A LOOK AHEAD
Here’s why your sports-viewing experience may soon change forever
Jan 27, 2022, 1:10 pm
On the road again? Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images.
3 jump-out-the-gym reasons you should be watching the young gun Rockets
ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports broadcasting, will not send reporters to Beijing to cover next month’s Winter Olympics, the most worldly of sports events.
Reason: Covid 19, plus China’s no-nonsense restrictions on people who test positive, possibly with a splash of reaction to China’s human rights policies.
Announcers covering far flung sports events from studios back home is nothing new, however. Just the reasons have changed.
In the early days of sports broadcasting, technological limitations kept announcers at home while teams hit the road. Remote coverage of TV sports is gaining popularity again, not necessarily with announcers and fans, but definitely with bottom line accountants. It’s simply cheaper for announcers to sit in a hometown studio and describe the action by watching a TV. Plus teams are keeping announcers off the road as a Covid safety measure.
While on the surface, it’s easy to dismiss remote coverage of sports as a lesser experience for viewers, there are advantages (at least minimal disadvantages) to having announcers cover games off a TV feed.
In most football stadiums, including NRG Stadium in Houston, announcers are sitting way way upstairs on the nosebleed level. They’re mostly watching the game on a press box TV, anyway. They may as well be in a studio, watching a wall of TVs showing 20 different angles of every play.
It’s not like today’s announcers hang out with players during road trips gaining insight to teams. Those days of announcers and journalists playing footsie, sharing confidences and covering for each other’s (ahem) indiscretions are long over.
I once asked a veteran play-by-play announcer for one of Houston’s major pro sports teams, “What’s (the star of the team) like on road trips?” He answered, “I have never said one word to him. The broadcast team and the players travel on the same plane, stay in the same hotel, but that’s the extent of our connection. We don’t mingle, it’s just not done.”
ESPN announcers have been calling college basketball games, especially those involving smaller schools, from studios in Bristol Connecticut for the past decade. Who knew? If the announcer is talented, fans watching on TV can’t tell the difference.
Rockets play-by-play announcer Craig Ackerman is talented. I told a friend, a big Rockets fan, that I was writing about many sports announcers doing games remotely and mentioned that Ackerman is broadcasting Rockets road contests from a studio in Houston. My friend was surprised. Points, Ackerman.
After starting the 2021-22 season traveling with the Rockets, Ackerman and color analyst Ryan Hollins were pulled off the road on January 1 due to the Omicron surge.
“It’s obviously doable, but ultimately less than ideal,” Ackerman said. “ I'll start by saying the positive about working remotely and not traveling is you can avoid the constant packing, unpacking and time spent on an airplane. With the various COVID restrictions, what you also gain by not traveling is not getting stuck on the road if you test positive.”
Ackerman would prefer to be on the road again, though.
“What you miss is being immersed in the atmosphere of the game and feeding off the energy of the crowd. Being a part of the game is vitally important to accurately conveying the tone of that game. What you also miss are some of the nuances of what is taking place off camera. When you are calling a game off a monitor you are at the mercy of what is being shown to you on your screen which is often the same thing that the viewers are seeing. You miss some substitutions, coaches and players' reactions to plays and officials decisions.”
But admittedly,
“When circumstances are typical and normal there's not much of a difference for the viewer or for us for that matter,” Ackerman said.
What does this say about the future of sports broadcasting? Like a bridge that keeps charging tolls long after the bridge is paid off, expect some sports networks, facing rising costs, employee cutbacks and inflation, to keep their announcers at home after the Covid threat lessens.
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While holding one’s breath that for a change the Astros aren’t publicly grossly underestimating an injury’s severity with Jose Altuve having missed the last game and a half with “right side discomfort…”
The Astros averting a sweep vs. Oakland Thursday was in no way a must-win, but getting the win allowed a mini sigh of relief. The Astros are NOT in the process of choking. Could they collapse? Sure that’s possible. Also possible is that they’ve just been in one more ebb phase in a season of ebb and flow. They certainly have left the door ajar for the Seattle Mariners to swipe the American League West, but with the M's simply not looking good enough to walk through that door the Astros remain in commanding position. The Astros made a spectacular charge from 10 games behind to grab the division lead. But there was a lot of runway left when the Astros awoke June 19th 10 games in arrears. September 3 the Astros arose with a comfy six game lead over the M’s. With Seattle blowing a 4-1 eighth inning lead in a 5-4 loss to the Texas Rangers Thursday night, heading into Friday night the Astros' advantage is back up to four and a half games despite the Astros having lost six of their last nine games and having gone just 10-12 over their last 22 games. Not a good stretch but nothing freefalling about it.
While the Mariners have the remainder of their four-game series vs. the dead in the water Rangers this weekend, the Astros play three at the lousy Los Angeles Angels. The Astros should take advantage of the Halos, with whom they also have a four-game series at Minute Maid Park next weekend. Since the All-Star break, only the White Sox have a worse record than the Angels 19-31 mark (the White Sox are 6-43 post-break!). Two of the three starting pitchers the Angels will throw this weekend will be making their third big league starts. To begin next week the Astros are in San Diego for a three-game-set against a Padres club which is flat better than the Astros right now. That does not mean the Astros can’t take that series. The Mariners meanwhile will be still at home, for three vs. the Yankees.
There are some brutal Astros’ statistics that largely explain why this is merely a pretty good team and not more. As I have noted before, it is a fallacy that the best teams are usually superior in close games. But the Astros have been pathetic in close games. There used to be a joke made about Sammy Sosa that he could blow you out, but he couldn’t beat you. Meaning being that when the score was 6-1, 8-3 or the like Sammy would pad his stats with home runs and runs batted in galore. But in a tight game, don’t count on Sammy to come through very often. In one-run games the Astros are 15-26, in two-run games they are 10-14. In games that were tied after seven innings they are 3-12. In extra innings they are 5-10. The good news is, all those realities mean nothing when the postseason starts. So long as you’re in the postseason. In games decided by three or more runs the Astros have pummeled the opposition to the tune of 53 wins and 28 losses.
General Manager Dana Brown isn’t an Executive of the Year candidate, but overall he’s been fine this season. Without the Yusei Kikuchi trade deadline acquisition the Astros would likely barely lead the AL West. Brown’s biggest offseason get, Victor Caratini, has done very solid work in his part-time role. Though he has tapered off notably the last month and change, relief pitcher Tayler Scott was a fabulous signing. Scrap heap pickups Ben Gamel, Jason Heyward, and Kaleb Ort have all made contributions. However…
Dana. Dana! You made yourself look very silly with comments this week somewhat scoffing at people being concerned with or dismissive of Justin Verlander’s ability to be a meaningful playoff contributor. Brown re-sang a ridiculous past tune, the “check the back of his baseball card” baloney. Dana, did you mean like the back of Jose Abreu’s baseball card? Perhaps Brown has never seen those brokerage ads in which at the end in fine print and/or in rapidly spoken words “past performance is no guarantee of future results” always must be included. Past (overall career) performance as indicative of future results for a 41-year-old pitcher who has frequently looked terrible and has twice missed chunks of this season to two different injuries is absurd. That Verlander could find it in time is plausible. That of course he’ll find it? Absolutely not. His next two starts are slotted to be against the feeble Angels, so even if the results are better, it won’t mean “JV IS BACK!”
Presuming they hold on to win the division, the Astros’ recent sub-middling play means they have only very faint hope of avoiding having to play the best-of-three Wild Card Series. Barring a dramatic turn over the regular season’s final fortnight, Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown are the obvious choices to start games one and two. If there is a game three, it is one game do or die. Only a fool would think Verlander the right man for that assignment. No one should expect Brown to say “Yeah, JV is likely finished as a frontline starter.” But going to the “back of the baseball card” line was laughable. Father Time gets us all eventually. Verlander has an uphill climb extricating himself from Father Time’s grasp.
*Catch our weekly Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast. Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and I discuss varied Astros topics. The first post for the week generally goes up Monday afternoon (second part released Tuesday) via The SportsMap HOU YouTube channel or listen to episodes in their entirety at Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.