ESPN Has No Business Covering Baseball Games

Painful, agonizing, boring, unwatchable; all adjectives I would choose to describe the Early innings of last nights ESPN broadcast of the Yankees vs Redsox. This comes from a die hard fan of not only the Yankees but the sport of baseball itself.

I have never been a fan of ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. My frustration yesterday did not come from Jon Millers lack of knowledge (although it was a slight annoyance). It didn't even come from Joe Morgan's inability to talk about a game without making endless references to his own career or how the game was better in the 1800's when he played (it happened).

These were all minor annoyances I'm willing to put up with to see the Yankees on national television rather than MLB.tv on my tiny computer screen.

Sunday's presentation brought bad broadcasting to a whole different level.

ESPN is known to shift the camera to people in the dugouts or bullpen or other people off the field quite frequently. It gets annoying. Sunday ESPN decided to plug its new made-for-tv movie "Lost Son of Havana." From the bottom of the second, until the end of the third innings they brought Luis Tiant into the booth to discuss the movie.

Discuss the movie and Tiant's career was all that occurred for an inning and a half. In case you didn't know, Tiant's English is not very clear. This meant watching the game meant listening to Tiant rambling in broken-English for what felt like forever.

Apparently only hearing this conversation was not enough. The camera switched to the broadcast booth after EVERY PITCH!

During this time, the Yanks v Sox game was almost entirely ignored. The game on the screen appeared to be more of a side note to old men unintelligibly reminiscing about a time long since past.

I'm sure Tiant's story was compelling. I also think shameless plugs like this ruin baseball games.

As for me, this was the first time I ever turned off a Yanks v Sox game. I tuned back in during the bottom of the eighth when they seemed to care what was happening on the field.

Well my rant is done, just thought I'd share my frustration on the off chance that someone else feels the same way