FanHouse JoeBuck

Remember when Peyton Manning called out Joe Buck during a recent interview with Bob Costas? (No? Here's a quick refresher.)

Apparently, Peyton didn't appreciate Buck taking shots at younger brother Eli, and he told Costas as much: "[The Giants] beat [the Eagles] and [Eli] drove them down there late and I remember standing on top of the bed, yelling at Toomer or one of his receivers because they ran a wrong route, and Joe Buck is just ripping Eli, just because that's what he seems to enjoy doing."

Good news: Peyton was just joshing. Buck admitted as much to Brinson on the most recent Hauscast, and he also spilled the beans to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The FanHouse Podcast: Because bloggers are much sexier on the phone.

In a special edition of ye olde Hauscast (it's special because Wilson's not here!), everyone gets the answer to the age-old question of "What happens when gravel collides with velvet?" Joe Buck joined Will Brinson to talk baseball playoffs, Peyton Manning and some mild mocking of Artie Lange.

Extra bonus: I somehow forget to shill Buck's cause -- a cancer charity -- and he promptly mocks me for it. Seriously though, I egged on that, but I will say that Buck is decidedly more likable on the phone than he is in the booth. That could have to do with Tim McCarver though.

Podcast after the jump.

Beneath that "aw shucks" exterior is a competitor. A perfectionist who, by the time his career is over, could hold every significant NFL passing record.

That's easy to forget when you see Peyton Manning's face pop up on every other commercial, most recently the one where he gets handled by Justin Timberlake in Ping Pong. But the guy has a mean streak. Well, as mean as you can be when you look like Gomer Pyle.

We got a brief glimpse of Angry Peyton during his Sunday night interview with Bob Costas. The subject of his ire? Fox Sports play-by-play announcer Joe Buck. You can hear his comments around the 10-minute mark in the video below. Or if you're a very busy person, or don't like the convenience moving pictures offers, (or both) the transcript follows.

It's been three days since their on-air confrontation, but Joe Buck and Artie Lang aren't done with their war of words. Buck has accused Lange of coming onto his show with an agenda to make the other guests look bad, and now Lange has responded on the Howard Stern show, ripping Buck for having a "boring" show and for, according to Lange, lying about what really happened. A video of Lange talking about Buck from Howard Stern's "Howard TV" On Demand channel is below.

Joe Buck and Artie Lange had an interesting exchange Tuesday night at the debut of HBO's Joe Buck Live, with Lange telling several off-color jokes on TV and then getting even more ribald during a web-only "overtime" segment. The video is below; the audio is not safe for work.

Ratings for Saturday's national baseball broadcasts on FOX are down 9 percent against last season at this time, the continuation of a trend that's troubling to the network. Last year's World Series was the lowest rated in history, regular season games are down 23 percent since 2000 and, since they're paying $255 million a year to show baseball games, they'd like that to change.

Following the long-standing axiom that there's no better way to get people excited than to bring Bud Selig into the mix, network executives will be meeting with the baseball commissioner next week to talk strategies. Hopefully, they'll come up with some new ideas because the ones they have aren't too inspiring.

There are many fantastic things about Fox's baseball coverage. Their music, for starters, is second to none, often featuring the dulcet tones of Phish, Widespread Panic and the White Stripes during Saturday games. Another fantastic thing: any excuse to show this picture of Rupert Murdoch. Two things that aren't awesome, however, are Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. Fortunately, when they screw up, it's quite amusing, and when they show the wrong man as John Mayberry, Sr., following his "son's" first career homer Saturday, well, good times ensue.



Bats via Deadspin

Just two days after losing Bob Costas to MLB Network, HBO has added another sports broadcaster best known for baseball play-by-play.

Joe Buck, who calls the NFL and Major League Baseball for FOX, has taken a job moonlighting at HBO, where he'll host a quarterly sports show that uses a town hall meeting format. The news was first reported by the New York Post and later confirmed by HBO.

A few weeks ago, MDS pointed out that during last year's Super Bowl, FOX tag-team duo Joe Buck and Troy Aikman enjoyed a free ride to University of Phoenix Stadium as they prepared to call the Giants-Patriots game. According to the Inspector General (via the Smoking Gun), it was "inappropriate" for the United States Marshals Service to use federal vehicles to transport Buck and Aikman to the game. You think?

Seems like common sense, really, but clearly it's not. At least that was the story a FOX spokesman was pushing after the fact. "We were unaware, however, that those arrangements were in any way inappropriate, and regret to learn now that they apparently were."

Next Big Thing is MLB FanHouse's look at emerging teams, trends and stars in 2009.

Every fall, die-hard baseball fans are treated to national coverage for every playoff game. We don't get to choose the announcers, and their voices become ingrained in our heads. For years, people have bemoaned the existence of Joe Buck for being insufferable, monotonous, and boring, in addition to many other not-so-redeeming traits.

But with TBS ramping up their baseball coverage this past few years, we are currently being treated to someone much more annoying than Buck: Chip Caray.