For today’s diatribe (that’s right, I’m changing ‘rant’ to ‘diatribe’ which I guess means I have to change ‘rounds’ to something else with a ‘d’ or else give up on my meaningful goal of always, um, using alliteration when possible (turns out it was impossible there)) I’m tackling a subject near and dear to my heart: Sarge and TMac.

Gary Matthews Senior and Tom McCarthy are the goofy, much maligned announcing duo that covers the Phillies TV broadcast from the 4th to the 6th innings - they do radio too, but for the sake of this post that is drastically less important. I’m going to argue that the negative feelings that seemingly all of Philly has towards the two is 1. wrong and 2. shortsighted.

Sarge Matthews was a noted Phillies outfielder from 1981 to 1983. He could play ball a little bit, he even won the 1893 NLCS MVP, a fact that he rarely lets us forget. He joined the booth before the 2007 season. McCarthy on the other hand came up through broadcasting. TMac did the Phils’ radio play-by-play from 2001 to 2005 and hosted the Phillies pre- and post-game shows. He then left for a job with the Mets before returning before the start of the 2007 season, signing an unprecedented five-year deal (the rest of the Phils team has always historically worked one-year deals. Harry Kalas is the exception to this rule - he is signed for three-years.) McCarthy has had an extensive broadcasting career that I’m not going to cite, but the players like him and he’s respected in the business. Sarge is the token ex-ballplayer most famous for constantly rocking absurd hats.

Now these two haven’t been the most-loved personalities in Phillies radio history. When they hit the booth together they immediately drew less-than rave reviews from Phillies faithful. Sarge has a soft-spoken style and overuses certain phrases - "filthy" and "cartoonlike" are two of the more obvious examples - while TMac is just kind of goofy, a reputation he seems to cultivate with his in-game interviews from random locations across the ballpark. Philly Media Sports (a blog thus named so it can call itself ‘PMS’) has posts entitled "Tom McCarthy, latest Phillies Disaster" and "Gary Matthews - Discharge the Sarge."

Now to be fair, those guys seem to hate everyone in the media (except Harry, nobody hates Harry) but those two pieces were especially scathing. Further, they weren’t alone. The 700 Level took a shot at them too at the end of last year, and while most of the comments there did seem to trend towards ambivalence, still I’ve yet to find anyone outside of my immediate social circle who speaks of those two with high praise.

At first I agreed with all the negative assessments. I generally don’t pay too much attention to announcers - I always have to ask my roommate who is calling even the biggest of national sporting events (I’m not sure I know who Mike Breen is, but I’ve been told I’m a fan) - but I grew up with the rhythm of Harry, Andy, Whitey and Wheels and they were Phillies baseball to me. While nationally I didn’t care about who was saying what, here at home I wanted the reassurance of the voices I had been listening to as long I could listen to. When the broadcast booth started to turn it irked me like it irked everyone else.

Recently though my mild anger has turned to uncontrollable happiness. These days the 4th through the 6th inning of the Phillies TV broadcast has become part of my routine and arguably the favorite part of my day.

TMac and Sarge have obvious chemistry, so much so that it actually detracts from their ability to call games well. I think that’s a good thing - and not just because I’m some snarky jerkass either. TMac and Sarge enjoy each other so much that they get lost in their own topics and conversations, and do so at the expense of everything that is happening on the field in front of them. At least once a game they end up on a topic so obscure and random that you would have to take notes to track how they got there - something I now know first hand.

Virtually every inning they get caught up in some hilarious anecdote about old-timers. For example, sunday they were talking about the difference in how power pitchers and junkballers are affected by the heat. It was a normal baseball argument until they brought in their examples.

The power pitchers? Vida Blue. Their junkballer? Phil Niekro. They choose to reference a flamethrower and soft-tosser who retired in 1986 and 1987, respectively, as opposed say, guys who didn’t retire years ago, maybe even guys who are still playing.

It was awesome and totally normal for them. In the inning they also brought up Fernando Valenzuela and Bob Walk (!). Sarge has talked about Bob Horner twice in the last week.

Remember when Joe Buck came onto Conan O’Brien and admitted that he keeps his cell phone by him and has to say various words his friends text him? Well those two are like that with obscure baseball players but they do it every single day.

There are two reasons I love this - the first is that it’s hilarious and tremendously exciting (whose next? How far back can they go? Can we guess the player?) but the second is closer to my heart: their ridiculous rants and the joy I derive from it feeds into something I’ve been trying to promote for years: eliminate play-by-play.

Seriously, how much of the sports-watching population needs to be told that it’s 3rd and 6 when a graphic is on the screen telling them "3rd and 6" on the top right corner of the screen? How much of that population doesn’t need to be told that 3rd and 6 is a typical passing down, and that means that the team on offense is probably going to pass? I’d much rather hear two guys who know the game a little bit just talk about it.

When has anyone ever enjoyed a game more by themselves than at a bar with friends? It would be like Mystery Science Theater 3000, for sports. You can make it two hometown guys for local broadcasts, give them a few beers and let it rip. For national games put two local guys - one from each town - give them a couple beers and let them rant all night.

This idea is obviously still is rant here, and truth be told I’m here writing more because I want to

1. 1. draw some attention to the dynamic twosome that is Sarge and TMac, and give myself a relevant reference point to start dropping the S&TM old-schooler of the day and
2. 2. be able to claim credit when this million dollar idea takes off

 

Am I off base here and is this just a narcissistic desire to justify my own talking over the TV or are we as sports fan ready to take off the TV training wells and enjoy a game for the game?

Because we’re on the topic, the Fightins’ have a sick slideshow of Sarge’s hat collection. Check that.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 9:07 am and is filed under Beale's Quixotic Quests, Morning Rant, Sarge and TMac. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.