Rustin Dodd – The Athletic ($): One of the joys of baseball is that it is urban, rural, in remote fields, and in cities that are packed to the gills. Each experience is unique, and the players find things to love about playing in every locale. Playing games with, and against, the Brooklyn Cyclones is a treat because of the surrounding city and atmosphere. Finding the little things to enjoy about going to the park makes baseball seem even better than it already is, and that is quite the accomplishment.
Corey Brock – The Athletic ($): I grew up a fan of the Chicago Cubs, but I regularly turned on a few different teams broadcasts based on their announcers. One of those teams was the Seattle Mariners and the more I listened to Dave Niehaus the more I liked what I heard. I never fell in love with Niehaus like I did Vin Scully, but he became one of the voices of baseball in my head. Knowing that someone is working on keeping his work preserved makes me happy, the baseball world needs to be able to hear Niehaus forever.
Marc Carig – The Athletic ($): I never truly think of local announcers as unbiased. I know that they all say they try to be unbiased, but the truth is that they aren’t and never actually will be. National announcers and reporters, on the other hand, should be unbiased. Having people working in baseball operations for teams doing national broadcasts involving their team or other teams presents too much of an opportunity for bias. The same is true of reporters who work for teams and then cover the game on a national level. In this day and age, people don’t seem to care, but hearing an ESPN announcer who’s also in baseball operations for the New York Mets opine about a trade between the Mets and New York Yankees gives me all the bad vibes.
Lead photo courtesy of Chris Hondros – Getty Images
