In what will come as a shock to absolutely no one, a study by the Wall Street Journal determined that Chicago White Sox broadcasters Hawk Harrelson and Steve Stone were the most biased in the league… by more than four times the next most homerific broadcast team (Indians announcers Matt Underwood and Rick Manning).

The WSJ study looked at a home victory for each MLB team and counted each instance of homerism by the broadcasters, including first person pronouns referring to the home team, nicknames that aren't widely used, and blatant cheering. Harrelson and Stone had 104 instances of homerism in the chosen game, a 2-1 win over the Rangers in July. The most impressive aspect of that statistic?

That number was more than the next seven highest broadcast teams combined!

Aside from the White Sox topping the list, the rest of the top five teams were all small market teams: the Indians, Pirates, Astros, and Marlins. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, five teams featured no recorded instances of bias in the chosen game: the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Mets, and Dodgers. Those are generally large markets and their broadcast teams are thought of highly. Vin Scully does not refer to the Dodgers as "we" during a broadcast and he's made a decent career out of announcing.

Now obviously, a one game sample doesn't give us any definitive conclusion. But, when you have such a massive gap from #1 to #2 like in the case of the White Sox and the rest of the competition, that's a clear sign who is undoubtedly the biggest homers in baseball. Then again, you could put a mannequin next to Hawk and the White Sox team would still top this list by a mile. You can argue about the placing of the teams from #2 to #30, but all shades of baseball homerism pale in comparision to Hawk Harrelson… but you already knew that.

[h/t: Wall Street Journal]

About Joe Lucia

I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.

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