KCBS Sports Fans: Shut Up Bobby Valentine!
KCBS News Anchor Stan Bunger (who along with KCBS Sports Anchor Steve Bitker are the on-air duo known as KCBS Sports Fans) offers his unique sports analysis.
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- I'm not sure I can put it any better than Twitter user @dean13 who, back in June, managed to squeeze this thought into 140 characters:
Shut up, Bobby Valentine. Shut up, Bobby Valentine. Shut up, Bobby Valentine. Shut up, Bobby Valentine. Shut up, Bobby Valentine. Shut up.
Exactly.
The downside to the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series is the fact that they've become hot stuff for the network folks, guaranteeing more appearances on the Saturday Fox broadcasts and the Sunday night ESPN games.
I say "downside" because this means Bay Area viewers lose the capable and comfortable Kruk & Kuip, and get stuck instead with motormouths like Valentine. "Insufferable" is a good place to start when describing this guy. "Ceaseless" is a good place to start when describing his chatter.
The wizards at ESPN decided to empty their broadcast booth of two Hall of Famers (Jon Miller and Joe Morgan) so they could stuff in Dan Shulman, Valentine, and Orel Hershiser. As far as I can tell, Shulman calls a very good game. But it's hard to hear him because Valentine doesn't leave much room (fill-in play-by-play guy Dave O'Brien got the same treatment in last night's Giants-Mets game).
The first couple times I caught this act, I figured somebody upstairs would hear it too and rein Valentine in. No such luck. And it's not just how much Valentine talks; it's often what he says. For example, last night, he took pains to criticize the Giants outfielders for the way they were aligned in a late-inning situation. As a former major league manager, Valentine ought to know that the outfielders don't position themselves; there's a bench coach worrying about those details. For a guy who seems to want to show everyone how much he knows, he misses the mark pretty often.
I have friends who used to cringe when Morgan would mangle the language or launch into another self-serving story. But at least he occasionally shut up.
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