Oh Christ; Not McCarver

I love baseball and I tried to watch the World Series game tonight between the White Sox and that National League Team, but I swear to God, Fox's coverage seems designed to make people find something else to do. My biggest problem is the noise. I can forgive them completely missing Joe Crede's home run while they showed a prerecorded interview with Houston's pitching coach, because lord knows when you expand the time between innings from 2 minutes to 3 minutes so you can sell more commercial time, you'd better use that time to sell commercials, so those fascinating prercorded bits have to be shown while the game is actually in progress. Those things happen, okay? But the noise; there's no excuse for that. Every time they show a replay, which they do for each pitch, it's preceded and followed by a whooshing sound. Every time a runner scores, the TV makes a little ping. On some pitches, but not on all, I don't think, they put in an artificial crescendo. On really fast pitches, they have this "cute" little flash of artificial flame at the top of the screen, to show us that that baby was really smoking. It's like they think baseball is a freaking pinball game.

And then there are the announcers. That Buck fellow (Jim? Jeff? Jerry?), he's not exceptionally offensive, but then I'm probably grading him on a curve, comparing him favorably to his companion in the booth, Tim McCarver. The big thing with McCarver is that there's nothing he says once that he doesn't see the need to say six more times. And there's nothing that pops into his little head that he doesn't think is worth saying, no matter how remotely related it might be to what's happening in the game, or even to baseball itself. He somehow managed to mention the Edsel tonight. I couldn't even try to tell you how that was relevant, even from his perspective. And then there's his voice. He talks as though every once in awhile somebody randomly steps on his left nut, placing emphasis on words and syllables that most of us normally wouldn't. That's on top of his already annoying high pitched voice and Jethro Bodine accent.

Anyway, no more World Series for me this year. That's bad enough, but we're already having another year without pro football here in the Bay Area and although the Warriors finished last season on a high note, filling us with hope for this coming year, I just know that they did this only to find a fresh way to disappoint us with what I'm sure they can turn into another dismal season. It can be tough to be a sports fan, you know it? It's almost enough to make one go out and get a life.