Broadcaster Rankings (Radio): Names and Places
Over the course of last week, we released the results of our television broadcaster rankings — themselves the product of reader crowdsourcing that started in late November. (See the final rankings here.)
I’m not lying when I say that the success of the project exceeded my expectations — both for (a) the degree to which, as a consumer of televised baseball, the results generally reflected my own rough sense of the league’s broadcasters, and also (b) the civility with which readers conducted themselves (this being the internet, I mean, itself not known as the home of well-tempered discourse). As such, I’ll begin publishing ballots for radio broadcast teams, starting today, in the Daily Notes column found in these pages.
The first step: to arrive at some understanding of whom, exactly, we’re rating. The names you see below are intended to represent the main radio broadcast teams from 2011 for each of the league’s 30 clubs. The information here is taken from Wikipedia, but would certainly benefit from editing by readers who know and care about such things.
Again, the idea is to identify the broadcasters most frequently found in each team’s booth in 2011 — even if there have been changes this past offseason. This way we can establish a frame of reference for all 30 teams and then revisit it as readers become familiar with their team’s new broadcasters.
Also note that, while many clubs have occasional color commentators and guest announcers, isolating the most regular contributors will make this process more streamlined, if perhaps slightly less nuanced. Finally, don’t hesitate to indicate if a club has a dedicated home and (different) away broadcast team, as the Dodgers do on the television side.
Below is the preliminary list. Teams marked with a “(?)” are the ones about which I’m least sure.
Arizona: Greg Schulte, Tom Candiotti
Atlanta: Jim Powell, Don Sutton
Baltimore: Joe Angel, Fred Manfra (?)
Boston: Joe Castiglione, Dave O’Brien
Chicago AL: Ed Farmer, Darrin Jackson
Chicago NL: Pat Hughes, Keith Moreland
Cincinnati: Marty Brennaman, Jeff Brantley
Cleveland: Tom Hamilton, Jim Rosenhaus
Colorado: Jack Corrigan, Jerry Schemmel
Detroit: Dan Dickerson, Jim Price
Houston: Milo Hamilton, Brett Dolan, Dave Raymond (?)
Kansas City: Denny Matthews, Steve Stewart (?)
Los Angeles AL: Terry Smith, José Mota
Los Angeles NL: Charley Steiner, Rick Monday
Miami: Dave Van Horne, Glenn Geffner
Milwaukee: Bob Uecker, Cory Provus
Minnesota: John Gordon, Dan Gladden
New York AL: John Sterling, Suzyn Waldman
New York NL: Howie Rose, Wayne Hagin
Oakland: Ken Korach, Vince Cotroneo
Philadelphia: Scott Franzke, Larry Andersen
Pittsburgh: Greg Brown, Steve Blass, John Wehner (?)
St. Louis: Mike Shannon, John Rooney
San Diego: Ted Leitner, Bob Scanlan
San Francisco: Jon Miller, Dave Flemming
Seattle: Rick Rizzs, Ron Fairly
Tampa Bay: Andy Freed, Dave Wills
Texas: Eric Nadel, Steve Busby
Toronto: Jerry Howarth, Alan Ashby
Washington: Charlie Slowes, Dave Jageler
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Mets are now Rose and Josh Lewing, Hagin was let go
Lewin*
it doesn’t even matter. Rose and a monkey would still be a superior pair.
Yeah. As noted above, I’m actually looking for the 2011 teams — to serve as a baseline of sorts. I’ll publish a ballot for Rose and Lewin during the season sometime, to give people a chance to become acquainted with the latter.
oops, reading comprehension fail on my part