FanHouse Tim Mccarver

During Tuesday's FOX broadcast of Game 3 of the ALCS, Tim McCarver referred to Andy Pettite as the "Dean of the Cutter." It was a title I found somewhat ridiculous considering that Pettite doesn't even have the best cutter on his team. No, that would belong to closer Mariano Rivera.

Rivera has booked himself a ticket to Cooperstown using his cutter to help him save 562 game in both the regular and postseason during his career, and many have wondered what his secret to throwing the pitch is. Well, there's some video from Monday's television broadcast that may have just solved that mystery.

While making my daily attempt to read everything on the Internet, I came upon a link that took me completely by surprise. It was to a story in the Providence Journal entitled, "Tim McCarver sings the American songbook." I did a double-take, the double-took my double take. The Providence Journal is a real newspaper and there's an Amazon.com link to the CD. This is really real.

This information has overloaded my poor little brain. Tim McCarver is one of my least favorite baseball announcers of all-time, and one of the reasons I can watch a game with the volume on and never actually hear one word the announcers say. But it's one thing to make fun of his baseball commentating. Everyone does that. Can I actually make fun of the man's singing voice?

Anyone tired of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in the broadcast booth got a bit of a reprieve tonight. President Barack Obama joined them in the booth in the top of the second inning to chat about his recent travels, the All-Star Game, and Washington D.C.'s most pressing current problem -- the Nationals.

Obama stopped by in his White Sox jacket, the same jacket he wore when he threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

It was a mildly curious decision because it's standard operating procedure to wear the home team's gear when throwing out the first pitch, but Obama, an avowed Sox fan, wanted to stay true to his hometown team.

"Everybody knows I'm a White Sox fan," Obama told Buck and McCarver, "and my wife thinks I look cute in this jacket, so for those two reasons, why not."

Joe Buck has been announcing NFL games for FOX since 1994 and been the lead play-by-play MLB man since the network acquired the rights to broadcast baseball games for the 1996 season.

Monday night, Buck will break with his announcing past and become an emcee for the premier episode of his new talk show, Joe Buck Live on HBO (9PM ET/PT).

FanHouse caught up with Buck last week to talk about his new show and about his 15-year career announcing some of the most high-profile sporting events in the world. Read the interview after the jump.

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

Let's go on a trip back in time to the year 2002. It was the month of October and while people all over the country were falling in love with Good Charlotte's "Young and the Restless" and flocking to local theaters to see "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," there were new cultural phenomenons taking place in southern California. The Los Angeles Angels were on their way to winning the World Series, and introducing us all to the Rally Monkey and the Thunderstick in the process.

In my entire life as a baseball fan I have never seen fans do anything more annoying than bang those two inflated sticks together repeatedly for hours. Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver included. It was a plague that had been unleashed on the sport -- in 2005 they were handing them out at White Sox playoff games -- and thankfully they've since died out. For one man in Los Angeles, though, they didn't die out soon enough.

Back in 2004 when the Angels and Red Sox were facing each other in the playoffs, then 29-year old Daniel Slama was in attendance at a game rooting for his Angels. He also took the time to make sure he chanted "Boston sucks" repeatedly, which is fine, but he then made a fatal mistake. He hit a Red Sox fan in the head with a thunderstick.

It's a good thing the Rays won the American League pennant, because had the Red Sox won, the Phillies might have had to juggle their starting rotation. Or something like that. From Bob Nightengale of the USA TODAY:

"I did not want to play Boston," says Myers, 28. "If Boston had beat Tampa, I would have gone to (manager) Charlie (Manuel) and told him, 'I don't want to pitch in Boston.'

"I don't ever want to pitch in Boston again."

If you remember, it was in Boston during the 2006 season that Brett Myers was arrested for allegedly beating his wife, Kim, outside a downtown bar. Despite the charges, he actually started the very next day. The Phillies caught a lot of flack for not holding him out, though for what it's worth, the scorn he received from the fans apparently scarred him for life.

Most of the hyperbole in the two league championship series was directed towards the opponents of the Rays and Phillies. This is because the big media types love the Red Sox and Manny Ramirez, while generally express a vague indifference towards teams like the Rays and Phillies. Somehow, I don't think that's going to stop broadcasters and journalists from saying stupid things about these two teams.

Hyperbole: Just about anything said about the Rays is potentially hyperbolic.
Truth: Let's straighten things out here: the Rays turnaround from 2007 IS remarkable. Their win over the Red Sox in the ALCS was NOT an upset. Many talking heads predicted the Rays would finish last in the AL East this year, but many people who bothered to put time and thought into their predictions thought the Rays would win somewhere between 80 and 90 wins. That means that while it is fairly surprising that the Rays are in the World Series, it's only mind-bogglingly shocking for people that don't pay that much attention to baseball.

Hyperbole: Blah blah blah, Manny Ramirez, blah blah blah, Boston Red Sox, blah blah blah.
Truth: Manny? Home. Red Sox? Home. You see, they're not playing this week because their teams lost and were eliminated from the playoffs. And yet, why do I feel like we haven't heard the last of them?

There are a lot of things we can count on to annoy us during the World Series this season. First there will be the complaints about the fact that the Phillies and Rays just don't have large enough fanbases to bring in viewers, which I couldn't care less about because all that matters to me is the baseball being played. Then, of course, we're going to have to deal with listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver for a week and a half. Finally, there will be all those scripted conversations in the dugout about Taco Bell, and how Shane Victorino plans on getting free tacos for Americans everywhere.

So with all that annoyingness preparing to attack you in the coming nights, I bring you this warning: Do not tune in for the national anthem before game one. Unless you really hate your ears, anyway.

Move over, B.K. Jackson. The Backstreet Boys will be singing the national anthem of game 1 of the World Series on Wednesday night, according to team fan experience director Darcy Raymond. Throwing out the first pitch will be Pinellas County Commissioner Bob Stewart. Stewart was a St. Petersburg City Council member back on July 24, 1986, who voted with five others to build the stadium even when the area didn't have a team.

Yes, the Rays are pulling out all the stops for their first World Series appearance. Apparently the New Kids on the Block are too busy touring. Still, I suppose this makes sense when you think about it. Just about everybody on the Rays roster is 23 or 24 years old, and that would make them the perfect age to have been Backstreet Boys fans when the group was popular.

Maybe I should tune in just to see Evan Longoria screaming and then fainting in the dugout.