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Chicago fans get what teams pay for in the broadcast booth
Ted Cox TV/radio columnist
Posted Friday, November 18, 2005
I was driving home from Bloomington-Normal after visiting my folks last weekend, listening to the Bears on WBBM 780-AM and thinking of how much I missed Wayne Larrivee.
That made me think of how much I’m going to miss John Rooney on White Sox radio broadcasts, which in turn made me think of how much I still miss Jim Durham on Bulls broadcasts.
Anybody notice a trend here?
Not to sound like the media-critic equivalent of Joe Morgan — insisting how everything was better back in my day — but I detect a general and across-the-board decline in the quality of our sports play-by-play announcers in this town. And it’s no mere coincidence.
I’ve given a pass to Jeff Joniak over the years. I’m sure he’s a good guy, and it’s evident he works hard and puts in a lot of time doing the Bears. Yet the time has come to simply state that he’s no Larrivee — he doesn’t have the heft and authority Larrivee had (and has) — and one notices it more when the Bears are good and worth shouting about than when they’re not.
As for Tom Thayer, he doesn’t begin to make up the difference. Between the two of them, they’re nice, intelligent guys with high-pitched voices, and it just doesn’t sound the way a Bears game should. The three-man crew of Larrivee, analyst Hub Arkush and aural barometer Dick Butkus defined the way the Bears should sound. For that matter — and I never thought I’d say this, much less write it with time to consider it — but Joniak and Thayer miss Arkush. In any case, something is missing.
If memory serves, when Larrivee left, it was simply for the prestige of doing Green Bay Packers games. Hard as that is for Bear fans to swallow, it’s a defensible career choice, and I don’t believe money played a great part in it.
Yet otherwise Chicago’s sports franchise seem to be conspiring to try to keep announcer salaries low, and it shows in the broadcasts fans get.
After leaving the Sox at the end of their championship season, Rooney signed this week with the St. Louis Cardinals, reportedly for twice what the Sox and WSCR 670-AM had offered him. The Cards also bought out the last year of announcer Wayne Hagin’s contract, so they paid double for the man they wanted.
“We wanted John here. We made him an offer. We made what we thought was a fair offer,” said Score program director Mitch Rosen. “We wanted to go into the next season with John Rooney. He didn’t accept our offer.”
In a strange parallel, Durham and the Bulls couldn’t come to terms after the Bulls’ first NBA championship. I’ve gotten used to Neil Funk, who has put his own nasal stamp on the team’s broadcasts, but I’d still have to insist that he’s no Durham.
For that matter, it’s worth remembering the Cubs, too, lost their TV play-by-play man a year ago when they low-balled him on a salary offer, so Chip Caray went off to greener monetary pastures with the Atlanta Braves. Len Kasper has the potential to be better than his predecessor — he’s the only one of the current play-by-play guys I’ve named here who can say that — but he’s still a work in progress. And he doesn’t begin to make up for the team’s loss of Steve Stone for Bob Brenly, who as much as he improved over the course of last season still was a step down in quality.
Getting back to the Sox, the plan is to move Ed Farmer to play-by-play when the games go to the Score next season.
“Give Ed a chance,” Rosen said. “He’s been doing three, four innings a game (of play-by-play) the last eight years. You’ll see a personality come out in Ed you’ve never seen before. So we’re excited that he’s doing the play-by-play, and we’re going to find a great analyst.”
To be sure, Farmer did seem much more animated than usual doing off-the-cuff appearances on both the Score and WMVP 1000-AM during the Sox’ World Series run. But I find it hard to believe he’s been hiding his light under a bushel basket all these years with Rooney. We’ll see how he fares with whoever emerges to claim the job, with the most prominent names being ex-Sox Steve Lyons, Bill Melton, Ron Kittle, John Cangelosi, Lyle Mouton and, yes, Mike North. (Look for a decision in the next month.) Yet, aside from longshot North and Lyons, who would probably demand a nice chunk of change to leave or augment his Fox Sports work, none would figure to command big bucks, so it looks as if however it shakes out the Sox will be saving money in the booth next season.
That’s the way of the world right now, but it doesn’t make it any easier for a Chicago sports fan to accept that Wayne Larrivee is doing Packers games and John Rooney will be doing Cardinals games next year.
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