Grading Remy’s Replacements
After a prolonged hiatus which spanned the majority of the 2009 regular season, iconic color analyst Jerry Remy will return to the booth tomorrow night.
Over the years, Remy has received lots of criticism in certain circles, most of which is aimed at his relentless “Remdawg” brand salesmanship, his interactions with the anthropomorphic “Wally the Green Monster” doll that sits in a small white chair in the broadcast booth, and other such gimmicks and tangents. However, after witnessing the parade of replacement analysts circulated by NESN over the past few months, I think we can all agree at one thing: Remy is decent at what he does, and it’s definitely not an easy job.
So, how have his replacements fared thus far?
Dennis Eckersley
Grade: B
Dennis is one of the more popular personalities in NESN’s pre/post game studio. He’s known as a down-to-earth guy who tells it like is with little regard to politics, and most people, including me, like that about him. However, once he started broadcasting the actual games, we were all a little nervous about the rate at which he was using certain buzzwords , and how that would obviously distract the easily-amused Don Orsillo (note: I like Don, and I’m not using “easily amused” as an insult, like in the Nirvana song. He’s just a jolly guy; nothing wrong with that). However, Eck seems to be uttering “cheese” and “hair” less frequently these days, which is great. He’s new to this gig, and appears to be learning on the job. I hope he’s the guy who fills in for most of Remy’s future absences.
Sean Casey
Grade: C-
I’m going to go easy on Casey, since he cured my leprosy while I was meandering around a Lawrence soup kitchen back in 2006. Casey seems like a smart enough guy, but he’s a little too goofy for media work, I think. He’s like a more intelligent, coherent version of Rex Hudler. Casey is living proof that you can’t just pluck any clean-cut “nice guy” from MLB retirement and drop him in a studio. Maybe, like Eckersley, he can improve, but I think the problem is his voice and his demeanor, which aren’t characteristics that you can change easily.
Frank Viola
Grade: D+
With the thick Northeast accent, the mumbling, the 1987 vintage mustache, and the gold chain, he’s esentially the baseball version of Fred Smerlas. One day, I expect to hear him on The Big Show on WEEI, telling me how J.D. Drew does not have “hot”.
Dave Roberts
Grade: F
Wow. Does he look uncomfortable up there, or what? You want him to do better, but it just seems like this is the last type of career he should pursue. It’s the Sean Casey effect magnified by 10: sometimes being popular isn’t enough to cut it.
Lenny Clarke
Grade: Z
I made up a new grade for Lenny. It’s in a dimension beyond “F”. Lenny is a 350-pound time capsule from the Boston busing crisis era, and damn proud of it. A fat, loud, disgusting, belligerent townie. He laughs extremely hard at his own jokes, and his laughter always stands alone. Lenny is at this best when he is playing himself on shows such as “Rescue Me”, and at his worst on live television, or anywhere else an audience may be present. Really, he doesn’t belong in the same category as the guys listed above, but I wanted to create an opportunity for myself to rant, so there you have it.
I think Boston was hit with a reality check over the past few months. Even if you are of the opinion that Jerry Remy is mediocre at what he does, “mediocre” is difficult to find in a world where Joe Morgan is considered the gold standard.
The Hudler comment is beyond the pale. He has a child with Down’s syndrome for god’s sake.
Awkward. I’ll go ahead and change the wording.
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You left out the only person who, I thought, did a good job: Bob Montgomery. He might have only done one game, but he was there and he was right on form.
I enjoyed The Eck a lot. Of course, I’m somewhat easily amused myself. I think Roberts became a bit more comfortable as things progressed, but he still had an unfortunate tendency to stammer a bit.
Glad to see Remy coming back. I look forward to tonight’s telecast.
What about Dewey?! He sat for a couple games and sounded like a golf announcer…his soothing voice combined with a blowout game literally put me to sleep.
Great job here, especially on how desperately unfunny and obnoxious Lenny Clarke is. Easily the least funny comedian I’ve ever had to endure, and that’s only when he gets invited into broadcast booths. He did some bits during the last Sox World Series that made me want to shoot my TV and then shoot my radio. He creates his own dimension of suck.
I’ve been surprised at all the ink and airtime devoted to Eck’s use of baseball slang. He just uses a lot of very common pro-player jargon, which I thought every serious baseball fan was familiar with. I’m told he’s not such a nice person in the flesh, but I think he’s a very insightful and candid analyst, pretty refreshing. Still, I’ll be glad to have Remy back.
One thing we learned (or were reminded of) is that it’s good to hear in-game analysis from a pitcher/catcher sometimes. None of the replacements was as good as Remy is now (as opposed to ‘88-90), but Eck, Montgomery, Kaat, and even Viola offered some insights Remy wouldn’t have.
I totally forgot about Monty. Should have mentioned him; he’d probably be somewhere in between Eck and Casey. Not a bad job…of course, he has some experience in that seat from the old “TV 38″ broadcasts.
Besmirching Dewey on this blog is like dividing by zero – if I tried it, the universe would collapse upon itself.