Brent Mayne

Announcers

Announcing is a hell of a lot harder than it looks/sounds. The Vin Scullys and Chick Hearns of the world make it seem so effortless, like anyone could do it. Trust me, that’s not the case.

I know this to be true for a couple reasons. Firstly because I’ve been exposed to just about every baseball announcer in the U.S. for a decade and a half for every game of the season. I also know how difficult it is from my attempts at broadcasting/interviewing on my podcast series.

That being said, there’s good ones and there are bad ones. To be 100% honest, I think most fall into the second category. Maybe I’m spoiled because I grew up with Hearns and Scully. Maybe I’m just really hard on them because I’ve listened to so many. I don’t know. All I know is that most bug me.

The current trend of “teaching” while calling the game particularly bothers me. Think McCarver or Hershiser, or many others. They have a bad tendency to top off every situation with a mechanical breakdown and a tutorial which highlights their vast and superior knowledge of the game.

Instead of just calling the game. God forbid a little dead air or some simple sounds of the ballpark.

So who do I like? I like Scully, I like Kuiper & Krukow up in San Fran, I like Ryan Lefebvre in K.C. I like Bob Costas too. There are a few more, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.

San Fran's Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper.

Kansas City's Ryan Lefebvre.

What got me on the subject in the first place was this interesting article in the #Wall St. Journal earlier this month. Basically someone tediously figured out how many words per minute every play-by-play announcer spoke. Figures were calculated by counting the number of words spoken in one non-scoring inning in one day. Here’s the results…

*Mr. Scully is the only announcer in the Dodgers’ broadcast booth

For more info on announcers, check out this blog. Cheers.