Found October 11, 2007 on The Red Sox Ticket:
Slam
With 13 games in the bag, and the next round of the playoffs starting today… I have a serious question about playoff baseball coverage. How do you feel about the TBS Play-By-Play and overall presentation versus the Fox and ESPN coverage in years past? As a person who's not a particular fan of McCarver and Buck, I actually liked the TBS coverage (watched most of the games). I do admittedly have a soft spot for Don Orsillo, who did a killer job in that 13-inning one-game playoff. Lets break down this year's national coverage by each network that's recently aired playoff games: ESPN: Pros - Jon Miller - Fun overpronunciations of player names. Great calls when something exciting happens. The B team is pretty stellar. General awareness of other pertinent sports happenings doesn't get in the way of the action. Cons - Joe Morgan, oversaturation of commercials for crappy ESPN original series, lack of Harold Reynolds, highly self-referential production. Fox: Pros -Thom Brennaman and Joe Girardi did a killer job this season as Fox's B-Team. I'm bummed out that there aren't two series on at the same time on Fox, as these guys would be great for the NLCS. In previous years I'd say the Fox B-Team strikes me a wholly unobtrusive… if lacking some energy. Cons - Joe Buck & Tim McCarver, Scooter, entire at-bats lost to crappy interviews promoting some God-awful Fox show that isn't premiering until next year, HORRIBLY losing the play via bad camerawork. TBS: Pros - Chip Caray, Tony Gwynn, and Bob Brenly did a phenomenal job covering the Yanks/Indians series. While they certainly got into it when the games got interesting, their overall laid-back approach didn't shove any asinine "-(insert name)-isms" into my brain. Ted Robinson and Steve Stone were a bit on the repetitive side, but not bad overall. The first couple days of FrankTV ads. Cons - Dick Stockton and Ron Darling nearly bored me to death, but so did Chicago's effort against the D-Backs. I'm a softie for Orsillo, but it didn't seem like Joe Simpson could get a solid cadence down with him in the booth. After the first couple days, the FrankTV ads started getting to me. This show should be premiering (or at least previewing mini-episodes) after games… since no one who doesn't already watch TBS is going to remember to go back to it in November. Maybe I'm giving TBS a flyer because I'm sick of the same ESPN and Fox mannerisms… but I feel like this year they provided the best national coverage baseball watching experience. And there were no talking cartoon baseballs involved. Who do you take in the battle of playoff coverage?
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