Entries Tagged 'media' ↓

I’ve moved everything over to BrewerParadiseLost.com, so please update your bookmarks and everything. All future blog posts will be there.

Still really busy here trying to configure the new blog website and name. Once I get everything fully integrated over into the new domain, czwief.com/blog will no longer be functional. But that hasn’t happened yet — I’ll announce it when it does.

You can check over on my progress on brewerparadiselost.com, since I have that up and running. Links, categories, the new header, and all that other jazz haven’t been implemented yet. I’ll cross-post any posts I make from now until I’m finished blogging over there.

As for last night’s game, it was a really good and much needed win. The Brewers have seemingly fallen behind in their last few series and it’s really good to get a leg up on a 4-gamer against a team that can occasionally go nuts against the Brewers. Putting in Trevor Hoffman in the 9th was a bit unnecessary, but any time you can get a poor Seth McClung relief appearance out of the way without any harm done to Milwaukee’s record.

I gotta tell you, it’s always a pleasure to tune into MLB.TV and listen to one-half of the Reds’ broadcast team. George Grande and Chris Welsh are wonderful to listen to. Grande has a baseball kind of voice and narrates the game well with it, and Welsh provides detailed information about pitching commentary that I’ve never heard of in my years of listening to Bill Schroeder. I mean, I didn’t know until tonight that Jason Kendall always forces pitchers he catches (no matter what team he’s on) to throw inside commonly — even when they’re uncomfortable doing it. Would Schroeder really drop that good of a nugget?

They spent a good detail of time going over pitches and pitch selection. Welsh did an awesome job of explaining a pitch and how it breaks while Homer Bailey served up pitches that didn’t. There was one particular pitch where the camera got a perfect angle inside of Bailey’s glove before he threw the pitch, and was able to tell how his fingers manipulate the seams to get a screwball-like action on his pitch. That’s the kind of in-game context I want from a color commentator, not just “he has loads of RBIs.”

There are few announcers in baseball who can provide that kind of intricate context during a game. Welsh is one of them. Ron Darling is another.

And, of course, some announcers get a free pass and can say whatever he wants and it will still be an awesome baseball experience. His name is Vin Scully.

Joe Buck got lit up the other day on his television show, and since then everybody’s been blasting his cred. The worst blog on the planet really happy he was embarrased on HBO.

Honestly, I don’t see all the hubbub about Buck. He’s a good, solid announcer; he knows the game of football very well; he tells me what’s going on in the game and everything else that could be relevant without getting in the way with smarmy opinions and goofy gimmicks (Gus Johnson). He’s got a good sense of humor and provides good anecdotes to game the game interesting and flowing nicely.

Most fans just don’t like Buck because they’re grumpy that he doesn’t follow sports as much as the blogosphere and got handed the broadcasting role for being the kid of a famous person. People need to stop being so cranky. If he wasn’t any good, FOX would have kicked him off broadcasting by now and he’d be going to school just like the rest of us. He can just afford not to.

On the other side, Artie Lange just isn’t funny. If he made fun of Buck and was funny I’d applaud him. But he sucks.