6/29/18; Colorado Springs, CO, USA; John Smoltz watches his tee shot at 3 during the second round of the U.S. Senior Open golf tournament at Broadmoor. Mandatory Credit: Michael Madrid-USA TODAY Sports
By Jay Rigdon on

John Smoltz was an incredible pitcher.

He’s also a very good golfer, albeit with the acknowledgment that there’s a big gulf between even the best amateur players and touring pros. Still, Smoltz loves to talk about golf, so much so that in an exclusive TMZ interview he described how he’s looking forward to hip surgery in order to chase his dream of playing on the Champions Tour.

Via TMZ:

Now, though, he says he’s already got one of his hips redone — and he’s hoping when he gets the other one fixed … it could lead to serious success.

“I’ve got a new hip, I’ve got one more hip to do, and then after that,” he said, “I want to see what my competitive juices take me to.”

…

If John doesn’t get healthy enough to compete on the PGA TOUR Champions … he tells us, don’t worry, he’ll still find some way to get into competitive tourneys.

“As long as they’re going to keep score,” he said, “and they’re going to have a scoreboard, I want to be on the leaderboard.”

So how good is Smoltz? Well, again, he’s a very good player. He qualified for the U.S. Senior Open in 2018, though he blew up in the first round. He’s certainly famous enough to get some starts on the over-50 circuit. If he wants to play golf competitively and there’s a tour willing to allow him to do that, he should.

That said: it is kind of funny how much more enthusiastic Smoltz seems talking about potentially playing pro golf in his fifties than he seems when he’s calling MLB games for Fox. Just a few days ago he clapped back at critics by suggesting they haven’t played the game, therefore they shouldn’t be analyzing his analysis.

It’s enough of a bit on Twitter that baseball-centric accounts have started noting how enthusiastic analysts in other sports help make a broadcast more enjoyable for fans tuning in:

https://twitter.com/OldHossRadbourn/status/1647397805126828035

Again, these are two separate things, until they aren’t. And whenever Smoltz makes enjoying baseball difficult for people tuning in purely because they enjoy baseball, it’s going to be tempting to hope he gets that hip fixed and hits it big on the Champions Tour.

[TMZ]

About Jay Rigdon

Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.

View all posts by Jay Rigdon