Sports announcing is very strange. Almost anyone can do it, and almost no one can do it well. Perhaps this is because of the incredible pressure placed on the announcers themselves. I, for one, couldn’t come up with enough idle chit-chat to fill two uneventful middle innings in a baseball game, especially if the only people I had to talk to were Joe Buck and Scooter. In that regard, Tim McCarver is a genius.

Easy as it is to bash on the hosts of the Game of the Week, I’m starting this off on the wrong foot. Of course everyone hates Tim McCarver. For six games a week, five if there was a day off, you get to watch your team with your own hometown announcers. Those guys follow your club from spring training through the postseason, and accompany the team in their off-season public appearances. They root for your team, and they are very familiar with everyone in the organization. Even if the game is on Wednesday Night Baseball on ESPN, it gets blacked out there, and you get to hear your local guys (instead of Rick Sutcliffe) call the game. Then Saturday comes along, and here’s a couple of yahoos that haven’t been anywhere near as close to your team, and worse yet, who don’t have right of approval from your favorite ball club (that means, they can’t get too happy when the home team scores, or too sad when the visitors score). That’s a delicate line to walk, and I admire them for even trying.

In this series, I hope to report a neutral stance about announcing using advanced statistics (whether it be major league baseball, college basketball, or college or NFL football; those are the sports I follow). I will attempt to be open and honest about my biases. If I get the gumption, I will link to others who have a positive or negative spin on the topic of discourse.

Which brings me to my final introductory point. I want to be as much positive as I am negative, at least, with this endeavor. It’s not fair to always criticize and never complement, especially in a genre that really leaves itself out there to be critiqued. There are lots of people trying to get into this business, and there are only a handful of slots available. The profession as a whole deserves some slack, and I intend to provide it. Reasonably. I also expect to be called out in the comments if I’m not being reasonable, even though we only have about five regular readers.