We interrupt the NFL Week 8 previews for a baseball respite.
While many sports media observers have praised Joe Buck’s call of David Freese’s walk-off home run to force a Game 7 in the World Series (not me, however), you may have wondered how other broadcasters called the moment. And I believe both of these clips were much better than Joe Buck’s plagiarism of his dad, Jack’s great call of Kirby Puckett’s walk-off homer in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series in Minnesota.
Let’s provide you with Gary Thorne who called the game with Rick Sutcliffe on MLB International for the audience in Canada and overseas. I’m not a fan of Thorne’s by any means, but this call was very good. While the MLB Gestapo has been pulling clips off YouTube from last night, this comes from ESPN which produces the MLB International broadcasts so I think we’re safe.
And here’s Dan Shulman’s call of the home run which comes to us courtesy of ESPN Radio. Thanks to David Scott of ESPN public relations for sending this file over.
That will do it.
You can also hear the local radio calls by Mike Shannon (cards) and Eric Nadel (Rangers) here:
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=1995…
I'm generally not a fan of Joe Buck, but I actually didn't mind him borrowing his father's call from 20 years ago. He's done it before (when I didn't like it), but this time, it seemed very appropriate. Thanks to Mike's link, I got to hear Buck's call with the 2 local radio calls, and Eric Nadel's from Texas was much much better.
Gary Thorne has been ruining great moments in broadcasting for many many years (Canada's Gold Medal in Hockey in the 2002 Olympics and the Devils 2003 Stanley Cup win are 2 that come to mind). That being said, Thorney did a good job with this HR (in his style).
Ken, I agree with you on Buck's call. Everyone in the blog-o-sphere is saying it's genius. It is not. It is lazy, typical and symbolic of Joe Buck. Question – does Fox do any viewer polls? They could control the message. Or maybe they could just troll the internet and see that there is a 10-1 dislike for Joe Buck. He has ruined a decade-plus of World Series telecasts.
[...] Thorne's call for ESPN International, Dan Shulman for ESPN radio http://fangsbites.com/2011/10/gary-t…series-game-6/ Official sponsor of my daughter Sarah and the St. Louis Cardinals He's got a bendy tail, and he [...]
Is there any chance you could e mail me the audio file of Dan Shulman's call? Just for my own personal use.
ryan@castlemanpower.com