As you are quickly learning, part of my job is to read the daily major publications. Every now and again something jumps out at me worth sharing with you, and today I have a couple nuggets. Lets start with "Flight Fight".
And again, I don't take the time to get all the facts verbatim, and I will tell you the below image is from the Wall Street Journal, but I am too lazy to link it up, so type in WSJ.com if you would like to learn more, but here is pretty much how it went down.
A couple of knucklehead pilots got into a fight during a flight from San Diego to Minneapolis, something regarding "airline policies". During this fight they either did not hear, or completely ignored repeated calls from the tower regarding them severely overshooting their flight path. The chart above will indicate when the light bulbs finally kicked in and they looped the plane back around for it's eventual landing in Minn over an hour and 15 minutes late. Both pilots were suspended, and will be appearing in a reality show with the balloon boy family soon (okay, so that part is made up).Sportwise, the New York Times had their annual "What's wrong with TBS Playoff Baseball Coverage" rant. I swear they just run this story from archives each year, but among the complaints are:
1) Get the best announcers - same old yada yada...lets clone Vin Scully and all feel better about things.
2). Choose local voices and bring in local announcers - well for one, the Red Sox/Angels series featured Don Orsillo, local Red Sox play-by-play, so....huh?? And secondly, doesn't bringing in local announcers contradict complaint number one (in most cases)?
3). Silence is a good thing - The Times is just slammin on Chip Carey for yammering too much.
4). Baseball announcers need rhythm- Call these guys
5). Technology is imperfect - The paper claims that Fox's strike zone technology is used way too often and is not accurate. They say the same for Fox, but the main argument here is that TBS needs to use it less and Fox needs to use it more. Which basically means, even though it is inaccurate, it sure is pretty.Like I said, it is the same rant every year since TBS jumped into the fray. IMHO (Acronym alert!!), TBS has gotten light-years (Star Wars/Star Trek reference alert!! Red alert!!!) better since they jumped in a few years back. Of course HD helps that a whole lot, and lets face it, the quality of the games is what makes a broadcast better. Nothing worse than a 10-1 blowout where announcing crews have gone through every talking point on their list and then need to go to guys like David Wells to fill the gaps.
Oh, and just one more little dig on FOX...what is UP with your World Series theme song each year? Why do they go from the regular Fox Baseball theme to something that sounds like it should be used for the Masters or something like that? Tell me I am not alone in this...
I agree with the K-Zone things or whatever being inaccurate. Case in point, Lackey's disputed strike call last night. Now, I'm not saying it should or shouldn't have been called a ball, but the K-Zone made it look like the pitch was right down the middle, which it certainly was not. It was a questionable strike, at best, that looked like it could very easily have been low and inside. I admit that I'd probably be singing a different tune if I was an Angels fan, but I think we can all admit that it wasn't a no-brainer strike, at the very least.
ReplyDeleteAlso, John Lackey is one of new least-favorite players. The Angels end up winning, but he still complains about the call in post game interviews. Give me a break.