OT: Al Kaline on 97.1 The Ticket
You are a baseball fan. I only want to hear Al in my head along with George Kell. Al got his 3000th hit in Baltimore. I think Al got his 3000 against the great Dave McNally.
Am I a bad person for wishing Kaline would punch Jim Price in the throat right about now?
But I sometimes have a hard time following the action with him as a play-by-play man.
Sometimes? I cannot listen to Jim Price do play by play, worst I've ever heard.
There have been 2 or 3 instances in this game where his reaction led me to believe that a HR had been hit when there wasn't.
"oh baby, I tell you that late movement probably saved those balls from being home runs". - Jim Price announcing any game ever.
Skip Caray and Milo Hamilton are 2 announcers I could do without.
Announcers I really like/liked include;
John Sterling - Yankees
John Miller
Jack Buck - Cards
Tom Cheek - Blue Jays
Harry Caray
Harry Kalas sp -Phillies
I leave off Ernie Harwell because he pissed me off with the crap he pulled with Bo, but I do like Ernie.
The crap he pulled with Bo?! Wtf that was most certainly NOT Ernie's fault, but Bo also gets blamed too much for that situation, it was really Tom Monaghan, the owner of the Tigers who told Bo to fire Ernie, which was one of the most bone-headed decisions in sports.
I like Price and Dickerson as well, but I absolutely HATE Mario Impemba and Rod Allen. Especially, Allen. What an idiot. Every time I hear his voice all I can think of is him chasing around that Japanese player around the field when he almost got beaned in the head back when he was playing in Japan.
From what I remember, Bo and Ernie had some type of agreement, but when it came time to implement the agreement Ernie started crying to the media about himself and Lulu. Bo just shook his head in dismay at Ernie and his behavior.
Ernie was in serious regression as an announcer at the time. Don't know if Ernie was ill or worn down, but he was making alot of mistakes on the air. When Ernie did return from his forced retirement and his workload was lessened he did a much better job.
As for our current announcers, I will listen to Rod and Mario everytime over Dickerson and Price. Your visions of Rod are something I am not handicapped with, I didn't see a whole lot of games from the Japanese league.
I wish we could send Jim Price on an extended trip to Japan to search for pitchers with late movement.
I, too, grew up with Kaline and Kell (if anyone can find that song they used to start the broadcasts with, I will be eternally grateful -- dah dah, dah dah danahnahnahnah)
Alkaline didn't know the players' names on the other team (took me about 2 innings to realize we were playing the O's -- I have a good excuse though for not knowing who we were playin). On the other hand, he had some great insights early in the game, including a story about chatting with Ted Williams back in the day. Ted told him "Pitchers are dumb -- they'll give you something to hit." He also spoke of instructing hitters to keep their eyes low and not worry about the high fastball. You just don't get that kind of insight normally.
I wasn't alive for Kaline's career. He was my dad's favorite player the way Trammell was for me. But there's still an electricity about that name: Al Kaline.
http://wjrpodcasts.com/podcasts/series/history/history-part9.mp3
Go to the 9 min 30 sec point of this broadcast and you will hear the music followed by Ernie calling an Al Kaline home run.
Not it, but cool mp3.
That's way before my time. The theme I remember was a late-'80s, early-'90s synth-pop thing.
And the tiger would come out of the circle -- a la MGM Lion -- grab a bat in his mouth and swing.
Did anyone else growing up in the Detroit area think that Al Kaline was such a good baseball player they named a battery for him? The AlKaline battery? It was like the easter bunny got shot when some 4th grade science teacher told me that wasn't an AlKaline battery, it was an alkaline battery, named for the chemistry involved. I think this is why I became a chemical engineer, so I could avenge this injustice.
I think any list of great baseball announcers begins and ends with Vin Scully. I'll tune into the Dodgers games on MLB.tv just to listen to him talk. The best part is that he does the entire game by himself so no annoying color commentator (i.e. Price, Rod Allen...or basically 95% of them in any sport) can get in the way.