While leading my brother and his family to the entrance ramp to 287, I was listening to the Yankees game on 880 WCBS (versus XM Radio), and the Yankees' announcers, Jon Sterling and Suzyn Waldman were going over the out-of-town boxscores (a very favorite part of the radio broadcast leftover from the pre-internet days.)
Suzyn came to the Mets/Pirates score and said the Pirates were starting a pitcher she had never, ever heard of - Tom Gorzelanny.
And I thought, "How can she not know who the top prospects are for each team?"
This is something that bothers the Hell out of me. (If not for my constant replenishment of it, I'd have been cannonized a long time ago!)
These people's jobs are baseball. It takes very little effort and intelligence to read a magazine called Baseball America on the plane flights or car rides. Never mind the minimal increase need to type in a website address.
Over and over again, I am stunned how little baseball announcers know about minor league players.
Then I remembered, in fact, baseball knowledge is not a requirement of their positions. It only seems like it should be.
What is neeeded is the ability to blissfully parrot the company line which brings me to another complaint about baseball announcers.
While ironing my shirt last night, I turned on 660 WFAN to hear Ron Darling comment on Aaron Heilman's recent struggles.
Less than confidently (his regular tone), Darling said Heilman's struggles may be due to the disappointment of seeing the Mets parade all the shitty (my word) AAAA starters to the mound while ignoring him. He said that maybe Heilman felt he would have gotten a chance at sometime during the season.
I thought, "Right on!"
And his counterpart immediately proferred that Heilman needs a third pitch, which served the purpose of defending Mets' management's decisions.
An intelligent rejoinder would then have been that Jose Lima doesn't have one pitch. Much less two. Much less three.