I’m always torn about homer announcers. These announcers aren’t necessarily there to play it totally straight down the middle, but at the very least have to tell the story from one team’s perspective. I’ve always thought there has to be a way to get excited when your team does well, but yet stay professional enough to not sound like a cheerleader. Homerism in announcers is a subjective thing for me. Some can be rather entertaining while other homer announcers would make me want to listen to Fran Drescher call the game. Hawk Harrelson falls into that latter category.
And the Hawk was at his homerific best for the South Siders yesterday in Oakland, both in success and ultimately defeat. First, check out Hawk’s call of Paul Konerko’s 9th inning game-tying home run that also happened to be the 400th of his career. It allowed Hawk to go to one of his favorite calls: “YES!! HELL, YES!!”
Words just can’t describe it. The delayed “WOW!” may be the best part of Hawk’s call. Maybe that homer call isn’t so bad though. It’s a career milestone for Konerko and tied a game in the 9th. Maybe you can’t blame Hawk for going all Stone Cold Steve Austin on people watching at home and getting uber excited.
The homer call that is bothersome is what happens in the 14th inning. It was there the Chi Sox blew a 2 run lead and then got beat 5-4 on a single by Kila Ka’aihue. Hawk’s call was one of melancholy depression:
“And that’s trouble…. this ball game is over… (crickets).”
Sigh. Can’t a homer announcer at least call the play before taking the microphone and going home? It’s that refusal to even describe what actually happens that is the one of the most annoying trait of homer announcers.
In case you really, really want to see that clip, you have to visit MLB.com because Bud Selig can’t live without those extra cents that come from you watching their Lowe’s ads. No, instead of growing the game of baseball and allowing fans to share their highlights, MLB Advanced Media would rather waste their time taking down every shareable video that promotes their sport. Then, they can spend more time and more millions of dollars wondering why their audience is dying off and no young fans enjoy baseball. Makes sense to me. So, instead of sharing with you the actual video of Hawk Harrelson’s sadness, here’s a lady playing a sad violin…
(Real life MLB highlights via Yahoo)
