The sports coverage and announcing thread

[TMC1982 0]

Clear Channel kills Fox Sports Radio

 

Craig Sheamon & James Washington's show has been axed, to be replaced by Dan Patrick, now a Premiere show.

 

Andrew Siciliano is out, replaced by something called the "PMS Show" from KLAC. I wish I was making that one up.

 

Chris Myers stays on, but he gets new co-hosts.

 

No work on "JT The Brick" or the Czabe yet.

 

Ben Maller is gone.

 

Also departing Fox Sports Radio weekends is Jorge Sedano.

 

WTF?

 

Between this and XM ditching Mark Patrick on Home Plate in the mornings...ugh..

 

Petros & Money is actually not bad, but I am beyond pissed that they nuked Maller's show...now I'm forced to listen to goddamn George Noory and the Foil Hat brigade.

 

My affiliate, KNBR 1050 out of San Francisco, dumped FSN in favor of ESPN Radio quite a while back.

 

[MFer 0]

Man, fuck Jay Bilas. It's bad enough that he's a Dukie, but this guy is so obviously biased against Michigan...he just needs to shut the fuck up. This article pretty much sums up why.

[MFer 0]

So after ESPN already had Nelly, Lil' Wayne, and Bow Wow among others on 1st & 10, now they've got Wayne on Around the Horn (not to mention he already blogs for ESPN).

 

Yeah...

[CanadianChris 0]

Clear Channel kills Fox Sports Radio

 

Craig Sheamon & James Washington's show has been axed, to be replaced by Dan Patrick, now a Premiere show.

 

Andrew Siciliano is out, replaced by something called the "PMS Show" from KLAC. I wish I was making that one up.

 

Chris Myers stays on, but he gets new co-hosts.

 

No work on "JT The Brick" or the Czabe yet.

 

Ben Maller is gone.

 

Also departing Fox Sports Radio weekends is Jorge Sedano.

 

WTF?

 

Between this and XM ditching Mark Patrick on Home Plate in the mornings...ugh..

Sonofabitch. I loved listening to Siciliano and Krystal Fernandez. Game Time Live was the only show I'd go out of my way to listen to.

[HarleyQuinn 0]

Just watched the MLB Network crew covering the Baltimore Orioles and Harold Reynolds started talking about how since Cal Ripken Jr left, that the Orioles hadn't been playing the game the right way (i.e. The Oriole Way... whatever that's supposed to mean).

 

Why do announcers talk about players not playing "the right way"? Harold made the point of talking about the SS coming out further when getting the cutoff throw to allow him to throw to the whole field (evidently the current SS is doing it wrong or something).

 

Somebody explain what "the right way" is so I can watch for it because apparently it seems that certain ballplayers, despite having the skill to make it to the Majors, just haven't grasped it over their 10-12 years of playing baseball from little league through the minor leagues.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Here's how I view fundamentals. They are hugely, vastly important. If you do not have them, you will no doubt lose many games. The problem with harping on them is that at the major league level, every team already HAS fundamentals. So it then takes talent to separate the good teams from the bad.

 

Fans who insist modern players (in any sport) aren't fundamentally sound aren't watching closely.

[CanadianGuitarist 0]

Here's how I view fundamentals. They are hugely, vastly important. If you do not have them, you will no doubt lose many games. The problem with harping on them is that at the major league level, every team already HAS fundamentals. So it then takes talent to separate the good teams from the bad.

 

Fans who insist modern players (in any sport) aren't fundamentally sound aren't watching closely.

 

I can recall saying, during the Habs' awful '03 season, that they looked bad fundamentally; in hindsight, what's quoted makes an incredible amount of sense to me.

[Guest Czech please!]

I'd argue the opposite: everyone at the major league level has the talent to be there, but it's the dedication to the small stuff that distinguishes the best from the great. Take, as the Mariners did, Ronny Cedeno. There's no doubt in my mind that he has majors-caliber talent, because he has shown plenty of those flashes of brilliance, but he's also the guy that got thrown out at second base for oversliding the bag on a walk. There were more like that, too, from Cedeno and his teammates.

 

Brainfart minimization is a big part of winning baseball. Wasn't that the blueprint for Earl Weaver's Orioles, and to a lesser extent Terry Ryan's Twins? To not only have diligent and superior coaching at the major league level, but all the way down the line, so that call-ups could be plugged in and always be prepared to play smarter (and thus better) baseball than their peers? I watched the Dusty Baker/Gene Clines/Gary Matthews years, and I feel I watched them fairly closely. Significant talent can be squandered if there's not enough dedication to playing day-in-day-out heads-up baseball. I know that "plays the right way" has been used as code for "is white," but there's something to be said for not lapsing mentally or physically, which some in the bigs do more than others. I'd say all those Orioles, white/black/otherwise, played the right way.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Cedeno can't hold a starting job with that talent, which indeed shows the importance of fundamentals. My argument is not that they are not important, but they are so prevalent that you can't win by focusing on them alone.

[Guest Czech please!]

Well, I don't know of anyone who does focus on them alone. I'm contending that there are cases where fundamental soundness is what separates players equal talent. To address Harley, I don't think there are players who have been holding their bats upside-down since Little League, that's not the issue; there are players who have been able to coast on pure ability in spite of mental lapses up to a certain point where that stops being enough. I think that's with whom Harold is taking issue.

[TheDevilAndGodAreRagingInsideMe 0]

Good: ESPN Radio in New York is getting rid of the waste of time that is the 1:00-2:00 Tirico & Van Pelt show.

Bad: They are taking away an hour of Max Kellerman, cutting him down from 10:00-1:00 to 10:00-12:00.

Worse: They bringing back Colin Cowherd from 12:00-2:00.

[HarleyQuinn 0]

Well, I don't know of anyone who does focus on them alone. I'm contending that there are cases where fundamental soundness is what separates players equal talent. To address Harley, I don't think there are players who have been holding their bats upside-down since Little League, that's not the issue; there are players who have been able to coast on pure ability in spite of mental lapses up to a certain point where that stops being enough. I think that's with whom Harold is taking issue.

 

I'm curious, do you (not just you but in general, everybody) think that this is what separates say a Quad A guy from a Major Leaguer or is that more the case of just getting enough at bats to put up a good sample size?

 

Players like Dan Johnson come to mind. Good first year and just falls off the next two seasons. He's struggling to hit .235 BA wise but at AAA has hit .313 in 748 AB over his past three healthy seasons there.

 

One of the big knocks on Angels' prospect Brandon Wood is his inability to make contact/strike out so much (4 BB vs. 55 K in MLB doesn't help). Granted, he did have 150 AB but he's hit .272 and .296 the past two years in AAA.

 

The general consensus seems to be that AA (or just AAA) is where the pitchers start coming into their own and as a hitter, the test starts to become whether you can not only recognize but hit the breaking ball pitches. So is it just fundamentals/mechanics that leads to somebody struggling at the plate? If so, isn't the onus on the hitting coach/manager to help the player break through?

[Star Ocean 3 0]

Bad: They are taking away an hour of Max Kellerman, cutting him down from 10:00-1:00 to 10:00-12:00.

 

Listening to the podcasted version of the show, Max does pause an awful lot. With all that dead air, it seemed like he couldn't fill 3 hours.

[Brett Favre 0]

Good: ESPN Radio in New York is getting rid of the waste of time that is the 1:00-2:00 Tirico & Van Pelt show.

Bad: They are taking away an hour of Max Kellerman, cutting him down from 10:00-1:00 to 10:00-12:00.

Worse: They bringing back Colin Cowherd from 12:00-2:00.

 

Fuck.

 

Kellerman should have gotten another hour.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

According to an article I just read, Kellerman and ESPN Radio have parted ways.

 

http://simononsports.blogspot.com/2009/03/...st-got-lot.html

 

[Star Ocean 3 0]

Crap.

[Guest Czech please!]

That's two crushing blows for you in like the last two weeks.

[Star Ocean 3 0]

What was the other one?

[Guest Czech please!]

Didn't Adam Carolla's show get cancelled because the station flipped formats?

[Star Ocean 3 0]

Yeah, but he started podcasting like 2 days later, and has already broken records for most downloads. It'll probably end up a better product than the morning show was.

[Steve J. Rogers 0]

Erik Kuselias continues to annoy the sheer hell out of me, which is odd considering I only hear him for about an hour whenever he is filling in for Mike Greenberg or Mike Golic.

 

Well anyway, he and Golic were talking about the Wonderlic Test at the NFL combines, and to play the Devil's Advocate about privacy of the results, Kuselias brought up the Vince Young situation and how there were those at ESPN that didn't want to touch it, in part due to the race card.

 

This is wrong on OH SO MANY levels. Oh sure race probably had some hand in it, but Kuselias, and no one at any major mainstream media outlet, will not tell you the real reason no one wanted to touch Vince Young.

 

Plain and simple, Young was to be the Next Big Thing in the NFL. Even if he was white they would have defended him and bashed the idea of the Wonderlic Test and making the test results public. They didn't want to touch Young because he was being hyped as potentially being the greatest player in NFL history by ESPN (a partner of the NFL of course), clearly they weren't going to ruin a good thing by making any sort of deal out of him scoring a 6 on the Wonderlic Test.

 

The Mainstream Media, whether it is poltical (Obama), sports (Young), or entertainment (too many to mention), there is a strong sense with it to completely overhype and deitfy someone who shows even a hint of great potential. To the point where they will explain away the flaws, even going so far as bashing the system that created the flaws in the first place (i.e. the fairness and seriousness of the test, showing examples of great players who did not do well in said test, etc).

 

[Czech please! 0]

That's not "wrong on so many levels" if you're first conceding that race did have something to do with it. It's right on one level, and wrong on another. The dangers of prefab verbiage.

[Steve J. Rogers 0]

That's not "wrong on so many levels" if you're first conceding that race did have something to do with it. It's right on one level, and wrong on another. The dangers of prefab verbiage.

 

Heh. Fair enough. Race was a reason for ESPN and the MSM to attack the test results and defend Young, but I don't think it was the over-riding reason that Kuselias seems to think.

[Steve J. Rogers 0]

Yet another example of the self-fulfilling prophesy of sports talk. Listening to ESPN radio, and they are all but pushing John Calipari to leave Memphis for Kentucky.

 

Okay, now no one who suggests this should complain over the next Nick Saban mess, where a coach uses a University as leverage, or act like a complete dick by lying about their intentions.