When Dennis Eckersley is doing color for a Red Sox game, I always leave it on. When Jerry Remy is in the booth? I usually end up switching it off.
Last year, as the Red Sox organization was covering itself with glory with one bone-headed decision after another, team chairman Tom Werner decided that the broadcast booth needed to be re-energized. (NYT 9.5.15) Couldn’t agree more! But then management replaced play-by-play announcer Don Orsillo, while sticking with the lumpen and grating Jerry Remy for “color.”
In baseball, the people calling the game really matter. Unlike other sports there’s lots of empty time to fill in — just in the normal course of the game, never mind the rain delays — and Remy just babbles on and on about his hotel room . . . or his ride to the stadium . . or who Wally the Mascot is dating. Dennis Eckersley is a much more interesting person, and genuinely funny. (Tons of anecdotes from a very colorful past.)
Happily, Eck will be in the booth again tomorrow at the Patriots Day game starting at 11am; pregame ceremony at 10:30am.
N.B. Movie people have recently started filming “Patriots Day,” a movie about the marathon bombing, in and around the Boston area, and will be participating in the morning’s events.
Jeff Bauman and his silver-screen counterpart will throw out the ceremonial first pitch before Monday’s Boston Red Sox-Toronto Blue Jays game at Fenway Park, the Red Sox announced Friday. Bauman, who lost both of his legs in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and later helped authorities identify those responsible, will be joined on the mound by actor Jake Gyllenhaal as Boston commemorates the third anniversary of the attack.
[Clarification: It seems there are two marathon bombing movies being filmed. The Gyllenhaal project is called “Stronger.”