John Schriffen. John Schriffen.
By Andrew Bucholtz on

The Chicago White Sox are 14-31 heading into Saturday afternoon’s game against the New York Yankees, but not all of the angst around the team is about what’s happening on the field. A significant amount of that’s around the broadcasting situation, too, where they lost beloved TV play-by-play voice Jason Benetti to the Detroit Tigers this offseason and replaced him with John Schriffen.

In that new role, Schriffen has taken some criticism from fans. And he’s taken a lot of criticism from some of the voices on local sports radio station 670 The Score. And on the team’s broadcast on NBC Sports Chicago Friday, Schriffen fired back.

There, after analyst Gordon Beckham flubbed an ad read, Schriffen weighed in on “radio losers” who might clip it. Well, that was indeed clipped and shared by one of those radio voices. That would be afternoon co-host Danny Parkins.

That sparked quite the return comments from Parkins, and from 670 The Score executive producer Shane Riordan, with Riordan even sharing a story about Schriffen’s alleged clubhouse behavior taking criticism from White Sox outfielder Tommy Pham (language warning):

For his part, Riordan eventually said he’s fine with Schriffen criticizing their criticism, but they’re going to weigh on on that pushback as well

Riordan has a point that his station’s personalities certainly can comment on announcing, and that Schriffen can then respond to their comments. And it’s notable that he says he tried to offer Schriffen a platform on the station airwaves to respond. That seemingly would have been a better fit than doing this in the middle of a game, where many of the viewers might not even have an idea what Schriffen is referencing.

But what’s strange about this is how personal it seems to have gotten, especially with Schriffen’s “radio losers.” Criticism certainly can be tough to hear, and there’s undoubtedly a lot of frustration around the White Sox in general right now, but “radio losers” is quite the line to utter on a broadcast. And that then got quite the response from Riordan in particular. We’ll see where this goes from here.

[Scriffen image from ESPN Press Room]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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