Torrents of useless chatter from broadcast trio

Jul 14, 2008 04:30 AM
by Chris Zelkovich
Toronto Star

The horrors of the three-man broadcasting booth have been well documented, with the spotlight shining mainly on the torrents of useless verbiage they produce.

Though not everything that emanates from three-man booths is to be condemned, the fact is they are inherently evil.

CBC's baseball crew proved that on the weekend, producing much that was to be lauded and much that was to be condemned.

On the good side of the ledger, the trio of Jim Hughson, Jesse Barfield and Rance Mulliniks often raise the level of the broadcast.

The two former Jays are at their best when discussing the finer points of the game and telling stories. When Hughson asked them yesterday to talk about things they've done during the all-star break, Barfield told a great story about spending hours in a batting cage near his home.

It cost him about $10 in quarters, he said, but it got him out of his slump.

Mulliniks isn't afraid to question players, knocking Adam Lind for a baserunning error and wondering aloud what Brad Wilkerson was thinking about when he took a fastball down the middle on a 3-2 count.

They also produced some laughs, most notably when slumping Jays infielder Scott Rolen got a hit. "That will get the monkey off his back," Barfield said. "In his case, it was an ape."

But the crimes were many.
                                                                            
The most blatant was Mulliniks' continuing abuse of the English language.

How abusive? Let us count the ways:

"They had gave up on him."

"It could have went either way."

"A.J. Burnett has came up big for the Blue Jays today."

"He has pretty good sinkage (sic)."

Nobody expects Oscar Wilde out of these guys, but somebody needs to send Mulliniks back to Grade 6.

Grammatical sins are only part of the problem. Then there are the inanities produced by the perceived need to fill airtime.

With runners at the corners, none out and Marco Scutaro facing a 3-1 count, Mulliniks told viewers that Scutaro, "wants to stay patient and not go after a bad pitch." Can you think of the last time a batter was in a situation where he should not be patient and want to go after a bad pitch?

That type of mind-numbing commentary affects everybody in a three-man booth. As the trio prattled on about nicknames for the curveball, Yankee Jorge Posada was hit by a pitch.

Hughson, one of the best in the business, told viewers it was a wild pitch before he realized what had really happened.

If a guy like Hughson can be distracted by all this nattering, what hope is there for the rest of us?


czelkov@thestar.ca

Too harsh.

Barfield's new at it. Rance is certainly not Buck Martinez but he's not as bad as this article suggests.

You can't expect ex-jocks to become overnight Rhodes scholars. Even Pat Tabler is a work in progress more than a decade after his broadcast debut.

Is Darrin Fletcher still doing games for Sportsnet in the Tabler-Mullinicks-Fletcher menage?

Agreed.  

I mean, when did you hear jocks referred to as "smart jocks"?