These all seem like paragons of the species. Now, thanks to a terrific bit of game color from Mets broadcaster Matt Raad, I know what to call these baseball middle management folks. Perfect. 

“I was all geeked up to get the burnt ends because burnt ends are so good. I think they’re such a delicacy and they usualy run out of burnt ends before they run out of anything else. And I forgot to order them.  

“The pitch to Masyn Winn is in for a strike, nothing and one.” 

ABS has brought baseball into the 21^st century. Heck, it’s dragged baseball out of the 19^th century introducing flashing lights, advanced technology, and instant-gratification – the triumvirate of our low attention-span era – to the bygone sensibility of our national pastime.

Red Barber, the iconic and beloved Dodgers announcer and latter-day avuncular NPR star (and Tallahassee resident), put the lie to the superstition of the no-no moratorium during the 1947 World Series between Brooklyn and the Yankees. 

“If Suzyn Waldman and Dave Sims were speaking only in meaningless syllables you would still immediately know, yep, that’s the Yankees booth.”

“I've truly never seen anything like it,” Jon Miller said of the drone/smoke display of San Francisco Bay.
“It was amazing,” Dave Flemming said.
“I didn’t know they could do that,” Mike Krukow said, awestruck. 
“Do it again!” Miller quipped. 

Today begins a 162-game run through Sunday, September 27. Ahead are six months of daily installments of a story not yet written.

Big league managers are now media spokesmen and clubhouse psychologists. This is no small thing, but it’s a huge change from when titans strode the earth.

Nick Margevicius pitched the sixth and seventh and gave up three hits, but not a run. He got two wins during this spring training game: On the field and over the air as the White Sox announcers pronounced his name right.