stuff you can't make up

Being a baseball announcer has to be a tougher job than it looks. It is a long, long season, and there are many games over the course of the season that are just not all that entertaining. And so sometimes you will find announcers talking about bizarre things in the booth.

But this doesn't excuse Ken "Hawk" Harrelson and Darrin "DJ" Jackson for this exchange. It was the top of the first inning after a major comeback. It was the first start of the season for both pitchers, so you could talk about their careers, their springs, something. Instead, we get this:

(In the middle there is baseball play-by-play talk, like "low and outside, ball three" and stuff like that that is deleted from the transcript.)

Hawk: It is a beautiful but cold, cold day here in Kansas City, especially in the shade.

DJ: I'm looking over at my partner and he has an icicle hanging from the tip of his nose.

Hawk: I wish it was an icicle.

DJ: (Laughs) My bad.

Hawk: I got my hanky on the ready.



Now, I have been watching Sux games on WGN for 20 years now, and anyone familiar with me or this blog knows just how much I hate the Sux. For the better part of 20 years, the only time I could see my beloved Royals on television was when they played the Sux on WGN or the Rangers on Fox Sports SW. (The baseball package is a must have for all baseball fans unfortunate enough to live outside the media market of their team.) And the WGN guys just insulted the other team left and right for three hours. Harrelson was partnered with Tom Paciorek, who is the worst color guy ever. And so I grew to hate the Sux over time. Which is kinda sad, given how horribly the franchise had performed over the last century or so. I mean, who hates the Clippers? But that is how bad Hawk and Wimpy were; they could make you despise a team so far on the fringe of the American sports scene as the Sux. (Wimpy was always worse in my mind. Hawk played for the Royals for a short time, and always has something to say about how great a teammate George Brett was, and now always has something pretty decent to say about Sweeney. It is the color guys who turn those comments into backhanded insults.)

And so I expected today, when the baseball package wasn't carrying the game, forcing me to watch on WGN, to have an insufferable afternoon. Now that the Sux have actually won something through a series of seismic reactions it may take generations to understand fully, weren't they going to be more arrogant and obnoxious than ever. That is what happens to hometown announcing crews the year after a championship. I followed the Angels pretty closely through their run to the title in 2002. As it turned out, that was my first year in fantasy baseball, and I had Glaus, GA, Erstad, and Percival all on my fantasy team, and since I followed a midwest team, as soon as the Royals game ended, I would flip over to the Angels game and listen to Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler call the action. And the Wonder Dog is so energetic that it is sometimes tiring, but it is a good crew, and I was seriously cheering for the Angels throughout the post-season. But the next season, Hudler and Physioc were simply unwatchable. Every single pitch of every single game caused them to mention something about the play-off run the year before. I wanted them to win every game that post-season; I didn't give up when they were down 3-2 in the world series and 5-0 in game six. I knew they had it in them to come back. But the next season and a half, I just couldn't watch them. It was too brutal.

And so after all that, I thought it was going to be so much worse today. And it wasn't. I enjoyed this game today - except for the booger interlude - as much as I have ever enjoyed a Sux game on WGN. (Except potentially opening day a couple of years ago when they insulted the Royals for eight and a half innings only to have Billy Koch implode and the Royals score like six runs in the bottom of the ninth to win. But that was enjoying the game from vindictiveness.) This time, they were actually relatively unbiased. I would have enjoyed the game even if Sweeney hadn't gone deep in the bottom of the eighth to win it. Ok, I don't know that I would have enjoyed it, but the reasons I didn't wouldn't include the announcers. That is probably more accurate.

Maybe it is a new day. Maybe actually winning something - all winter I expected an apocolypse, something major, but nothing too bad has materialized - they have lost the chip on the shoulder that came from so many generations of suckage. Don't get me wrong: I still hope they finish 1-161 this season. But for the first time in my recollection, they might be watchable.