Kevin Vranes has a phud in Physical Ocean- ography and Cli- matology. He now studies sci- ence policy and politics at the You guys are killing it. You really are. You have hired one of the best announcers around in Joe Buck (although Jon Miller would have been the better choice, of course), but your camera work is absolutely atrocious. Who decided that close-up after close-up after close-up after close-up was a good idea? Who decided that baseball is really a game of the smallest possible visible window, not the biggest?
Whoever made the decision to zoom closer and ever closer into the field instead of taking longer views of the action I'm guessing has never been to a game. Think about what you do when you see a game in person. You look around. You take in the whole stadium, the whole field. You notice where the second baseman is positioned, you look down the third base line. You see how the second baseman teases the runner on second. You watch how the infielders shift together. When the pitcher delivers, you see the entire infield at once.
Here's how you do not watch a game in person:
Binoculars glued to your eyes 95% of the game. Look at the pitcher's face. Quickly switch to the manager in the dugout. Now the first baseman. Now the first base umpire. Next some random dweeb in the stands. Make sure you only can see the head from chin to top of hat and nothing else -- the entire head must fill your frame of view. Ok, pitcher is getting ready, pan to the smallest possible frame that will capture the battery. Foul ball? Go to close-up replay of batter swinging, showing only the batter from waist to top of helmet. Ok, now show a close-up of the catcher walking somewhere (but make sure you don't show where he's walking -- get close, closer....not close enough. Ok, there, now you definitely can't tell where he's walking or why.)
You guys are seriously ruining the experience. Infield at double-play depth? How the hell would I know? Left fielder shifted ten steps to center? How the hell would I know? And why would I care? I mean, what I really want to see is how many zits the pitcher has under the left side of his jaw two inches behind his chin. You haven't showed the pitcher's nose and eyes enough -- quick, get closer!
Hey! Julio Franco is up. Why don't you show him batting live from a side view so all we can see is the batter, and if he does hit the ball we'll have absolutely no idea where or how hard he hit it. Great idea! Here's an even better idea. Jose Reyes, the Mets' speedy speedster just got to first and he might run. You better show only his body prancing around just so we can't see what the pitcher is doing and how Reyes is reacting to him. We wouldn't want that!
See Fox, what you're doing is giving us less information, not more. A good 90% of your coverage is so zoomed in as to have no informative value. Seeing the pitcher's face between pitches tells us nothing about the game. Show us the infield! Show us how all the infielders are reacting as a group to their pitcher's game. Show us whether the outfielders look ready or bored. That's what you should be doing between pitches, not filling my TV screen entirely with the same face you show every five seconds. I don't care what focus-group research or canvassing told you this kind of camera work was a good idea. It's not! You're not making the game better by increasing the emotion factor, you're making the game worse by keeping valuable information from real fans.
Here's a great example. Top of the 9th, game 2 in the NLCS. Pujols just pulled a line drive near the left field line. Even though Pujols is slower than George Bush trying to understand a national intelligence report, Pujols made second base. How'd he do it? Well, as your announcers explained, he made such a wide turn at first, he had a chance to gauge the left fielder's throw back in. You'd think we'd also be able to see that at home but we can't. Not even after three replays from three different angles. Why? Because you don't have a wide enough view. You only have close-ups on every angle. We can't see Pujols rounding first while Chavez is closing in on the ball and firing back in. Oh well, at least now that Billy Wagner is getting absolutely shelled (hmmm...Mets postseason closers? Not so good. see: Benitez, Armando ... and, uh, Billy? you just gave up a 0-2 dong to a 130-pound Japanese teenager that had all of one postseason at bat before facing your 100-mpg closer heat) I can see all the emotion on his face in close-up closeness. Thanks for that!
Fox, please stop before it's too late!! You are really killing baseball for me.
Comments
# 1 | Malcolm Tredinnick | October 14, 2006 12:11 AM
Not a huge baseball fan (nor a US resident), but I can appreciate your description. Sounds like it would ruin the game.
Still, the whole thing sounds like a metaphor for the Fox network and shows admirable consistency on their part. Don't put things into perspective; fail to look at the big picture; don't show the sources or raw information, but instead expect the viewer to sit quietly whilst the Fox experts whisper their version of truth into your ear.
# 2 | Karl | October 14, 2006 12:26 AM
I have another reaction on a different aspect of the tv coverage. I don't know if this is some kind of discrimination on the part of the producer or a real reflection of the situation. They show a lot of crowd shots, some wide angle and a lot of closeups. I watched carefully for about the last hour of the game. I saw no (none, zero, nada) non-white people. Is a New York crowd that highly skewed, or is it the coverage that is skewed?
# 3 | JYB | October 14, 2006 1:25 AM
I agree with your comments, except for Joe Buck.
Can't stand the guy, but I understand that announcers are a very personal preference. The first word I'd use to describe him would be "smug."
# 4 | James Annan | October 14, 2006 1:29 AM
Can baseball be ruined?
[GD&R]
# 5 | Gabe | October 14, 2006 2:19 AM
Remember, TV is your problem. Throw it away.
# 6 | Chris | October 14, 2006 2:44 AM
I have nothing to add, except an "Amen".
# 7 | Zeno | October 14, 2006 8:47 AM
Don't like Fox. Don't like baseball (or any sport, for that matter). Now two of my dislikes have conveniently come together.
Is it possible that the Fox guys in charge of baseball aren't fans either? That would be one explanation for how they seem to be screwing up their coverage.
# 8 | Dave Gill | October 14, 2006 8:57 AM
Agreed, I hate baseball on Fox - and avoid it all year until I have no choice in October. (Obviously I have a choice - turn it off.. )
My other red wagon? For us in the east, games that don't start til almost 8:30 and have long commercial breaks mean that I go to bed in about the 5th inning. (I get up at 5:30 usually). And they wonder why the kids today don't like baseball - they never really get the chance to watch exciting October games.
DPG
# 9 | RPM | October 14, 2006 9:16 AM
You have hired one of the best announcers around in Joe Buck (although Jon Miller would have been the better choice, of course), but your camera work is absolutely atrocious.
JYB said it: smug. Joe Buck is a closet psychopath.
Jon Miller would be doing it if ESPN had the rights. And so would Joe Morgan. And if Joe Morgan were doing the color, we would all drop 15 IQ points. Joe Morgan is the personification of stupid. He openly admits that he doesn't watch baseball, knows very little about baseball, and doesn't trust people who know about baseball.
Let's just say it, the world would be 1000x better if Vin Scully was in the booth for every single baseball game.
# 10 | PhysioProf | October 14, 2006 11:08 AM
Buck is very annoying, like a smarmy weatherman. Jon Miller has an amazing voice.
# 11 | Scott Simmons | October 14, 2006 11:43 AM
You know, I always wondered why I couldn't stand watching televised baseball. Like listening to games on the radio. Love watching live and in person. TV broadcasts mostly just annoy me ... The things you're complaining about really are the problem. And every network does it, if not as much as Fox (I haven't seen any of Fox's games, I don't think, so it's hard for me to compare). It's just the difference between 'awful' and 'horrendous'.
If football broadcasts spent most of each play focused down on individual players, televised football would suck too.
# 12 | John Fleck | October 14, 2006 1:08 PM
You're not the target audience, Kevin. Most viewers aren't going to pick up on the fact that the left fielder is shifted ten steps to center. So the wide angle shot may help you, but it's lost on the larger audience. By definition they've gotta cater to that larger audience, especially this time of year.
# 13 | Matt | October 14, 2006 1:18 PM
I agree - the lack of a whole-field perspective is the major problem with televised baseball. I might add one further example of where I miss it - watching the outfielders track balls. If you have a close-up tracking of the outfielder you can't see where he started from, what kind of a jump he got, his angle at the ball,etc.
I think that one reason Fox "dumbs down" its coverage is that it thinks that emotion (head shots,etc.) and useless information (hitter A is 1-15 against pitcher B when the moon is new) will capture the interest of the casual fan and viewer. Espn and ABC had the same problem in their coverage of the recent World Cup. They used graphics with meaningless statistics and announcers with no soccer broadcast experience to try to appeal to the casual viewers.
# 14 | kevin v | October 14, 2006 5:03 PM
RPM - you fully anticipated something I had put next to the Jon Miller comment and then taken out because it was bulky. ESPN somehow pairs the best or second-best announcer in baseball (Scully being the other) with hands-down the worst color guy. Morgan is my personal nightmare. How he got picked up nationally is beyond me. Miller + Morgan = average, because Miller is so damn good and Morgan so horribly awful. (Lucky for me, Miller's "home" team when he isn't doing national is the Giants, so I get to hear him a lot.)
John F - you're right, of course, but I wish Fox would explain to me how their coverage serves their target audience better than how I would like it.
# 15 | kevin v | October 14, 2006 5:23 PM
yea James, I feel the same way about cricket. but you're in Japan now -- get local, boy! love the game!
# 16 | James Annan | October 14, 2006 5:54 PM
There's local and there's local :-)
# 17 | kevin v | October 14, 2006 6:48 PM
hey, don't think i didn't see that post when it came out. but isn't some U.S. citizen Hawaiian guy ripping up the Japanese sumo scene right now? http://tokyonewsline.com/entertainmentline/konishiki.html
# 18 | James Annan | October 14, 2006 6:53 PM
He retired a few years ago. Many of the top wrestlers are Mongolian and East European (including the current Yokozuna, Asashoryu). The authorities are (planning on?) bringing in some rules to limit foreigners.
# 19 | kevin v | October 14, 2006 11:36 PM
wow. yea, maybe the U.S. Congress can pass some laws restricting baseball to only whites who can prove to have at least a four-generation U.S.-born lineage. sure, the quality of baseball will plummet, but we've got traditions to uphold!
by the way, in the truly bizarre, Fox gets hyper politically correct:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2006/news/story?id=2625
is the sports department overcorrecting for their news opinion division?
# 20 | Miguel Del Norte | October 16, 2006 7:45 PM
Hear Hear! Couldn't agree more...and don't even get me started on McCarver....I always thought, in this big-bandwidth day and age, that MLB could afford to run a second feed on an alternate channel (FOX has F/X, for example) that was just a long-shot lock-off of the field. Sort of like ESPN Gamecast, but with live video. We can dream, I guess....
# 21 | John E | October 16, 2006 8:12 PM
Spot on! Yes! You can't see the whole field. Anyone who doesn't like baseball just doesn't understand the 10,000 things going on on each and every pitch. Jon Miller also calls the Giants games on radio and he is terrific; delightful sense of humor. I disagree on Morgan, he is bright and interesting. Thank gawd Lyons the Moron is out. Talk about stoopid. Only a baseball fan would understand -- where are they playing this guy to hit? are they guarding the corners? I think Pinella added some insights to what managers wanted to do but overall, Fox is dismal indeed.
# 22 | BAV | October 16, 2006 10:48 PM
Absolutely....what you said! Ah, #5 writer of article doesn't own a TV. But really loves baseball. Goes to sports bars to see it. #12 must work for media people. Target audiences, indeed. Baseball fans watch.
# 23 | Olaf | October 17, 2006 1:36 AM
Right on the money. And the mindless close ups are not unique to FOX's baseball coverage. They do the same thing to football.
And the announcers. Oh god. They have one of the worst tv football announcers, Tony Siragusa. What a schmuck. He must have the goods on some executive because he was demoted him from the being up in the box. Didn't use him at all for a while. And now he is turning up on the sideline, prying into the details of on the field casulties and all things morbid and critical.
Dr. Z from Sports Illustrated (a football writer) has taken up the points of this blog (in reference to football) in his column and with the actual directors of sports presentations. He says that they consistently tell him that he doesn't understand television and to mind his business.
So what option does that leave? Boycott? Maybe. Highly Acidic public blog flogging? Might as well. Or maybe we gets some guys from the neighborhood and go over and reason with those fellows after hours. You know, Soprano-style.
# 24 | Gamesix | October 17, 2006 10:57 AM
Who the hell offered up Vin Scully for an alternative? Why not just grab the first short-term amnesia patient you find off the street and have him to do games? I do not question what he's meant to the game, but good lord, that was (literally) 50 years ago. His stories are on repeat from the early 1900s and he's been mailing it in since Buckner. Come on now. Scully?
# 25 | susan | October 25, 2006 12:18 PM
i thought of you last night when they zoomed in for a really really close shot of not just the score board - but the numeral one. i never thought about it, but maybe the reason i prefer to listen to tiger baseball on the radio instead of tv is the announcers allow the game come alive in my mind
# 26 | J-Dog | October 27, 2006 2:27 PM
We could pay of the National Debt if everyone that wanted to was allowed to take a Louisville Slugger to Joe Morgan and ponied up a dollar for the privilege. I will never forgive him for his blatant Ryno hating.(Ryno = Ryne Sandberg, the Hall Of Fame 2nd baseman for the Chicago Cubs. Ryno played 2nd, as did Morgan, but was a better lifetime hiter, and fielder than Morgan, and Morgan lobbied against Ryno getting to the HOF every chance he could.)
Fox broadcasts? - They SUCK. The earlier respondent suggested they must hate baseball, and he could be correct, they do everything they can to ruin it. To properly watch a baseball game, you MUST be able to see the entire field. Period, end of story. Maybe they can get "Scooter" to demonstrate what a fastball to the forehead would do to the Fox baseball executive in chage of production.
# 27 | jim coyne | November 29, 2006 8:36 PM
I couldn't agree more about the intense closeups. I've been watching baseball on TV since 1950. Back then, the camera (the only camera) sat behind home plate and provided the coverage for the entire field. At that time I longed for another camera or two to breakup the monotony.
When it came, it quickly became as boring as before, in that the added camera was in center field, so we had funnel-vison from both ends. And that remained the basic staple provided the viewer through most of the sixties. Then came zoom lenses, and slo-motion lenses, and a major shift in overall coverage. But with all these innovative changes, it is exceedingly rare that the camera provides a view from say, the first base, or third base stands while the ball is in play. And why not? It's the way millions of fans actually see the game played. With all the cameras now being used it would be most refreshing to see some of the nuances of the game that tv viewers never get to see. But I must admit, that incessive shot of Andy Pettite's eyes upclose must wow the ladies.