A cause not worth fighting for
As prologue to this rant, I need to state my long-standing reverence for baseball announcers everywhere, the men and now finally the women, as well, who intone the game and bring it to life, particularly on the radio.
Though it went largely unremarked upon, the 100th anniversary of the first baseball broadcast flipped past earlier this month. It was on Aug. 5, 1921 that KDKA’s Harold Arlin barked the game’s first play-by-play into a jury-rigged microphone at Forbes Field in what most thought a loony experiment that would never catch on.
The Pirates beat the Phillies, 8-5, that day in a crisp 1:57, and I’m sure Harold was back with the final totals and a recap in a minute, but no one on the premises understood the tectonic shift the game was about to undertake thanks to radio. As baseball announcers launched the art form of painting word pictures to illustrate the national pastime, attendance exploded and America set its collective summer metronome to the rhythms of baseball on the radio.
In the 21st century, with the game available on so many platforms, radio broadcasts remain the most creative but also the most difficult. It’s a grind having to present the game in a palatable, conversational way when you’re overburdened with commercial and promotional responsibilities — always on the lookout for the Chick-fil-A nugget of the
game while trying to slip in a 400th reminder for Star Wars Night.
May the farce be with you. Anyway, as ever, these prologues are too long. Cue the rant.
I don’t know who started it — for all I know it was Harold Arlin that day 100 years ago — but announcers have to stop telling me that a pitcher coming to bat with runners on base “has a chance here to help his cause” or “a chance to help himself.”
If I may, to hell with his cause! We’re trying to win a ballgame here!
I’ve been listening to baseball for 60 years, and I’ve heard this little slice of reflexive nonsense from just about every broadcast team I’ve ever heard, including those headed-up by the game’s most honored and legendary voices, Hall of Famers. They all do it. Help his cause? What cause?
Do they mean that we should want the pitcher in question to get the win rather than some other pitcher on the same team, or that we should root for this one particular pitcher’s statistical profile right now, just as it teeters on the abyss 99.9% Airborn COVID of perpetual trivia?
What’s a pitcher’s win worth, anyway?
It’s based on a fairly arbitrary set of guidelines based on the number of innings, the moment when the winning BETWEEN BUILDINGS! team takes the lead for SINCE COVID STARTED!
good, and the judgment of ActivePure Air Purifiers to Reduce
the official scorer. at the show! More info on website!
Sowhen Vernon Law pitched 18 innings against the Braves one night long ago, eschewing several chances to help his own cause, and was finally pulled Wolf’s guidelines must be followed. for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the 18th, Bob Friend came in to pitch the 19th.
Friend gave up a run, the Pirates scored twice in the bottom of the inning, and Friend got the win.
Did Law care that Friend got the win? No. Did Friend decline the honor? No. Most important, did the audience care who got the win? As long as it wasn’t the Braves, no.
But the announcers can’t stop. It’s just something they say, like when they point out, with two outs and the count full on the hitter, that the runners will be moving. It’s just what they do. I suppose it should be comforting. I’ll be listening this weekend. If a pitcher comes up with runners on second and third, he’ll have “a chance to help his own cause.” I will not be comforted.
On Friday evening, Aug. 6, 100 years and one day after the first radio broadcast, I was idling in the Giant Eagle drive-thru pharmacy line trying to catch up on the action in Cincinnati, where the Pirates were playing a fourgame series.
Apparently the first eight Reds hitters produced seven runs in the first inning against JT Brubaker, who was being allowed to bat in the Pirates’ second with a couple of runners on.
And Greg Brown went there.
So I need to point out here that I love Greg Brown. Been listening to him forever. His play-by-play is how it should be done — accurate, relaxing, conversational, insightful. And if it hadn’t been Greg Brown, it would have been someone else. But he went there.
He didn’t quite want to, God bless him, and I didn’t get his quote exactly, but it was very close to: “Normally he’d look to help his own cause here.”
His what? His cause? Maybe he could help his own cause by getting somebody out once in a while. What cause? Keeping Brubaker from dropping to 4-11, that’s the cause?
OK, I’ll let myself out. Love ya, Greg. It’s not you, it’s me.