Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Former MLB players as TV analysts: mostly suck!

During yesterday's spring training game Yankee play by play announcer Micheal Kay mentioned that two Yankee TV analysts, both former players, had been nominated for a local  New York sports Emmy award.  They are John Flaherty and Paul O'Neill. They suck!

Note: that Emmy should go to New York Knick basketball analyst Walt "Clyde" Frazier.

Flaherty speaks almost exclusively in an annoying sing song rhythm.  He's not insightful.  He's not funny.  He adds nothing except empty noise.

O'Neill is worse.  O'Neill's voice is even more annoying than Flaherty's and is so high pitched that you think it must be his sister Molly who wrote food reviews for The New York Times.  Until the end of last season O'Neill seemed to be challenging the late Dandy Don Meredith, original analyst on Monday night football, for the analyst who does the least to prepare and pretty much boast about it.  I dread when O'Neill is doing a game.  I don't need to hear 100 times a season how little O'Neill knows about computers and how much he depends on his wife and kids to use them for him.

Fortunately, the Yankees rotate their many analysts, so instead of Flaherty and O'Neill we might get Al Leiter, who also sucks.

Yesterday I was flipping between MLB network and NBA network.  The NBA players are pretty good.  They know what they are talking about and are prepared.  The MLB analysts don't just suck.  They're morons, especially Harold Reynolds and Mitch Williams, both a wealth of misinformation.  No baseball cliche escapes them no matter how outdated.  They are proud of how little they know about modern evaluation criteria like On Base Plus Slugging (OPS).  Their motto must be: give me batting average or give me death.  Pitch count?  We don't need no stinkin' pitch count.

Recently Reynolds was demonstrating how new Red Sox first baseman Adrian Gonzalez would benefit by batting in Boston's Fenway Park.  Reynolds did this by showing replays of Gonzalez in San Diego hitting 250 foot fly balls and claiming that they would hit the left field wall (green monster) in Fenway.  I'm watching this, thinking this guy is a moron and none of the other morons sitting there said a word.

Plus, Harold Reynold can barely speak.  They need to alert air traffic controllers when he might be approaching the English language.  Reynold sounds like he's eleven years old.  Harold Reynolds, you suck!

Al Leiter, Billy Ripken, ... except for Barry Larkin, who is not on much, they all suck.

2 comments:

ivan jerkinhoff said...

listen to all away broadcast to avoid the Yankees announcers. i can report that ALL other team announcers are better than the Yankees radio and tv announcers, and they are much more objective. oneil is not funny, kay is boring, flash dopey, and the worst combination in baseball is sterling and waldman. they are horrible jock sniffer homers who no nothing about baseball .

Kenneth Matinale said...

Ivan,

Try a course in English as a second language.