Tips on How to Watch Cubs Playoff Games
As a fan base, Chicago Cubs fans hate Joe Buck, and you can now add Ernie Johnson and Ron Darling to that list. In fact, anytime the Cubs are on a national broadcast the fans end up hating the TV crew hired to call the game.
This is partially warranted, but mostly not.
As a fan of a particular team you get tunnel hearing as you are used to your hometown guys calling the game from the hometown perspective. When your team is covered by a national crew they have to call the game from an unbiased perspective.
This means, they aren’t there to stroke the egos of a hometown crowd, but rather tell the story to the national audience.
This is going to be hard to hear, and I know there will be tons of readers that say they wouldn’t stop talking about Stephen Strasburg all night. That is incredibly correct. They (Johnson and Darling) were talking about Strasburg all night. Because he was special in game one. Even though Kyle Hendricks out-pitched Strasburg, Stephen was special – especially early.
But in the compliment bouquets towards Strasburg, they said some great things about Cubs players as well. Like anytime Javy Baez touched the ball they commented on how his arm is the strongest on the team, no other second baseman in baseball makes that play, his speed and ability is better than perhaps anyone else in the game. They talked about how much Anthony Rizzo’s leadership means to this team, they talked about how staunch Carl Edwards has been in a setup role, they threw compliments out to Brian Duensing, and finally they gave the biggest tip of the cap to Hendricks in saying he was better than Strasburg.
I traveled with the Cubs to Cleveland last season for game six. All the Indians fans would talk about is how in love Joe Buck was with Kyle Schwarber. It equaled or was even more apparent to them as the Buck Clayton Kershaw love affair was to Cubs fans. Thing is, they talk about the story, all of the national guys do. They aren’t going to go into a monologue on how important Tommy La Stella has been to the team, because there are many other storylines much more interesting and important to cover to an national audience.
So how do you watch the broadcast? We should, and all fans bases should, keep them honest. There were several horrible mistakes made by Johnson and Darling last night. Misremembering situations, trying to tell stories by embellishing facts and details. Stuff like that cannot happen, and TBS should be ashamed for themselves.
But listen with an open ear. 90% of the viewers haven’t seen many, if any games at all of the other team. As Cubs fans, I’d easily bet that 95% of us haven’t watched more than 10 Washington Nationals games, including the seven that the Cubs played them in. So listen to the games to learn about their team, their players. Don’t close them off by immediately saying “they’re hanging off of (insert a Nationals players name here)(insert body part here).”
Understand it isn’t their job to know all storylines from the Cubs this year, but to enough enough about each team to fill a three plus hour long broadcast. Knowing the way a national broadcast is run, will help you get through said broadcast without as much angst. Plus, you might be able to actually enjoy the outcomes (of course, if the Cubs win that is).
If all else fails, turn Pat and Ron on and try to pair up the audio with the video.
