Maybe sports fans — you — don’t care about an overly-sensitive owner or overly-sensitive executives or leaders of the team for which they — you — root, powerful people overreacting to their team’s broadcast crew, but those fans — you — should care.
Otherwise, all fans get during games is sunshine blown up their shirts and skirts and little actual truth. Think about it. If, say, Jazz or Cougar or Ute broadcasters are collared into shouting only glowing compliments about the team, even when the team sucks, what’s that do for the team and its patrons?
Nothing positive.
Fans aren’t stupid, but sometimes team leaders think they are, think they can somehow polish up what isn’t being properly polished on the court or the field or the pitch or the diamond or in the locker room.
Already, there’s fear in some broadcast booths that if announcers tell it like it is, they’ll face unpleasant consequences for their veracity. And that fear is spread wide around pro and college sports of all kinds. On account of that, some team broadcasters do little more than lead cheers for the teams that employ them. On a bad night, they’ll sing a team’s praises for trying real hard. I’ve always had great respect for guys and gals in the booth — they do exist — who are courageous enough to spit truth, to describe what is really happening or what has happened with a team, whether it’s positive or negative, whether it reflects richly or poorly on players, coaches, administrators, executives, owners.
It’s not that hard. Just tell the freaking truth. But that truth sometimes does not set broadcasters free, it gets them suspended or fired.
Kevin Brown, the Baltimore Orioles’ television play-by-play announcer, is the latest example. He was recently suspended for explaining before a game against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field to viewers that the Orioles could do something special against the Rays: They could win a game and maybe even a series. He explained that Baltimore had split a two-game series in June against the Rays, but that prior to that they had lost 15 straight series against that opponent.
A graphic was shown on the screen under the heading “Trop-ical Depression” that illustrated that the improved Orioles had an 0-15-1 series record against Tampa in their last 16 tries. The graphic also showed the Birds’ last series win over the Rays came in June, 2017. This season, thus far, the graphic indicated the Orioles had won three of five games. It also showed that Baltimore, from 2020-22, had three total wins in 21 outings.
Brown said the Rays were no slouches now, seeming to compliment the Orioles in their upswing of results this season, stating that they were now alone in first place in the American League’s East Division.
For that, he was indefinitely suspended by the club.
What?
There was nothing unprofessional that Brown said, only looking into the camera and stating what had actually happened on the field between the two teams, stating facts.
But some bully on top of the club wasn’t happy with such truth-telling, and the man has been disciplined. A team official said he’d be back sometime soon, but he’s been absent for over a week. Twenty-some years ago, the Orioles refused to renew the contract of broadcaster Jon Miller, who owner Peter Angelos said was too critical of the team.
This is embarrassing.
I couldn’t care less about the Baltimore Orioles, they’re good for who they’re for, and maybe you don’t give a hoot, either. But fans of all teams should demand from team owners and execs that broadcasters be given license to be honest with viewers. To compliment when it is warranted and to be empowered to if not openly criticize, to tell it like it is when that is warranted. And sometimes, it is.
Most fans understand they’re likely to get a glossy version of events on and results around a team for which they root by announcers who are paid by the team and whose jobs depend on keeping their employers pleased.
I would say, given those circumstances, take what some announcers say over the air with a grain of salt or sugar. Sometimes, quite often, you’re not going to get unvarnished candor. But sometimes, you do. And when you do, appreciate it. Appreciate broadcasters who say, the hell with it, I’m speaking forthrightly because that’s what viewers, fans, deserve to hear. Appreciate team owners and executives and coaches and managers and directors who are secure enough to allow it or, at least, to look past it.
Those are the broadcasters and owners and team leaders you can believe, you can trust.
Pity that such folks seem to be growing fewer and farther between.
The view from this corner is that customers should insist on it.
Again, fans aren’t stupid. They — you — can see what’s really going on, whether or not they — you — like it, whether or not the overly sensitive are too soft to endure it. Whether or not the raw truth is hard to hear or see or accept, anything’s better than being lied to through forced giggles and fake grins.