Be Thankful for Our Broadcasters

I know that we rip on the snooze quality of Wayne Hagin's WFAN broadcasts, but honestly we have some of the best broadcasting teams working for the Mets. Over the weekend I was down at the Jersey shore and listened to parts of the Mets games via XM radio which forces you to listen to the home team's broadcast.

The Reds radio announcers are possibly some of the worst in the business. First off they alternate between two one man teams. So there's no banter, no commentary, just one guy making the calls. There were at least a dozen times I thought XM lost its signal on because there was nothing but dead air coming through the speakers for 30 seconds at a time. All this on top of the fact that you couldn't tell if a guy just hit a home run or into fielder's choice because the inflexion in the announcer's voice was the same for 9 straight painful innings.

Now Hagin is easily the weaker broadcaster on the radio, but the Reds guys make Hagin look like the Vin Scully of radio.

Of course, our SNY team of Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling are a Mets Lifer's dream broadcasting team, but even industry people applaud the way they call a game. Their unbiased and unabased in their commentary and that's what makes them great.

Even Kevin Burkhardt is a great asset to the SNY team. For a young sideline reporter he asks tough questions in the post game interviews and does a great job in the mid-game cutaway segments. Newsday is even following around Kevin to do special piece on him in the upcoming weeks. In fact today our own Kevin Burkhardt speaking at a local sports broadcasting camp run by Bruce Beck and Ian Eagle, talking to kids about the in's and out's of broadcasting. Who knows maybe he's even speaking to one of his future replacements?

So don't take what we have for granted. We easily have the best broadcasting team in New York and I'm sure we outshine much of the other MLB teams as well. Enjoy what we have while it lasts.

And if you're in Cincinnati, don't operate heavy machinery and listen to the Reds game.