The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Boston Sports Media

Best Radio Play by Play (Red Sox): Joe Castiglione

Love Joe Castig and Love Sean Grande (Celtics). This one was too close to call so we split the award. The two are both professional with Joe being the voice of experience and Grande representing the new regime of sorts.

Castig is a seasoned pro whose radio voice is calming and soothing to the often whigged out Red Sox listeners. Castiglione was a Yankee fan as a kid and this almost cost him the award here. He said in his autobiography that he then closely followed the Pirtates becasue the were the closest to Youngstown and became in Indian fan after moving to Cleveland.

Not only did Castig make that famous call when the Sox won in 2004 but he is also the Geography King. Seems to know the home town of every MLB player this side of Tokyo.

Best Radio Play-by-Play (Celtics): Sean Grande

Grande is in his seventh season as the radio play-by-play voice of the Boston Celtics working along side Cedric Maxwell.

Prior to taking the job in 2001, he was mostly known among New England sports fans as the “Flashboy” on The Big Show on WEEI He was also the program director at WEEI for three years. Grande is knowledgeable and consistent and is a good straight man for Maxwell.

The duo is known as “Grande and Max.” As of the end of the 2007-2008 season, only the legendary Johnny Most and current television voice Mike Gorman have called more Celtics games than Grande.

Best TV Color: Jerry Remy

Jerry Remy is the God of color commentating. He has been working in broadcasting since 1988 and as the Red Sox color commentator since 2000. He laughs at himself and has no bones about poking fun at his perceived baseball inabilites. He promotes himself endlessly and is the first president of Red Sox nation.

Remy's hot dog stand, RemDawg's, is open outside of Fenway. He also runs a web site, called the Remy Report and is the author of children's books Hello Wally and Wally the Green Monster and his Journey Through Red Sox Nation! and his air guitar bit is legendary.

Best TV Play-by-Play: Don Orsillo

The consummate professional, even when he cracks up to Remy's antics. The pride of Melrose Ma spends much of his time laughing at RemDawg when he is not announcing top notch Red Sox.

He has been NESN's play-by-play man since the beginning of the 2001 (a no-hitter thrown by then Red Sox pitcher Hideo Nomo in his first game). He also called Cal Ripken Jr's final game, as well as the no-hitters thrown by young Sox pitchers Clay Bucholz and Jon Lester

He is sometimes referred to by fans as "announcer boy," after he was given that nickname by Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield in a NESN commercial. In addition to his Red Sox duties, Orsillo has called the Beanpot hockey tournanment and Boston College.

Best Sideline Announcer-Naoko Funayama

Certainly not as pleasing to the eyes as Tina Cervasio, Hazel Mae or Kathryn Tappen were, but if this is about beauty then Dan Shaughnessy is in trouble.

A graduate of Williams College and BU College of Communications, she joined NESN as a freelance feature reporter in April 2007. In her first year with NESN, she covered Red Sox pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima. Funayama caught the eye of NESN after she helped Matsuzaka's strugling translator during Matsuzaka's introductory press conference. Funayama joined NESN full-time in August 2008 as the Bruins in-game reporter and host of "The Buzz," a Bruins countdown show.

Best Post- and Pre-game Analyist: Dennis Eckersley

No one closes it out like Eck. Rice and Donye Marshall are good for the Sox and Celts and David McCarty was my personal favorite but Eck is in a league of his own. Plus the ladies say he is still "one fine piece of eye candy."

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