Remy, Orsillo Make GQ's Best Broadcasting Team Ranking

Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo ranked number 4 out of 5 in the GQ list of the best and worst broadcasters in baseball. They were on the best side, and according to Orsillo and Remy on a recent broadcast, ranked the best in the AL.

I think they are hilarious and the most interesting duo to watch because you never know when they will go off an a tangent and start laughing their collective asses off, do a dance or poke fun at NESN's fringe programming. Sometimes, the laughter will last an entire inning, especially in a blowout game. My wife, a life-long Yankee fan, loves Remy and Orsillo as well (and like me, totally loathes the Yankee announcers in broadcast and radio).

Incidentally, there was a great moment on Saturday night's game when they showed some footage of Remy and Orsillo realizing they were first in the AL on the GQ broadcasting list and they did some kooky dance. It was fantastic (I wish NESN would put up these videos for linking... I cannot find it anywhere).

I will never forget them going off during a game when NESN was filming the Red Sox dating show Sox Appeal at Fenway. They loved to rail on the guys during the dating and tried to guess how bad dates were going.

GQ wrote of the duo:

Remy has an arresting voice, with a thick Massachusetts accent—not the sound of your typical broadcaster—and he talks in a string of short bursts. He also has no volume control. In fact, when he first chimes in, one worries that some beer-brave Sawx fan has stumbled into the booth. It's a big personality to cram into a headset, but Orsillo makes it work by playing the straight—if bland—man, by calling a solid game, and by getting out of Remy's way, when necessary. Remy will misspeak (hilariously) on occasion, like: "Sometimes it's hard to get down that sacrifice fly," on a botched bunt attempt. But it's always in service of the game's action, and it never slows him down.

I think this is sort of accurate, but totally misses how great the chemistry is between he and Remy, not to mention how much Orsillo laughs and loses his straight-man demeanor with one good Remy quip.

Listen to Remy go off on Christmas letters and Orsillo make fun of NESN broadcaster Tom Caron.

You must watch Remy play air guitar too.

And be sure to watch this silly commercial on that dating show Sox Appeal:

Time to Hit the Offensive Panic Button?

So, here's my first post, and it's not gonna be pretty, Red Sox junkies.

My Week 1 assessment: The offense--despite Youk's hot bat--is brutal.
Is it too early to panic? Probably, but let's talk next week.

Eric is the usual stat junkie, but let's just roll over some of the difficult, beard-scratching facts that we must face after 8 games (nearly 5% of the season):

• Red Sox are ranked 24 out of 30 in Batting Average at .237
• With an On Base Percentage of .318, Slugging of .388
• Red Sox are ranked 27 out of 30 in Runs Batted In (27)
• Red Sox are ranked 1 out of 30 in Ground Outs (97) and Assisted Outs (97)
• Red Sox are scoring an average of 3.63 runs per game

Right now, we're 4 games back with 2 meager wins. Ouch. We should be playing in Petco wearing camo uniforms with this kind of lackluster performance. Ironically, the Padres are ranked slightly better than the Sox right now in offense. Put that rotten scrod in your fish taco, AL East lovers.

Can you blame it on the scheduling (home for 3 games, then road games across with timezone shifting in Anaheim and Oakland)? The WBC? Is Mike Lowell's hip a liability? Will Drew return to first-half 2008 form? Can Ellsbury be a real lead off guy? Is it just me, or does Ortiz's timing look way off?

I was at Fenway for the home opener last Tuesday and Beckett was in post-season form (I'm talking the 2007 post season domination, not the shaky 2008 oblique strain challenge). It was awesome, and I expect (pray for) more of that this year.

Pedroia hit a nice bomb over the Monster. Tek (Tek!) had a dinger batting left-handed and it went past Pesky's pole. Things were April gray, the tight wooden seats in right field were damp with New England moisture and exicted anticipation. And the Sox played like the kind of playoff contending team the experts were predicting. Solid pitching, timely hitting.

Since then, I've watched way too many guys left on base. The timely hitting seems to be circling Fenway stalls looking for Remdawgs (no longer called that by the way, now called Monster Dawgs-- here's why).

While I'd like to be able to stay calm and give myself the "it's a marathon, not a sprint" pep talk, 4 games back in this division is none too comforting right now. It makes it harder though seeing how real the Rays are again, and the potential for that team in the Bronx to pitch its way in to the playoffs. Meanwhile, Adam Lind in Toronto along with Adam Jones and Nick Markakis in B-More have started to really light things up. Can those teams contend? I don't think they have the pitching, but still, this first week makes you reevaluate all of your assumptions.

I have to stop the madness, take a breath and remember that every offense goes through slumps. I just didn't expect it to be so freaking soon.

Let's go Wake!

Watching History Unawares

I was in the gym this morning, pounding away at one of the elliptical machines, when a TV broadcasting one of YES's classic games caught my eye: Boston versus New York, clearly at Fenway. A date flash across the 22-inch screen; from 15 feet away, I thought I saw June, 1972. The score read 5 to 3 in favor of New York. 'Odd choice for a classic game,' I thought, but settled in to watch as someone (Fisk, as it turns out) hit a single that sent Yaz to second. I knew the Red Sox would end up losing this game - it's YES, after all - but it seemed like a good piece of diversionary history: intellectually interesting, but ultimately unimportant.

Not long after, Fred Lynn knocked in Yaz with a single to left. Hobson flew out to right for the second out and with runners on first and second, George Scott came to the plate. I knew Scott was a big part of the '67 team (something I used to help write off my growing confusion about why I knew the names of so many of the players on a team that supposedly played a good 15 years before I started watching baseball); I'd learned more about him after digging up his card from a box of baseball cards I'd gotten from my grandfather. 'Boomer,' I thought. 'Right-handed power-hitter in the classic slugger mold. Let's see what he can do.'

Not much, as it turns out. Watching Boomer swing was a bit like watching someone built like David Ortiz swing like Dustin Pedroia: monster cuts with a backswing so fierce it spun him out of the batters box, with none of Pedroia's twitch to help him catch up to the ball. Gossage nailed him to the wall in three pitches and the game cut to commercial.

YES skipped the top of the ninth; the Yankees singled, but couldn't put anything together against Andy Hassler. Rubbing a little forshadowing salt in the wound, one of the commercials was for the replay of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS; the TV broadcast the Aaron Boone homerun and I suffered a chest spasm. Five years and two championships later and that game still rubs a little raw.

Dwight Evans started out the bottom of the ninth with a flyout to left; Rick Burleson walked. Jerry Remy came to the plate and all of the sudden, the thought that had been lurking in the back of my mind, the realization that - as those of you who followed the Sox in the 70s have no doubt figured out by now - this game didn't take place in 1972. I was pretty sure Jerry Remy wasn't playing in the majors in 1972 and even if he was, he was out in California, not in Boston. Remy singled, Jim Rice came to the plate with the tying run on second, and YES flashed the game date on the screen again. Straining my eyes, I finally saw what had eluded me for the past 15 minutes through the blindness of distance and - perhaps - a willfull decision not to see. The date on the screen was October 2, 1978.

You know the rest, of course: Rice sac-flied Burleson to third for the second out and Yastrzemski, in what must have seemed like a microcosm of the whole season, popped up to third, ending the game and stranding the Sox in second place. Bucky Dent would go on to become a byword for Red Sox futility by virtue of having homered the winning runs in the seventh; the Sox didn't see the top side of third place until 1986 and have yet to match their 99 win total in the thirty years since. As the Yankees celebrated around home plate, I climbed off the elliptical machine. The historical significance of this supposedly unimportant game had suddenly hit a little too close to home.