Cubs' TV gets praise that it doesn't deserve
I'm kind of surprised anybody likes that crap
Every year the folks at Awful Announcing let their readers vote on the best baseball local TV broadcast teams. It usually makes for a fun read, even if some of the rankings are patently insane. The sheer fact that whatever team Chip Caray is on that year doesn't automatically rank last proves what Selina Meyer said about listening to "real people."
This year's rankings are fine.
It's just fan opinions, and as the wise man once said, opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one.
The A's announcing team ranks dead last, mostly because they're the A's and nobody is watching, but I'm also sure that some fans just learned that the main play by play announcer is a woman, Jenny Cavnar and they dropped them down the list just for that (Jenny's a lot better than a whole lot of the dudes on this list), or for Dallas Braden's weird beard. You know what? I think the beard does deserve the drop of a few spots.
The White Sox broadcast ranks 21st thanks in large part to just how terrible play by play guy John Schiffren is. The Cardinals are 18th which is 12 spots too high for Chip. The Brewers somehow rank ninth even though nobody has watched a Brewers game on TV since Ben Oglivie was playing first base. Really good broadcasts like the Blue Jays and Tigers are in the top ten. The Yankees broadcasts on YES which are dull as fucking dirt somehow ranked fourth. The best broadcasts do rank 1-3, though probably in the exact wrong order with the Mets third, Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow's final ride with the Giants ranking second, and the Padres first. Don Orsillo and Mark Grant are very fun and good, and you can't go wrong with any of these three teams.
Those of us who watch the Cubs every night on Marquee Sports Network have become resigned to their mediocre slog of inane commentary, banal sideline reporting, terrible production values and the amazing inability for the director to ever call up the right shot in any big moment. So where did the Cubs rank? 15th? Right in the middle would seem right.
No, they were fifth.
Maybe it makes sense that Awful Announcing would heap praise on such awful announcing.
But it's not the ranking that rankled me.
