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SPORTS RADIO QUESTION

M

MsMusicRadio

Guest
I have a question that takes me away from my usual rants about Oldies and AC. I grew up in a National League city ( PGH) and spent years in Richmond where they followed the Atlanta Braves. I also used to watch a lot of Cubs on WGN. Since I now live in Tampa that extols the Yankees, Red Sox, and now the Rays, it occurred to me that a lot of sports broadcasting cliches I heard seem to be absent froom American League broadcasts. I will list them. I wonder if these are still used in the NL or jusr passe and time specific to people like Harry Carey and Bob Prince.

Table setters referring to the first 2 hitters
two bloops and a blast
long taters
utility infielder
utility outfielder
a bunt situation
double switch
"good enough to start anywhere else"
Long relief specialist
set up man ( pitcher used before the closer)
bottom half of the order

I'm sure there are more.

Any help on this?
 
I don't think "utility infielder" is a cliche. It's what a backup infielder who can play mulitple positions including shortstop is called.

Same thing with "double switch." That's a defensive replacement with two or more players that alters the batting order.

But most of those terms are traditional baseball expressions. Generally as time goes by such expressions become less and less frequent (I haven't heard "Long Tater" in awhile. I know Willie Stargell used to call his home runs that quite often), but you'll get hear them every so often.

Of course, I like to call the fourth spot in the batting order "the position of honor," and that hasn't been used in about 100 years with any sort of regularity.
 
I just heard Table Setter when the announcers were reading the lineups for the game last night. Bloop and a Blast I believe was a Bob Prince saying. I personally have never heard that anywhere else.
 
I enjoy John Miller from ESPN. I will listen to him call a baseball game. I am in that 18-24 croud that grew up with the World Series not ending until 1 in the morning, thus never really enjoying baseball. I also have a aaa team called the Pirates in Pittsburgh, so I was never really exposed to good baseball either.
No matter what terms are used by broadcasters, most of us under 40 will never care about the sport enough to notice if it's 15 years old or 50.
 
What I mean is the fact that the two leagues play a different game now mean that broadcasters use different lingo
 
Not really, and I would submit to you the two leagues played a far more different game in the late '70s-early '80s than they do now.

The DH rule is different, but terminology is the same.
 
In the NL they used to used use a cliche" Good enough to start anywhere else" about guys like Jose Pagan or Dan Driessen, but in the AL they have an extra position in the batting order. Because AL managers don't have to take out a guy who is pitching well for a pinch hittter in close situations, hence the AL doesn't seem to use the cliche" long relief specialist". Oh well, maybe I just miss the "Gunner"
 
It isn't a league difference as much as it is the newer generation of broadcasters. They are all out of the Fox Sports mold which filters all of the color out of it. You have a broadcaster in Tampa who studied under Bob Prince AND Harry Carray and yet is about as interesting to listen to as an elevator motor. Nobody is allowed to be interesting or different anymore unless they are over 60 and don't care what the consultant is telling them.
 
If you're talikng about DeWayne Staats on Rays TV I totally disagree. I'd listen to him and Joe Magrane over the Pirates crew any day of the week (and I watched them for 9 years or so... he never got negative the way Lanny did).
 
Yeah, and once DeWayne was the Frank Gifford to Harry Carey and Steve Stone's Don and Howard
 
DeWayne has a great set of pipes but when you sit back and think about all of the colorful broadcasters that he's worked with you realize that the basics rubbed off and not much else. Sure, he's not yelling for no apparent reason like Greg Brown but he's very much in that Fox Sports "Don't offend anyone/just give them the obvious"mold
 
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