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Mom loves Joe Morgan. What to do?

No kidding. My mother thinks the Hall of Fame second baseman and ESPN analyst is fabulous. He's her favorite announcer. Quote "I'm so fond of Joe" Unquote.

Most baseball fans of my acquaintance would love to see Morgan dangling from a lamppost on Cooperstown's main street. While in neither camp, I lean towards the latter interpretation of Morgan's work. "See, he got the ball up" is a far worse sound than nails on a blackboard.

On the other hand, I know that the location of any pitch is the most important feature of every ballgame. If Morgan has chosen this principle to drive home past the point of mania, at least he picked the right one. And besides, national announcers can never win. EVERYONE hates them. Forget managers and coaches. The one thing every fan thinks they can do better than everyone else is call the game on radio and TV.

It ain't that simple. Tony Kornheiser is finding that out at this very moment. There's no tougher job in sports than announcing a nationally broadcast game. Those who do so are well compensated and damn well deserve it.

For proof of the above statement, let's travel back in time-t0 the fall and winter of 1972-73.

Yours truly was the lead singer of a C&W rockabilly band, the Oso Family, we're still a legend in Missoula and North Platte. We lived in Green Mountain Falls, Col., a suburb of Colarado Springs. Among our neighbors was Cheryl Gowdy. daughter of Curt.

Cheryl was and I presume still is beautiful. I was lovestruck. But I couldn't make a move because in the back of my mind was the awful thought "I'm an American sports fan. I've called your father every dirty name in the book. "The five attributes of the superstar." "Sudden victory." I want to kill him. This puts a crimp in romantic thinking.

Forty years later, Curt Gowdy's work is a regular feaure of ESPN Clssic. Compared to some of the gang working national events today, he's freakin' Edward R. Murrow. I'd love to denounce his successors, but the trouble is, I like them too,

Big Ten college students have a Brent Musberger drinking game, and a fuuny one it is, but trust me, you won't meet a better person to have dinner with in a strange small town than Brent. Red Sox fans hate Joe Buck and Tim McCarver for an alleged Yankee bias. They're wonderful folks, and may I suggest that said bias results from the Yanks beating the Sox more often than not. Yeah, McCarver makes no bones about Derek Jeter being his favorite player. He could've made a worse choice.

My man Joe Buck has made about the worst career choice imaginable, trying to double up as pregame studio host and lead broadcaster for Fox's NFL telecasts. That's just too much work, and Joe's doomed to fail miserably. That doesn't mean Joe's bad at his job, it means he was so good at it he flew too near the sun.

No one can speak for three to fout hours without saying something terminally idiotic. Socrates, Shakespeare, and Einstein couldn't. The next time you want to strangle Al Michaels, remember that.

posted by Michael Gee @ 9:27 AM