WHAT’S THE SCOUTING REPORT?

WHAT’S THE SCOUTING REPORT? I have been exposed to a lot of baseball announcers for different teams with the coming of satellite television. The standard is pretty high; most announcers are quite good. I had thought that the Detroit announcers were the best last year, with the Seattle announcers next. Joe Girardi is now an announcer, and he is head and shoulders above the rest. Every inning it seems that he has new insights. The most important thing he does is to give an idea of how the pitcher is approaching the batter, what the book is on the batter—something that other announcers can and should do. Orel Hershiser is also good at telling how a pitcher is setting up a hitter. Nevertheless, even though he never said a word about how a pitcher was working on a hitter, I still have to rank Phil Rizzuto as my all time favorite announcer.