New TV Color Commentator - Kevin Frandsen

[imref]

if you mixed Dibble and FP's voices together, you'd get Fransden. A bit deeper/more gravely than FP.

Frandsen has been fine, but just that, fine. I guess I'm in the minority as I liked FP. I'd really like to have Dibble back now that the team is on a 2008-09 nostalgia tour.

[DPMOmaha]

if you mixed Dibble and FP's voices together, you'd get Fransden. A bit deeper/more gravely than FP.

Frandsen has been fine, but just that, fine. I guess I'm in the minority as I liked FP. I'd really like to have Dibble back now that the team is on a 2008-09 nostalgia tour.

I thought Frandsen's "YES" on the triple play the other day sounded very Dibble-ish.

[UMDNats]

I’m just going to keep saying this until you realize it’s true. Frandsen sounds like Dibble. Not FP.

Agree with that. Forgot about Dibble.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

I just can't get past how much he sounds like FP, it makes it seem there's been no change for me even though yes Frandsen is less snarky than FP. If we were getting someone new I just wish they actually sounded like someone new. 

too bad Gilbert Gottfried passed. He would have sounded different.

[van lingle mungo]

Who else was driven to the point of throwing a brick thru his TV during the Frandsen/Amaro blabberfest yesterday? Whatever happened to real baseball broadcasts where the PBP guy called the game and the color guy interjected a salient point every so often and not every 6 seconds? A lost art...

[Slateman]

Yesterday was the first time we heard Franny in a week

[Natsinpwc]

Who else was driven to the point of throwing a brick thru his TV during the Frandsen/Amaro blabberfest yesterday? Whatever happened to real baseball broadcasts where the PBP guy called the game and the color guy interjected a salient point every so often and not every 6 seconds? A lost art...

Part of the reason is the long time between pitches. Once they use the pitch clock there will be less time for babbling.  Three in the booth is too many.

[DPMOmaha]

I'm assuming that was just his vacation spot for the season?

[Duke of Earl]

I just can't get past how much he sounds like FP,
 

I also think he sounds at times very much like FP.   But I also think at times he sounds like Kolko.  So much so that it takes me some time to realize it's not Kolko. (As soon as he says something showing some insight I realize it's not Kolko.)

[JCA-CrystalCity]

I'm assuming that was just his vacation spot for the season?

Bob mentioned Frandsen's Dad passed away last week.  He was possibly going to come back for the Zimmerman day broadcast, but held back a day.

[DPMOmaha]

Bob mentioned Frandsen's Dad passed away last week.  He was possibly going to come back for the Zimmerman day broadcast, but held back a day.

oh, I missed that. Then, yeah, seems perfectly reasonable he would have been away for a while. Condolences to the Frandsens.

[van lingle mungo]

Part of the reason is the long time between pitches. Once they use the pitch clock there will be less time for babbling. 

The pitch clock won't stop Frandsen from babbling. Nothing short of cutting out his tongue will, and that probably wouldn't work either. He spews more words over the course of 3 hours than most of us do in an entire week.

[welch]

The pitch clock won't stop Frandsen from babbling. Nothing short of cutting out his tongue will, and that probably wouldn't work either. He spews more words over the course of 3 hours than most of us do in an entire week.

Nothing liker FP, who told us every one of his insights three times, and repeated his jokes a few times, as well, as if we couldn't remember.

I have spent the last 50 years in New York, where I came to love Phil Rizzuto, Bill White, and Frank Messer. Those three rotated around radio and TV. Scooter and White teased each other non-stop, like the evening that Bill White asked Rizzuto if he had played with Joe Dimaggio during the 1941 streak, and Rizzuto added that he came up when Lou Gehrig was playing 1B, leading White to say, "You mean, Scooter, you are so old that you played alongside Lou GEHRIG?" And on and on. They were great.

[van lingle mungo]

I have spent the last 50 years in New York, where I came to love Phil Rizzuto, Bill White, and Frank Messer.

What, no love for Lindsay Nelson, Ralph Kiner, and Bob Murphy? IMO Nelson was the best to ever man a sports microphone, whether it was the Mets, Notre Dame football, or anything else.

[welch]

What, no love for Lindsay Nelson, Ralph Kiner, and Bob Murphy? IMO Nelson was the best to ever man a sports microphone, whether it was the Mets, Notre Dame football, or anything else.

I compared them to Bob Wolf, the Old Senators' first and only TV broadcaster. Bob was the best of all. Started in 1947 and continued until Calvin Griffith moved the team. Wolf also did radio for Washington, plus the Colts-Giants overtime NFL Championship, and the Don Larsen perfect game. When I moved to NY, I found Bob doing Knick games. He did everything, and even wrote the book on how to broadcast. 

[van lingle mungo]

I compared them to Bob Wolf, the Old Senators' first and only TV broadcaster. Bob was the best of all. Started in 1947 and continued until Calvin Griffith moved the team. Wolf also did radio for Washington, plus the Colts-Giants overtime NFL Championship, and the Don Larsen perfect game. When I moved to NY, I found Bob doing Knick games. He did everything, and even wrote the book on how to broadcast.

Wolf was before my time but I'm familiar with his career. I grew up with Nelson, Gowdy, Chuck Thompson, Jim Simpson, Schenkel, Ray Scott, Charlie Jones. All outstanding.

[Duke of Earl]

What, no love for Lindsay Nelson,

All I can remember about him is that every time a runner was gang tackled Lindsay would say he was "snowed under". I can still hear him say it.

[DPMOmaha]

Where’s Bob?

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Where’s Bob?

sick. So is Kolko

[imref]

Fransden has gotten really good as of late.

[machpost]

I hate the Mets but if the Nationals ever wanted to see what a first class TV broadcast crew looks like, Ronnie Darling, Keith Hernandez and Gary Cohen might be the standard to shoot for.

Ron Darling has developed into a pretty good broadcaster, but he was pretty terrible when he was here in 2005. Sounded like someone who was talked into a gig that he really didn't want to do.

[catocony]

I remember the story in the Post that Ron and Mel Proctor met up in a hotel lobby with like the very first couple of MASN employees the morning of the season opener in 2005, and were calling the game that afternoon.  There wasn't much to it.

The early MASN broadcasts were pretty bad, with very few people able to watch. I have DirecTV and they had MASN from the get-go, but Comcast and Cox and the others didn't get MASN until like mid-summer. 

Mel Proctor was great from the start, and with his past experience as the Orioles' play by play guy he was familiar to a lot of us. 

Ron Darling was really bad at the start and didn't improve much for months.  Not as bad as Justin Maxwell or Mikey Morse, but tough to listen to.

[machpost]

Yeah, nearly half of that season's games were simulcast on either channel 20 or channel 5. I was fortunate enough to have RCN so I got all the games on TV. Radio on 104.1 and 1050 was pretty weak, though.

[catocony]

I don't have hard evidence but I think one thing that has really hurt baseball in recruiting new fans (and keeping some older ones) is that almost all games are on pay cable/satellite/streaming. 

As I recall in the HTS days, Orioles games were about half and half.  Half on HTS, half on channel 20 or later channel 50 (I think).  The same with Caps and Bullets games too.   Of course, in the 80s, many games weren't on TV at all so 50/50 was a massive increase in being able to see almost all games.  Nowadays though, other than maybe a few games on Fox 5, you have to pay to see baseball.  The "free" ad-supported method is about gone, and some potential fans too.

[Slateman]

I like angry at the umpires Franny