Replacing T-Mac no easy task
It doesn't really matter that Joe Buck, Harold Reynolds, and Tom Verducci, Fox’s new No. 1 baseball team, have only worked together four times through almost three months of the season. They will have plenty of time to get it together before undergoing microscopic scrutiny beneath the bright lights of October and the World Series.
The t r io w ill be tested Saturday night in the Bronx working Red Sox-Yankees (7:15 p.m.). Considering the current state of both teams and the mediocre AL East, the anticipation level for this game is a million miles away from Boston-New York matchups of the past.
Still, the eyeball factor will be significant. Red-Sox-Yankees should produce the biggest audience Buck, Reynolds and Verducci have played to this season. And while the game is always the thing, we will be watching to see how the “new” guys do as they work in the huge shadow of the voice they replaced - Mr. Tim McCarver. There are questions to be answered. Does it really take two voices to replace McCarver, the Hall of Fame broadcaster?
Three-man booths are tricky propositions. They also have no place in baseball or any other sport. That’s our highly educated opinion, which is the only one that counts.
Yet neither of the voices made the decision to go three-man. It was made by the suits residing in Fox’s Hollywood bunker.
Can Buck, Reynolds, and Verducci make it work? That really is up to Buck. He’s the straw. If his past offers any clues, Buck is the guy you want waiting outside the bank in the getaway car. Reliable. Quick thinking and, most importantly, able to bring the best out of his partners.
Will Reynolds and Verducci be able to capitalize working with arguably the premier set-up/play-by-play man in baseball? Impossible to say. We have not seen enough of this booth to make any pronouncements. Will Reynolds and Verducci play specific roles? One coming at it from a player perspective, the other a baseball gadfly?
Or will they create something new, a way of combining their vision and analysis to take viewers deeper inside the game?
Are the Foxies fully committed to the three-man past this season?
Or will they assess the performances of Reynolds and Verducci with an eye on dumping one and going back to a two-man booth in the 2015 season?
Are the t wo analysts working under pressure?
Another unanswerable question because we don't know if they each have multi-year deals or are working with one-year contracts.
Prior to Fox teaming the three voices, there was speculation from MLB TV sources the network was actually interested in current players who were nearing the end of their careers.
Reynolds and Verducci will have plenty of time to prove they are more than a bridge to future analysts who are still in uniform.
Their immediate task is putting some distance between their performance and memories of McCarver. There will be comparisons, which is not all bad. Especially from viewers who were not big fans of T-Mac.
For the rest of us who found McCarver informative, entertaining and fearless, the comparative analysis will be harsh, picky, and at times seem unfair. Tough. McCarver, who is working a limited schedule in the Cardinals TV booth, still had plenty left in the tank. At the time he said he was leaving Fox (he was clear to say he was not retiring) we said he was pushed out, that it was strictly a business move.
It was a bad decision. Now, it doesn't matter. Fox's three-man booth is in place. Saturday night, at Yankee Stadium, its road to October continues.
With plenty of questions still to be answered.