All About Pocket Knives

OLDE CUTLER wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 2:27 pm Arrieta resigned with the Cubs after his 3 years in Philly. Can he still be effective? Only costing the Cubs $6 mil

edge213 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 2:40 pm The Cubs made a number of moves, but I don't see any that will improve the team much over last season.

Ahhhhhh......talking of baseball with a foot of snow on the ground.

1967redrider wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 11:38 pm The pre-Season line on making the Post is in for both Leagues.

fergusontd wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 7:44 pm Jerry.....Reds will win Central division by 10 games over the 2nd. place Cubbies! ftd

jerryd6818 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:56 pm Cubs & Sox (White) this afternoon.

Most baseball fans can tell you the voice of summer that seduced them. For Len Kasper, it was Detroit Tigers radio announcer Ernie Harwell who led him to love not only the message but the medium while growing up in Michigan.

The hum and pop of AM radio has proved as enduringly irresistible a siren song as Harwell’s vivid calls over time.

So Kasper, who turns 50 next month, gave up the coveted Chicago Cubs TV announcing job he held for 16 seasons to become the new radio voice of the crosstown White Sox.

“I want to paint the picture of the great game of baseball on the radio like he did for me growing up,” Kasper explained Friday.

“This wouldn’t really make any sense to anybody unless you were familiar with Len,” said Mike McCarthy, general manager of Marquee Sports Network, the TV channel the Cubs launched this year with Sinclair Broadcast Group that featured Kasper front and center on play-by-play.

“Len’s dream was to pursue this purist view of baseball radio and he’s going to do that, and he doesn’t even have to move to do it. So it’s pretty special for him in the way of an opportunity. We tried like heck to keep him.”

Among those surprised Kasper would consider leaving the Cubs TV booth for White Sox radio was Brooks Boyer, the Sox chief revenue and marketing officer who fielded Kasper’s inquiry about the position alongside analyst Darrin Jackson earlier in the week.

“I want to call postseason games,” Kasper said. “I want to be behind the microphone to call a World Series.”

That’s why the 12-year-old who dreamed of being Harwell has won out, and the 49-year-old who wound up in TV but always thought radio would be his sound salvation is charting a new course.

Waukonda wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 1:24 am Love 'em, or hate 'em, none will ever fill the shoes of Jack Brickhouse "Hey, Hey", and Harry Caray "Holy Cow". I grew up listening to Harry Caray on KMOX, later lived in SW Michigan, within range of WGN, and was introduced to Brickhouse along with Lou Boudreau. Harry was with the ChiSox at that time and came to the Cubs later.

Waukonda wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 1:32 am How right you are! Steve Stone gave excellent commentary, and was the perfect complement to Harry's "larger than life" personality, great duo.

edge213 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 11:55 pm I won't miss Kasper. Now if we can get rid of Jim Deshaies it would be a clean sweep for the better.
I know everyone doesn't agree, but I didn't care for either.

jerryd6818 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 25, 2021 2:18 pm

edge213 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 11:55 pm I won't miss Kasper. Now if we can get rid of Jim Deshaies it would be a clean sweep for the better.
I know everyone doesn't agree, but I didn't care for either.

They're not my favorites but I enjoyed them calling the game. BUT oft times I tire of the blather and just turn the sound off and watch baseball.

That said, this Jon “Boog” Sciambi can go back where he came from. Blah. Poor choice IMHO. The new back up announcers Pat Hughes, Beth Mowins and Chris Myers are okay. I saw one game with Beth Mowins and she knows her baseball but she's going to take some getting used to. I have no idea who Chris Myers is. For me, Pat Hughes is the best of the lot. He has a soothing voice. Looks like a season of silence for me.

Mumbleypeg wrote: ↑Thu Mar 25, 2021 3:01 pm I love baseball on the radio. Maybe it’s because I grew up with it, spending countless hours listening to Harry Caray call Cardinals games. As a kid I often went to sleep listening to Cardinals games on a transistor radio hidden under my pillow. Something about baseball and radio seems the ideal marriage. While listening on the radio you can do other things, including of course even watching the game simultaneously on television.

In Texas we’ve been very fortunate to have outstanding radio broadcasters. The late Mark Holtz was a great broadcaster who started doing Rangers games in the early 1980s, but was taken from us too soon by leukemia in the late 1990s. About the same time he started with the Rangers, Holtz was joined by Eric Nadel as his broadcast partner. Nadel moved into the primary voice role after Holtz’s death, and today Nadel is still the voice of the Rangers. In 2014 he was inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame as a broadcaster. He’s in his seventies now, last year he started skipping a lot of road games. He has a “lifetime contract” with the Rangers to do their games as long as he wants. Not looking forward to his retirement but it’s inevitable I suppose.

Ken

zzyzzogeton wrote: ↑Thu Mar 25, 2021 3:53 pm
I remember doing the same with the 45 Colts/Astros games. The ONLY pro baseball game I went to until after college was to one of the Astros' games their first year in the Astrodome. When the Senators moved to Texas in 1971, I was often distressed trying to decide which game to listen to. I solved that dilemma but asking for a 2nd transistor radio for Christmas.