One More Time

At the risk of repeating myself ad nauseum, let me mention again how much the broadcasting team of Jason Benetti and Steve Stone irritates me. And let me repeat how certain broadcasters—e.g., Tom Paciorek and the late Ed Farmer—don’t. And let me add a few more names of announcers who’ve avoided being bitten by the clever bug. John Rooney did White Sox games on the radio for seventeen seasons, every one of them a joy. Rooney possessed an ability to make the game at hand interesting. So did Wayne Larrivee, another first-rate broadcaster who did the Bears before moving over to the dark side, aka Green Bay. Football, baseball, basketball: Larrivee made seamless transitions from one sport to another. From time to time, Benetti has been paired up with Chuck Swirsky, who also calls the Bulls on radio. Swirsky is a fans’ broadcaster without being so blatantly a homer like Hawk Harrelson; Swirsky feels every Bulls’ loss with the intensity of a true diehard. When he’s in the company of Swirsky (or Paciorek), Benetti improves exponentially, sounding as if he actually cares about the game of baseball. For reasons best known to himself, Len Kasper left the Cubs’ TV booth to call Sox games on the radio, and the early reports are encouraging. It should be interesting to see what happens when Kasper moves over to the TV side, as he’s supposed to do from time to time. If it’s just him and Benetti, I have no doubt the broadcasts will be first-rate. But if a certain ex-pitcher is part of the mix, all bets are off, I’m afraid. Full Disclosure: Stone has blocked Clare from his Twitter account. It seems he can’t take the criticism.