When in Rome for Benetti
Jason Benetti, who’s spending his White Sox offseason calling basketball games on TV every few days, knows he needs a break to recharge before baseball returns in just a few weeks.
So right after SoxFest, he’s getting on a plane bound for Rome, where he’ll spend four whole days before jetting home and getting back to work.
“It’s only eight hours” away by plane, Benetti said at the White Sox fan convention, as if that explains why he’s taking less than a week off to see sites and spool pasta.
Four days is an April road trip to Anaheim. Not even the Griswold family would consider that enough time for a European vacation.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but maybe Monday through Thursday is enough to hit the highlights.
Benetti, however, has only a few open dates in his slate of college telecasts for ESPN and fill-in slots for Bulls TV play-byplay man Neil Funk, so he wants to make the most of it.
What he won’t have time for is to tweet a picture of the Colosseum, asking his Twitter followers the first person to come to mind. (Flavius Anicius Maximus?) He plans to take a vacation from that too.
“I’ve just got to go, relax, throw my phone in the ocean for a couple of days and completely disconnect,” Benetti said.
That means a ceasefire of sorts from his mocking of — or perhaps mock fight with — newly re-signed Sox TV partner Steve Stone over who can amass the most followers.
“I am waiting with bated breath to open Twitter after four days and see all the shots (Steve’s) taken at my silent Twitter app,” said Benetti, who is 36 years old to Stone’s 72. “It’s going to be very exciting, after four days, to see, oh, where has he gone with this?”
At last check, they were separated by 3,248, people, alter egos or bots with Benetti followed by 41,679 and Stone 38,431.
“The problem for (Stone) is every salvo reminds people to go follow me. I think he’s actually hurting himself,” Benetti said. Maybe, but not really.
Both White Sox announcers could use some help. Combined, the Twitter audiences @jasonbenetti and @stevestone are dwarfed by that of Cubs TV announcer Len Kasper, who has 138,916 followers, for whatever that’s worth.
“The only thing that really matters is that the most possible fans get the most possible information from both me and Jason,” Stone said.
“Jason and I want everybody to be linked to the White Sox because we both feel this is going to be one of the most exciting periods of time, an era if you will, of White Sox baseball.”
Stone, the 1980 American League Cy Young Award winner, was 15-12 with the 1977 White Sox dubbed the South Side Hitmen by sports writer Philip Hersh. That Sox team led its division much of the summer until mid-August but stumbled through September to finish third.
“People want to compare this (2020 Sox team) to the South Side Hitmen,” Stone said. “I think this team will be better than the South Side Hitmen and the reason I say that is the South Side Hitmen, except for
Chet Lemon, who was a kid, were all guys either at or just over the zenith of their careers.
“But these guys? These guys have a young Eloy Jimenez, a very young Luis Robert, a young Yoan Moncada, a relatively young (Tim) Anderson. (Nick) Madrigal, when he gets here, will be very young. (Nomar) Mazara’s only 24 years old. So most of the guys on this team are young. They haven’t seen even close to what the ceiling is going to be, and that’s why … as they meld together, this is going to be exciting.”
While Stone will tease Benetti about his shellfish allergy, he reserves his true firepower for those who challenge him on his baseball insights.
The latest battleground: Stone’s unshakable conviction that Pete Rose’s gambling should keep him out of the Hall of Fame forever.
“There was only one rule in Pete’s time that got you banned from the game, and that was if you bet on baseball, you were banned from the game,” Stone said.
Stone will engage with followers up to a point, articulating his view as someone who doesn’t just know the game but knows Rose and played against him. But he doesn’t suffer fools and demands a level of civility some fail to meet. Profanity and politics are deal-breakers.
“I was reading Len Kasper saying he never blocks anybody,” Stone said. “I take a completely different avenue,” Stone said. “When somebody aggravates me, I block them. The reason is, No. 1, I’m not getting paid for (Twitter). No. 2, I do it to have fun.”
How he expects to build his Twitter following with such exacting standards is a mystery, but it’s easier to relax by blocking a few boors than flying all the way to Italy for four days, then making a beeline for home.
“Jason and I want everybody to be linked to the White Sox because we both feel this is going to be one of the most exciting periods of time, an era if you will, of White Sox baseball.” —White Sox TV announcer Steve Stone (at right)