Well, it’s all over, the second “Battle of the Beltway” series is finished and the Nats narrowly avoided a sweep with their victory today. Friday, it was a battle of the wills that we lost. Saturday, late inning heroics by the Orioles and what could only be called a complete bullpen collapse by the Nats, the O’s held court in Camden. Sunday was a different story, Livan was good for six plus, the Nats could capitalize on the walks issued by Orioles pitching, and the bullpen held the lead, securing a win.
The series had lots to offer in the way of close baseball and that was certainly outstanding. However, if you were forced to watch the games on TV instead of seeing it live, or hearing it on the radio, you were forced to listen to the absolutely braindead rantings of Bob Carpenter and Tom Paciorek during the game. I’ve had the pleasure of listening to some really good announcers on television, Joe Morgan and Jon Miller, Ray Fosse and Ken Korach, Hank Greenberg and his cohorts in SF all come to mind. There’s an art to play by play and color commentary, it’s not just explaining the game, it’s bringing light to all manner of things associated with the game that aren’t obvious. Sadly, most of the time, Carpenter and Paciorek end up sounding more like fans than commentators, and that’s really unfortunate. There were several times during Saturday’s game when the assembled group watching spent more time talking about the utter crap that they were spewing than about the Nationals failure to capitalize on scoring situations.
So, Mr. Kasten, please, before you do anything else this season, buy out the contracts of these two clowns and give us some real TV announcers. The radio guys are great, please, for the love of God, give us someone decent on TV.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.
