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.
