Skip and Don and Pete

The other night, while partaking of wings outside at a local wing shack, I listened to the play-by-play of the Atlanta Braves-Los Angeles Dodgers game as it was piped out of a TV behind me. From the time I first ventured to Atlanta in 1983, the play-by-play team had featured Skip Caray and Pete van Wieren. Don Sutton came along in 1989, and Joe Simpson joined in during the ’90s. None of these were heard during the call of the game the other night.

A couple of years ago, whichever conglomerate owns the Braves now decided that the announcers–with the exception of Joe Simpson–weren’t bland enough, so they overthrew the reigning order and instituted a new regime. Now, my point here is not to denigrate the current crew of announcers. I do not know them well, and they seemed to do a decent job of calling the game. They were brought in to be neutral and inoffensive, two counts on which they succeeded, and actually admirably so. But I missed the old days.

We got in the car to head home, and my wife put the game on the radio, and there were Skip Caray and Pete van Wieren. (Sutton was let go and has wound up working the Nationals games in Washington, which is one of the best reasons I can think of for living in the DC area.) And even though Skip’s voice was no longer what it had been, what had been tame on TV was now lively, and what had been bland was now fun.

There is nothing quite like a good call of a game, and it is getting increasingly difficult to hear one called with personality. I don’t think any team has ever had announcers with more personality, combined, though, than the Braves did with Caray, Sutton, and van Wieren. What a great trio, paired up in different combinations until Sutton and Caray were mysteriously separated earlier in this century. All three were knowledgeable and opinionated and articulate. They were (and are) fun to listen to, and the listener got the sense (false, I’m sure, but reassuring) that they had come to know them as people.

Baseball, of course, has become increasingly corporatized in recent years as salaries and the value of teams have skyrocketed. Unfortunately, one of baseball’s most attractive qualities traditionally has been the individuality that permeated it. Football was always the corporate game, with teams acting in concert. Wackiness and eccentricity were not allowed on the gridiron, but often bloomed on the baseball diamond.

This held true for the players (was there ever a football equivalent to Dizzy Dean?), the owners (Charley Finley, Bill Veeck, Ted Turner), fans, and announcers. The most eccentric basketball player I can think of was Marvin Barnes whose eccentricity involved getting apprehended in airports with firearms. There are no Bob Ueckers or Oil Can Boyds. Despite its basis as a business, baseball was always personal in a way that other sports weren’t. (Except maybe hockey, which is probably one of things I like about it.)

Baseball announcers shouldn’t be encouraged to be bland. Eccentricity, personality, and individuality should be the hallmarks of baseball announcers, not their curse. But this is a problem that we will continue to have while teams are owned by huge corporations, which is going to be the trend from here on out. The number of dollars involved are extraordinary, and the corporate atmosphere is timid and meek. Corporate vice presidents seek the mediocre, because their goal is to avoid controversy, which is something that Skip and Don and Pete were never good at.

I do know one thing, though. Whenever I watch the Braves on TV, I’ll make sure I have the volume low on the TV and the call of the game emanating from the radio.

Football

My wife, yesterday, made an offer that many men would consider ideal. She suggested that next year I should watch more football with my son. The Super Bowl was on, and she took note of the intensity with which I watched the game and understood that my son was interested in learning more about it and felt that watching football would be a good bonding experience for the two of us. All of which is fair enough.

I haven’t really watched much football in many years, though. I drifted away from it over time and for a variety of reasons. I acquired other interests. I was put off by the endless posturing of the modern professional football player. Mostly, I stayed away from it not because I cared too little, though. I stayed away from it because I cared too much, and it seemed pointless to expend that much emotion and energy on the outcome of a game.

I grew up a 49ers fan, and before the dynasty of the ’80s and early ’90s the Niners had one brief flirtation with success. It was in the early ’70s when they won three division crowns in a row. Their success was founded on a first-rate offensive line. They set a record for fewest sacks allowed in 1972 and having that kind of protection gave John Brodie the chance to show how fine a quarterback he really was.

In 1972, it seemed like a trip to the Super Bowl was theirs for the having when they went into the 4th quarter of the championship game against the Dallas Cowboys up 28-13. A young quarterback from the Naval Academy in Annapolis named Roger Staubach came in for the Cowboys and engineered three drives–two with less than two minutes on the clock–to defeat the 49ers and to doom them to another near decade of struggle.

It was a terrible and exciting game, and after it, my father announced that he never wanted to go through that emotional roller coaster just for the sake of a football game again. He never watched another game.

All of which brings me to Super Bowl XLII.

I have followed the Patriots ever since we moved back to Rhode Island from San Francisco in 1970. In any match up of the two teams, I would pull for the Niners. Other than that, I am a Patriots fan. Last night’s game–for those of us on the losing side–was another of those “that’s it, I’ll never watch another of those games” games. A few thoughts:

The MVP should not have been Eli Manning. It should have been David Tyree. He made a series of catches–most memorably the one where he clutched the ball to his helmet with one hand as he was tackled–when the rest of the Giant offense was doing bupkiss. He played phenomenally well and should have been rewarded.

Bill Belichick’s decision to go on 4th down instead of trying for a field goal in the third quarter was the key play of the game. It was a reckless, foolish decision, strategically unsupportable and completely needless. Had they gotten the field goal, even with the last minute heroics, you end up with a tie and overtime. It was grandstanding and the result of having suffered too much success.

The Patriots’ coaching staff can also be faulted for not changing over to a short yardage passing game until the 4th quarter. It was obvious by the end of the 1st quarter that they needed to offset and use the Giants’ ferocious pass rush with screens and passes to the flat mixed in with draw plays and periodic mid-range passes up the middle. They are a team that is perfectly constituted for a classic Bill Walsh offense, and they are morons if they don’t institute such an offense next season.

Not that I care, mind you. After all, it’s only a game.