus on the product, is it?
From a broadcasting vet: Fox’s Kenny Albert, working Yankees’ postgame clubhouse celebration Sunday, did “a fantastic job ignoring Mayor Bloomberg” who was standing in-frame, “trying to exploit the scene.”
Baseball historian James Kane notes that despite their nickname, many of “The Whiz Kids,” the 1950 Phillies — the last Phillies-Yankees World Series — were older than the Yankees. For example, Phillies’ catcher Andy Seminick was five years older than Yogi Berra. That Series, by the way, concluded on Oct. 7.
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Happens every time a local team is in the playoffs: New York’s newscasts have their anchors and reporters talk sports, often a dangerous thing.
Sunday, after the Yankees won the pennant, Ch. 5 presented its own postgame show. It began with news anchor Dari Alexander reporting that the just-completed Game 6 had been sensational, “an amazing game!” The Angels played dreadfully, but OK.
Next, however, Alexander seemed to think that the game she had characterized as “amazing!” had been played in Anaheim.
“Now we’re going to go out to California and to Duke Castiglione, who has been there the entire series.” Castiglione was standing, live, in front of Yankee Stadium.
Newscasts should stick to remotes from bars, patrons hollering, “Yankees! No. 1! Wooo! Yankees, all the way! Wooo!”
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Is there a person less eligible to ridicule anyone for “always getting it wrong” than Mike Francesa? He not always gets it wrong, he makes his predictions sound like inside word handed directly down to him — or across to him –from the Almighty.
Friday and Saturday, claiming that weathermen “never get it right/always get it wrong,” Francesa guaranteed that Angels-Yankees Game 6 would be played Saturday night despite an ominous forecast.
Of course, the game was postponed because of bad weather. And even on issues of weather, the all-knowing, all-seeing Professa Francesa serves as a reliable reverse barometer. Incidentally, WFAN’s contest to win a Series seat beside Francesa does not specify whether the winner must provide him food and drink service.