GIVE ME ENOUGH ROPE

By: Jim Cheney -- 10/19/05

The “color man” half of the sports broadcast battery is a tough job, perhaps more difficult than those charged with the play-by-play. While baseball is a game of wide emotional range, peppered liberally with nuance and strategy, it can be, well, boring. Less than action-packed moments are frequent and, being on television, there is often space that needs to be filled.

The duties of the color man are to fill those numerous, lengthy spaces in time with interesting anecdotes on the game. (If left as simply open air, it would become like Cricket, and no one wants that.) Color man challenges aside though, I’ve come to bury their kind; digging-to-China deep at that.

The American League Division series between the Yankees and the Angels offered a full display of the prime offender, ESPN’s Joe Morgan. Like most color man broadcasters, Morgan is a one-time athlete, a truly exceptional ballplayer best known as the second baseman for the famed “Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds of the 1970’s. His 20+ year career resulted in a well deserved enshrinement in Cooperstown.

As a broadcaster, Morgan has mastered nothing short of pointing out the completely obvious. He has become the Rembrandt of the mundane, useless comment. While he seems to be laboring under the impression that he is enhancing the viewer’s experience, I tend to believe he is actually enhancing the viewers’ likelihood to injure themselves. During Morgan related broadcasts, my devoted wife has taken to forcing me to surrender my belt and shoe laces. She knows to lock up the knitting needles and grapefruit spoons so as assure maintenance of my hearing and vision.

I’m perhaps being a bit too dramatic, but after watching the all-knowing Joe explain errant throws in game three of the ALDS, it was closer to true than not.

For those who had better things to do, this was the game played in the rain. If it was not for the tight schedule and daunting weather forecast, game three would certainly have been postponed.

As any scientist (or human with a functioning brain) will tell you, when a baseball gets wet it gets slippery. When both teams’ infielders began making lousy plays, or eschewing throwing all together, Professor Morgan pointed out that, given the fact the game was being played in the rain, the ball was most likely wet. He was then kind enough to point out that players need to have a good grip on the ball in order to throw it, demonstrating this fact by showing that holding a wet baseball by one of the lace-free panels makes it slippery.

Obvious, sure. Outrageous to point out, absolutely not. Outrageous to point out no fewer then eight times over the course of two innings? Herein lies the problem.

In a John Henry-esque display, Morgan simply hammered away, driving it into viewer’s psyches. I began thinking everything I touched became slippery, figuring myself for some King Midas of lubrication. Following a desperate attempt to recall Phil Rizzuto’s wife’s eggplant parmesan recipe, I snapped out of it, realizing that it was just televised sport, and that I’d come through with the majority of my faculties in tact.

Being a baseball color man is no doubt a tough job. Then again, there are lots of tough jobs. If Joe likes a challenge, maybe he can look into a career change. I’ll bet The U.S. Army is looking for interrogators and torturers. Hey, two birds with one stone.

TAKE ME TO THE TOP