Some Thank You's and More

When we wrote our piece and accompanying poll on Michael Kay, we never expected to have such a positive reaction. We would like to thank Was Watching, the Baseball Think Factory (which had some lively discussion on the topic), the Big Lead, who is always good to My Pinstripes, and Why Don't We Get Drunk and Blog for picking up the story and running with it. The traffic increase to our site has been fantastic.

We also thank all of you who have read the post thus far and taken the poll. We wish more people would leave comments, but that's never been too popular around these parts.

A lot of talk has emerged from this whole thing about Ken "Hawk" Harrelson. The Hawk was actually somewhat amusing when he broadcasted Yankees games in 1987 and 1988. We laughed when he said "jelly leg", "duck snort", and we could even tolerate "put it on the board".

But Harrelson is hands down the worst announcer in baseball. Granted, we haven't heard them all, but his homer bias makes Phil Rizzuto sound as if he hated the Yankees. His latest phrase, "he gone" to describe an opponent's strike out is beyond obnoxious, as is his use of the word "we" when talking about the White Sox.

It's not uncommon for fans, we do it, to use "we" when referring to the team they are rooting for. But it is beyond unprofessional for an announcer to use it. His use of "good guys" and "bad guys" is just plain sophomoric. (Hmm, sophomoric sounds like something Kay would say; we should have gone with stupid.)

There are honorable mentions of course. We haven't heard too many Red Sox telecasts, but even Red Sox fans are not necessarily enamored with the job Jerry Remy does. In the past we've documented our dislike of Joe Buck, Tim McCarver (who we actually liked when he did the Yankees games), Josh Lewin, Tom Brenneman, Skip Carey, Joe Morgan, Steve Lyons, and Keith Hernandez to name a few.

And of course we can't fail to mention the man who ruins every sport he touches, Chris Berman.