God Bless Vin Scully

[Frayed Knot]

Scully agrees to return for at least one more year.

It's been several years since he cut out traveling east of Denver to do games, but that still allows him to do all the home games, all NL West road games, the 'Freeway' series games in Anaheim, plus the occasional road games in Seattle or Oakland -- so that's got to be close to 3/4 of them.

[Fman99]

Charlie Steiner has to spend one more season changing Vin and applying lots of talcum. Good deal, all the way around.

[MFS62]

Colin Cowherd (ESPN Radio) doesn't say many smart things. But he just played that Scully tape as well as Vin's call of whatsizname's (brain fart) walkoff Series homer.
He then said "He's no Suzyn Waldmann".

Later

[Frayed Knot]

I'm surprised that Cowherd didn't simply follow this news with his usual 'go-to' move: opining that the Dodgers re-hiring the 84 y/o Scully is simply more proof that the only people that care about baseball are nearly dead senior citizens anyway.

[Ceetar]

Frayed Knot wrote: I'm surprised that Cowherd didn't simply follow this news with his usual 'go-to' move: opining that the Dodgers re-hiring the 84 y/o Scully is simply more proof that the only people that care about baseball are nearly dead senior citizens anyway.

I kinda want to organize a day in November where a ton of people start calling into ESPN Radio and other of these types of shows and asking baseball questions all day. Particularly on a "Football Friday/Monday/everyday"

"Good win by the Bears. yeah, so about the Cubs, who do you think plays Right Field next year? When is Theo going to address this?"

[Lefty Specialist]

And you can get past the call screeners by saying you want to talk about the Giants or Cardinals.

"And here's Bob from Weehawken, NJ who wants to talk about the Giants....."

"Yeah, do you think Lincecum can have a bounce-back year in 2013?"

[Ceetar]

Lefty Specialist wrote: And you can get past the call screeners by saying you want to talk about the Giants or Cardinals. "And here's Bob from Weehawken, NJ who wants to talk about the Giants....." "Yeah, do you think Lincecum can have a bounce-back year in 2013?"

perfect.

[Frayed Knot]

At this point ESPN has so "segregated" baseball to the point where it's treated like a specialized department within your company that's run by those few oddballs down at one end of the hall who no one really understands or socializes with, that it would be fine with me if the rest of their staff wold decide to just abandon covering the sport entirely.
Because, aside from the BB2N crew plus the handful of baseball-only journalists they've got on the payroll (Olney, Kurkjian, Stark), the rest of the enterprise is so geared towards football & basketball that the bulk of the staff essentially falls into (or comes across like they do) one of two camps: the one where they're simply not all that knowledgeable or interested in baseball, or the one where they hold the sport in utter contempt -- and I don't particularly want to hear the uninformed or derisive opinions from either one.


So while that whole 'bait-and-switch' tactic might get you on the air with some of the local hosts on the NYC affiliate of ESPN, I can't see it working with any of the national crew and I couldn't imagine why I'd want to talk baseball with any of them anyway even if it did.

[Ceetar]

Frayed Knot wrote: So while that whole 'bait-and-switch' tactic might get you on the air with some of the local hosts on the NYC affiliate of ESPN, I can't see it working with any of the national crew and I couldn't imagine why I'd want to talk baseball with any of them anyway even if it did.

True. It's fruitless. I'm just tired of seeing people (And I generally avoid the ESPN sycophants and what not) talk down to baseball and bash it. They pump up Football's popularity based on their own criteria. It's like only looking at an RBI list to decide who's the best baseball player. It's way more nuanced. But chasing away the people that want to talk about baseball does not mean that no one wants to talk about baseball.

Of course, these same people bitch about having to talk about this Tebow guy and then keep talking about him.

[Guest Swan Swan H]

Those oddballs down the hall at ESPN are going to be pretty busy for the next nine years. Their bosses just paid several gazillion bucks to extend their agreement with MLB through 2021.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8310763/espn-major-league-baseball-reach-new-8-year-broadcast-deal

[Frayed Knot]

Yeah, the big thing in that is that they're going to get one of the WC games each year - and I can't tell you how I look forward to seeing one-and-out playoff games with that annoying and constant crawl across the bottom telling me all sorts of important stuff like what Tebow had for lunch that day, whether or not Jerry Jones tweeted anyway recently, or to remind me about the all-important Toledo vs Western Kentucky college game which is now just three days away (on ESPN of course). This is all assuming that the WC game doesn't conflict with the Toledo vs Western Kentucky clash in which case the baseball will be bumped to ESPN-6

Other than that it seems like mostly just an extension to the package they've had all along.
They'll also get an additional couple a regular season games, will no longer have to observe black-out rules for their Monday & Wednesday games, and a few other assorted details.

[Ceetar]

Frayed Knot wrote: Other than that it seems like mostly just an extension to the package they've had all along. They'll also get an additional couple a regular season games, will no longer have to observe black-out rules for their Monday & Wednesday games, and a few other assorted details.

I wasn't sure of that, so that means I can watch the ESPN feed when it's the Mets? (not that I would)

That's the only thing that I don't like. I'm all for the desire to push MLB to be more national, but not at the expense of the local.

Although I guess this means if I want to flip to watch the Yankees on a monday off day I don't have to watch YES..

[Frayed Knot]

I'm assuming that this means the ESPN feed would be available [u:25jzv9ay]in addition to[/u:25jzv9ay] the SNY feed for Met games, not instead of.
IOW, their Monday & Wednesday games are NOT going to become like their Sunday game where they DO have the exclusive right to have no local competition.

[Ceetar]

Frayed Knot wrote: I'm assuming that this means the ESPN feed would be available in addition to the SNY feed for Met games, not instead of. IOW, their Monday & Wednesday games are NOT going to become like their Sunday game where they DO have the exclusive right to have no local competition.

well right, but previously that wasn't an option. I guess the logic was ESPN doesn't want to be blacked out and local fans probably prefer their local broadcast, but I don't know if that's true or not. Will people prefer to watch on ESPN?

[Guest Swan Swan H]

Ceetar wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: I'm assuming that this means the ESPN feed would be available in addition to the SNY feed for Met games, not instead of. IOW, their Monday & Wednesday games are NOT going to become like their Sunday game where they DO have the exclusive right to have no local competition. well right, but previously that wasn't an option. I guess the logic was ESPN doesn't want to be blacked out and local fans probably prefer their local broadcast, but I don't know if that's true or not. Will people prefer to watch on ESPN?

On my system SNY is on a higher tier than ESPN. Many folks who do not have SNY will be able to see the game on ESPN.

[bmfc1]

Something else in the new ESPN deal (in effect 2014): the number of times a team can play on Sunday Night is increased from 5 to 6.

[Frayed Knot]

Something else in the new ESPN deal (in effect 2014): the number of times [crossout]a team can[/crossout] the Yankees WILL play on Sunday Night is increased from 5 to 6.


Fixed it for you.

[bmfc1]

And more Red Sox.