John Madden was a Hall of Famer; Unique and entertaining; A true builder; George Steinbrenner

 Template Words Used By Baseball Announcers Make Me Mute The Commentary

By Arthur Solomon

As an experiment, for several days last week, while watching a baseball game on television, I decided to mute the sound and see if I could guess the commentary that announcers would use in various situations.  I did this while watching a game in my living room.  In another room, I recorded the same game with the sound on.

The next day I compared the words I had written down while watching the game on the muted TV, with what the announcers said on the “live” broadcasts.

Not to my surprise, I was almost 100% correct. Why wasn’t I surprised? Because after watching and listening to way too many baseball games, I can safely predict the template expressions announcers’ use. And so can you. Believe me, you can. You can bet on it.

Below are template expressions that are used inning after inning, game after game, season after season by game day announcers, many of whom think that they are broadcasting on radio. Maybe if they would acknowledge that viewers can see what’s going on via television and let TV do the talking, at least occasionally, when they have nothing of interest to say they would not have to use so many template words. They should also be reminded that unlike radio, there is no dead airtime on television.

Here are template phrases that I correctly guessed, in no particular order:

Situation-When a batter is in a slump: “He’ll have to play his way out of it,” or “he’s not seeing the ball,” or “He’s too good a player not to snap out of it.”

Situation-When a softly hit ball cannot be fielded and becomes a hit: “The ball has eyes.”

Situation-When an infielder makes an error that causes his team to lose the game: “He’ll make that play 99 times out of 100.”

Situation-When a substitute player gets a chance to play regularly because of an injury to a starter: “He’s getting a chance and making the most of it.”

Situation-When the substitute player performs better than the player that was injured: “He’s making it difficult for the manager.”

Situation-When a batter hits an unusually high pop up: “That’s a major league pop up.”

Situation-When a relief pitcher leaves the potential winning runs on base: “He got the big outs” or “that was a bug out.”

Situation-When a team comes from behind to tie a game: “It’s a new ball game.”

Situation-When a pitcher throws a home run ball, or when a batter misses a “hanger: “He wishes he had that one back.”

Situation– When a team is losing by two runs in the 9^th inning: “They need a bloop and a blast.”

Situation- When a team is losing by a run in the 9^th inning with two outs: “He’s trying to get on base anyway he can.”

Situation- When a batter just beat a throw to first: “He hustled down the line.”

Situation– What a batter hits a long fly ball: “He gave that ball a ride.”

Situation– When a player does smirching unusual: “He knows how to play the game.”

The use of what I call template phrases by sports broadcasters probably do not bother 99.9% of viewers, But it does me, probably because I was an English major in addition to my training as a print journalist, where the usage of trite phrases was considered a sin. (I know that the correct definitions of “template” and “trite” are different, but this is a sports column, and keeping in tune with sports broadcasters, shamefully anything goes).

But game day announcers using template phrases lags behind a few other aspects of sports broadcasting that bother me:

 Template Words Used By Baseball Announcers Make Me Mute The Commentary

• The moguls of sports, despite their unlawful actions, are treated as heroes: George Steinbrenner, the former New York Yankees owner, was convicted for illegal campaign contributions he made to the Committee to Reelect the President, what the time was Richard Nixon, and to a felony charge of obstruction of justice.

• In 2013, SAC Capital, the hedge fund founded by Steve Cohen, owner of the New York Mets, pleaded guilty to insider trading and other securities and wire fraud charges. As part of the settlement, SAC
  Capital agreed to pay $1.8 billion in fines and forfeitures, one of the largest financial penalties for insider trading at the time.

• For years, game day announcers labeled the owners of National Football League teams as the “finest of gentlemen” and showed them on camera during broadcasts, despite these “finest of gentlemen” remaining silent as their players suffered catastrophic brain injuries from concussions.

• For years, Major League Baseball team owners stayed silent as players used performance enhancing drugs because fans liked to see moon shot home runs.

• If a player is a star, all leagues and teams often forget the unsportsmanlike conduct of an athlete and welcome them back instead of using them as examples of what an athlete should not do.
• Forty five years ago, on December 20, 1980, then NBC-producer Don Ohlmeyer, who believed that announcers were over-talking, televised an NFL game, between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins without any commentators. His rationale was that silence would boost ratings for a meaningless game. The Jets won the game 24-17.

Recently, fed up with the nonsensical and needless commentary by certain announcers, I’ve taken to mute the sound and watch the game as if I was at the ballpark. I found it much more enjoyable.

No longer do I have to cringe when announcers continuously relate meaningless statistics such as launch angles, batted balls and pitch speed ad infinitum, instead of having the ability to charm the audience with their story telling as did Vin Scully, Red Barber, Bill Stern and Jim McKay did, to name a few.

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Or announcers who didn’t think that injecting some humor in their commentary was against the rules of sportscasting, like, to mention several, Harry Carry, “Dandy” Don Meredith, John Madden, Phil Rizzuto and Keith Hernandez. The current New York Mets analyst, and, Kevin Burkhardt, now of Fox Sports, who during his days as the on-field announcer for the N.Y. Mets, on a daily basis provided the most creative and humorous watching I’ve ever seen on a sports telecast.

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There’s an old proverb: “Silence is golden.” Some sportscasters should adhere to it

Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He also traveled internationally as a media adviser to high-ranking government officials. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and was on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He has been a key player on Olympic marketing programs and also has worked at high-level positions directly for Olympic organizations. During his political agency days, he worked on local, statewide and presidential campaigns. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr (at) juno.com.