Two words of introduction. A. I’m not a hater ( a little bit of a curmudgeon maybe, but not a full on hater.) B. At some point in every sports event I imagine myself making the same play or sometimes an even better play. I guess the second one might be a better place to start. Imagination is critical to sport. For the athlete, the ability to find new ways, more efficient ways, more creative ways to make the play is critical to breaking boundaries. Michael Jordan mastered the fade away jump shot. However, it was his under the basket dunk that was truly innovative at the time. Now everyone can do it. Or the time Golfer Seve Ballesteros hit a shot from his knees. Listen to the commentator who says, “fantastic improvisation from Seve Ballestro, fantastic. Well, if there is a way, he’ll find it. He has the most magnificent imagination for golf shots.”
The phrases of the announcer, ““fantastic improvisation” and “magnificent imagination” that paint the greatest image in our minds and spark further thought. That is why even in the age of television with instant replay and super slow motion (not just slow motion) we watch games with announcers. In baseball in which we can literally see everything on the field regardless of a producer’s inane camera angles and split screens, we still have announcers. They tell us what we are seeing and talk about everything from the food being served, to the number of people in attendance to stories of when they played.
I do admit, on the rare occurrence when something does happen, they do add to the excitement of the ball flying out of the park or a team turning a double play. Even though the statistics we never thought were important or even interesting such as exit velocity, are displayed on the screen, the announcers add to the excitement. Even though we saw it also, they still describe it.
It has been said that news stopped being news when it began being broadcast 24 hours a day. It became entertainment. That is exactly what happened to sports when 24 sports channels were born. When ESPN started (it literally has entertainment in its name – Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) in 1979 the announcer had to up their game.
We typically will hear two different sorts of commentary when watching the game for ourselves. There is the person with the grand view of the game called color commentary and then there is the one who is calling out exactly what is going on called play by play. The color commentary often add to what we are seeing such as strategy or background information on the players. The play by play commentator tends to just tell us what is going on. I suppose this is necessary because in this age of incredibly short attention spans we tend to be doing other things while the game is on. Alternatively, the broadcasting network just thinks the sports fan might not know what they are watching. (I appreciate this assumption when watching a sport for the first time.)
There is an interesting phenomenon that happens in some sports. Spectators attending the event in person can purchase an additional device so they don’t have to miss the commentary. Back in the day we might bring a radio with us so we can listen to the game while we watched in person. This added a level of engagement. The opposite is of course watching at home and turning off the announcers altogether. There is the real sports connoisseur who will watch the game on television and tune into the radio broadcast of the people they enjoy listening to, thereby creating a fusion. A generation ago we sat around the radio and listened to the game and imagined what it felt like to be at the Polo Grounds in NY. Or we imagined what the Green Monster looked like at Fenway. Those where the days when athletes got nicknames that described who they were, Pistol Pete for Pete Rose and La Grande Orange for Rusty Staub or Mean Joe Green, you can figure out who that was. Those were the days when the announcer added to the sport not became the sport themselves. (See comments this week by Aaron Rogers who barked a similar trope this week at ESPN, when he said, “There’s a lot of people talking about the game now,” Rodgers said, via Awful Announcing. “Both non-former players and former players who are trying to stay relevant fame wise. So the takes and the criticism are a lot different than they were maybe in the mid-2000s.”) The great announcer paints a picture and the listener fills in the colors.
Announcers aren’t critics. The sports critic seems to be an oxymoron. The announcer asks, “how did he or she do that?” The critic asks, “what were they thinking? Didn’t they see that was a mistake?” And the lines are beginning to blur. We have the announcers turned correspondents as coaches are interviewed in real time while the game is going on or during a brief pause in the action.
Finally there is one last aspect of this discussion that requires attention and that is language in general. In 1982 a man named Willian Safire had a column in the New York Times that focussed on the origin of certain words or phrases. This column on the etymology of language was incredibly insightful. For example he explained that the idea that “the whole nine yards” has nothing to do with football (anyone could figure it out by logical reasoning but who has the time or energy to do that). Who could forget the certain announcers catch phrases such as Warner Wolf’s “let’s go to the video tape” or Walt Frazier, one of the great centers of all time coined the phrase “posting and toasting.” Or Dave Niehaus’ “Get out the rye bread and mustard, grandma, it is grand salami time!” Of course you can’t forget the World Cup announcer Adres Cantor who just said, “Goooooooooooooooooooal.” Or Keith Olbermann who said, “I can’t read his lips, but he is not praying.” And of course, the greatest announcer of all time Howard Cosell, who basically summed up this entire entry by saying, “I’m just telling it like it is.” (For more great lines click here).
Today, whether it be the play by play or color announcers or the analysts whether former pros or just wanna be’s, the degradation of language is clear. Encouraged by a generation of memes, emoji’s and abbreviations, announcers are adding less and less. Language in the arena of sport can elevate. In the same way there is great literature and trashy literature, the market will demand one or the other. When an announcer instead of speaking about the physical stature of an athlete says they weigh a buck ninety, I find myself turning off the sound. When the announcer instead of referring to a foul on the play as tossing a flag says here comes more laundry, I turn down the volume while I watch so I enjoy the competition.
The ability to describe what is going on to those who are already watching can seem redundant until you realize that when language is wedded to action it can cause the heart to race even faster.