Fox Gaffes Show When Producers Need to Step Up to the Plate More Aggressively
While watching the Mets on Saturday against the Washington Strasburgs, the usually reliable Joe Buck got tripped up a couple of times. At least, I know he got tripped up. If he knew, or if anyone in the Fox truck knew, they kept it a secret.
No one expects announcers to get everything right all the time, but it's not too much to ask that when they do screw up, that they at least make some version of a correction.
First, Buck mentioned Mets reserve catcher Josh Thole, who started Saturday's game. After Thole got a hit, Buck said Thole was now "3 for 7 in his Major League career." All well and good, except that wasn't true.
Those were Thole's stats for 2010. But he had 53 at-bats in 2009.
Buck actually made reference to Thole's "career" stats twice. So, why did nobody in the Fox production truck, which surely has access to anything and everything put out by the Elias Sports Bureau, not know that what Buck said wasn't true, or if they did, whisper something in his earpiece so he could correct himself?
You might think I'm getting overly lathered about a remark over a third-string catcher. But when you're broadcasting a game that's being seen in New York, you're talking to a lot of knowledgable fans who know Thole is relatively new, just not brand-new. There's nothing wrong with getting it right, hubris be damned.
Buck dug his hole a little deeper later in the game when he talked about the once-precarious state of Mets Manager Jerry Manuel's job, and how he had gone to see the "Broadway musical Fences" and was told by Denzel Washington to hang in there.
August Wilson's "Fences" is indeed a Broadway classic, But it is decidedly lacking in hummable tunes, which is why it won the Tony last month for Best Play Revival.
Might be time for Joe Buck and his producers to take in a show next time they're in town.
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