Hawking for Ernie Harwell
I have no problem with John Miller and Joe Morgan interviewing Ernie Harwell during the game. I'm not particularly impressed with Harwell, but he's in the broadcaster's wing of the Hall of Fame -- which is pretty much automatic if you stay on the air long enough. Still, he's been around baseball. He has stories to tell.
Sadly, Harwell wasn't there to talk about his broadcasting career. Nor was he there to call the game for a couple of innings. He was there to hawk his 4-CD set of game calls and interviews. John Miller became the spokesmodel for Harwell when he turned to the camera, positioned the CD set carefully in front of the camera, and told us where we could order it on the Web. He embellished it with a story that he bought the CD set for himself last November -- which I do not believe.
That was a little irritating. But then the next inning, they did it again. There were three separate mentions of Harwell's web site so we could buy the audio set. Whatever happened to doing interviews for free?
Peter Gammons
Peter Gammons, arguably the most knowledgable baseball reporter in the last 30 years, worked the dugout during the telecast. He was used twice. First, he interviewed Johan Santana, which is a perfectly valid use of Gammons. It wasn't particularly insightful, but Gammons did not have much time.
The second, and last use of Gammons, was in connection with another ESPN product tie-in. John Miller, out of the blue, in the middle of the telecast, starts talking about the iPhone. He engages Joe Morgan in a conversation about the iPhone. Then it gets worse. Down to the dugout for a report from Peter Gammons...whose baseball intelligence is wasted as he tells us that Justin Verlander was able to pick up an iPhone when everyone else had trouble finding one. Why? Gammons says Verlander is smarter than everyone else because he went to the Apple store. What's so brilliant about that?
Moreover, what the hell does it have to do with baseball, and why is the best baseball reporter of my lifetime talking about the iPhone? Gammons was on the air for about 2 minutes for the whole game, and about 1/2 of that was pushing the iPhone.
No wonder I've been watching MLB TV exclusively.
