Good team: Fox TV, ESPN Radio
Hey Google: How do we wish Joe Buck and John Smoltz into the cornfield and bring on Dan Shulman?
Mute. Pursuit. Reconstitute.
There’s hardly any trouble-shoot trauma in leaving the Fox TV coverage during the World Series and finding the ESPN Radio feed. Even if you’re not privileged enough to have YouTube TV (we’ll get to that later).
Though the Dodgers’ KLAC-AM (570) hometown feed is 15 to 20 seconds ahead of the TV transmission, the ESPN Radio broadcast via KSPN-AM (710) is the opposite, making it simple to pause the video and synch it up with new, improved audio.
Shulman, the longtime ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” play-by-play man who walked away from that job after the 2017 season to concentrate on his Toronto Blue Jays assignments, comes back to do the network’s national radio coverage with the agile ex-bigleaguer Chris Singleton and equally adept reporter Buster Olney.
The trade-off: TV may be showing, as it did during Game 1, Jack White in the Fenway Park stands for some weird reason or going back to some taped audio clip from Red Sox first base coach Tom Goodwin.
But on ESPN Radio, you’ll get Singleton, a former teammate of Cody Bellinger’s father, Clay, going in depth explaining the techniques of how to play the Fenway Park outfield (he has six major league seasons with the Chicago White Sox, Baltimore, Oakland and Tampa Bay), and Olney reinforcing the well-researched stories Shulman is telling between pitches like a seasoned pro.
Now the issue: The Lakers need KSPN for games Wednesday and Saturday. The Angels’ KLAA-AM (830) also an ESPN affiliate, carries Ducks games these days. Check our apps, satellite radio or other streaming methods to keep this as your wicked-cool alternative in case you’ve jaded yourself into thinking the BuckSmoltz team just wore you out during the NLCS.
In case you’re wondering: Shulman and Singleton are high atop the Fenway Park press box calling the game, but often refer to the Fox TV feed for replays, bullpen action and dugout shots. With two out in the top of the ninth, while talking about the beard comparison of the Dodgers’ Justin Turner and the Red Sox’s Craig Kimbrel, a few moments later, Fox put a split screen of the two up.
“I like how Fox TV is listening to us,” Singleton said.
It’s the ESPN Radio bump that Fox may have needed.
Virtual monstrosity
The YouTube TV cordcutting service that apparently again has title sponsorship of this Fox-controlled World Series apparently will get its money’s worth with some high-optic virtual reality signage on the Fenway Park Green Monster left-field wall and the center-field batter’s eye area, turning them into virtual movie screens.
The mound visit lulls now apparently can be bought and sold to companies, resulting in the liveaction screen shrinking incredibly small and the sponsor product going up very large for about five seconds at a time.