Score's best-laid game plan gets tossed around by Stone
WSCR 670-AM had plans to make today's White Sox exhibition game special, and it will be, but the Score's plans have nothing to do with it.
Originally, today's game was supposed to be an experiment in which Ed Farmer and Chris Singleton did play-by-play for three innings, then opened it up in the radio booth to an "interactive" broadcast, basically turning it over to listeners in something closer to the Score's usual sports-talk format.
Today's game will be special indeed when the Sox take on the Colorado Rockies at 1:55 p.m., but not for that reason. Instead, it will be Steve Stone's debut as color analyst alongside Farmer, and they'll do the game straight for all nine innings, because it's one of only two exhibition games they'll get to do this spring as Stone steps in for Singleton as the Sox' regular radio color man.
Previous commitments limit Stone's availability this spring, but even so his addition is great news, and all the Sox fans I know were dancing in the streets like Cubans after Castro when the word broke about him replacing Singleton on Tuesday. Stone is a vastly superior broadcaster, and he should immediately improve the call. But it's not without pitfalls for Stone, Farmer and the broadcast as a whole.
Both are broadcasters of many years' standing, and they would figure to meld without much difficulty. Stone has shown his ability to work with almost anyone after breaking in alongside Harry Caray. Stone proved it again last summer in his glowing stint alongside Ken "Hawk" Harrelson as he filled in briefly for Darrin Jackson on the Sox' TV coverage.
On the other hand, however, Farmer and Stone are both pitchers with much of the same expertise, and their styles are quite a bit different. Vinegar and oil comes quickly to mind, and while that makes for a great salad dressing, baseball isn't known for being a salad-munching experience.
Although Farmer did play-by-play in the middle innings for years alongside John Rooney, this is still only his third year as lead play-by-play guy, and he'll be filling that role for the entire game, instead of switching for the middle frames the way he would have with Singleton.
What's more, Farmer tends to wander off topic, so that the game becomes almost secondary, more than anyone Stone has likely worked with before. (Say this about Harry: When he was spelling players' names backward, at least he was talking about baseball players, not the coach at Notre Dame.) Believe it or not, the Sox have actually encouraged that.
"We want it to be more of a conversation, where you don't have that straight play-by-play man. He's doing what we want him to do," Brooks Boyer, Sox vice president and chief marketing officer, told MLB.com last year. "He does drift. He can talk about St. Rita. He can talk about 'my Irish.' He can talk about golf. Sometimes, these guys can forget to tell you what the score is, and we talk about that. But they aren't under any strict format."
I'd expect Stone to provide a bit more focus, but can he do that without stepping on Farmer's sockless toes? Especially after Boyer himself has acted as enabler?
They'll have only today's game and the Cubs-Sox game on March 15 to work out any kinks before they reunite for the regular season.
Otherwise, the Score will be bringing in various announcers to team with Farmer during spring training, and they'll try that "interactive" game experiment Wednesday at 2:55 p.m., with Farmer doing the first three innings, then welcoming Sox personnel into the booth for three innings before turning it over to Sox studio host Chris Rongey for more listener involvement. Yet with the excitement surrounding Stone's addition, what might have been a bold spring-training experiment will instead be a sideshow.
In the air
Remotely interesting:
How hungry are Chicagoans - and Cub fans especially - for spring? The Cubs' 2008 TV debut on Comcast SportsNet Chicago last Saturday was the top-rated program in its timeslot and set a spring-training exhibition record on CSNC with a 2.0 local Nielsen, good for almost 70,000 households. Sunday's game did almost as well, with a 1.9. The Cubs make their WGN Channel 9 spring debut at 2 p.m. Saturday against the Diamondbacks. … CSNC has Friday's Blackhawk home game in high definition starting with the pre-game ceremony honoring Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita at 7 p.m. … Fox Sports will present a full season of its "Baseball Game of the Week" entirely in HD starting April 5 on WFLD Channel 32.
WPWR Channel 50 airs the boys' 1A and 2A basketball finals this weekend. The 1A semis are at noon Friday, the 2As at 6:30 p.m. Then the 1A consolation and championship games are at 11 a.m. Saturday, followed by the 2As at 6:30 p.m. … Bob Knight joins ESPN as a basketball studio analyst for so-called championship week and the NCAA Tournament starting Wednesday.
End of the dial:
WMVP 1000-AM remained ahead in the all-sports race with a 1.7 percent share of the overall audience 12 and older in monthly Arbitrends released this week, although WSCR 670-AM closed with a 1.6 share.
Christina Kahrl, Nate Silver, Kevin Goldstein and Bryan Smith do a "Baseball Prospectus" book signing at the DePaul Barnes & Noble, 1 E. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.