Eephus Pitch's Emma Span has a write-up of Game 1 over at Spanning the Playoffs, her new Newsday blog (which hopefully won't be ending Sunday night).
She rightfully calls Chip Caray to task for the horrible, biased abortion of a play-by-play job he did during last night's game. My TV was on mute by the 7th inning.
I would take it even further, though, and say that Tony Gwynn is pretty worthless in the booth. He seems like a nice guy, but he brings nothing but the most rudimentary game analysis to the table. And Bob Brenley's a hack. He was awful as a Fox announcer in the late '90s, he's awful as the Cubs announcer now, and I've hated looking at his ugly, Cowherian chin ever since the unfortunate events of 2001. Brenley isn't capable of providing deeper analysis than your average Little League coach. He's strictly by-the-book.
Meanwhile, Craig Sager is a fool, and the crew actually missed bits of the game for his inane interview with the douche who bangs the drum in the stands. Give me a break. I love Freddy Sez, but I don't want to miss pitches in a playoff game to hear his prescient analysis, either.
Between Sager and Ernie Johnson in the studio, it seems that TBS was too lazy and/or cheap to actually hire a baseball crew, so they just paid their basketball guys a little overtime. The boys in the booths in the other series don't seem impressive either, and Dick Stockton for the Cubs/Dbacks series is particularly gruesome.
Where are you, Rick Sutclifffe? Krukie? All is forgiven. Come home.
