Exiling Kay for the YES Booth, the Demise of the Wings and the NBA's East
Running Off at the Mouth
Dennis O'Brien
Issue date: 4/17/03 Section: Sports
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When the Yankees opened the season in Toronto, they were met, in the local papers, by advertisements showing a Yankees hat covered in bird droppings, encouraging fans to boo Japanese rookie Hideki Matsui.
This is the perfect personification of the anti-Yankee sentiment that has swept over the baseball world in recent years. To Michael Kay, it was something more, it was an attack on New York, an attack on America by foreigners in a time of war.
Being anti-Yankee was suddenly anti-American. This was the perfect example of everything that is wrong with Michael Kay.
For a long time Kay was an informative, authoritative voice on the Yankees, the Knicks and college basketball, but that was long before the YES Network. On the Boss' shiny new network, Kay's cheesy, radio-friendly describing the teams' uniforms shtick, and his blatantly Yankee-centric view of all things baseball, have become an annoyance.
Kay's background is primarily as a reporter, and his play by play experience had been limited mostly to radio before the coming of YES. Now, with long-time Yankee boothman Bobby Murcer involved in a reduced role at the network, Kay is Jim Kaat's new sideman for most Yankees broadcasts. He's relatively new at television play by play, and it shows.
Wrought with over-description and cheesy little bits like that uniform business, Kay doesn't seem to grasp the idea of television as a visual medium. In radio it is important to not only project what is happening, but to provide the sense of vision to an eyeless crowd. Television needs little of this, and the very best of television announcers let the game tell its own story visually as much as possible, and serve largely as mediators between that visual image and the audience.
This is not a knock on Kay as a person or as a commentator, but he simply is a better radio man than a TV man. Do you need an example of Kay's radio-centric game-calling?
Well, have you ever noticed how many balls are hit DEEP to left field and DEEP to centerfield that barely clear the half-way point of the outfield? I bet if you sit and count how many DEEP fly balls are hit during a Yankees game, especially when the Yanks are batting, you'll be shocked and overwhelmed by the result.
This is the perfect personification of the anti-Yankee sentiment that has swept over the baseball world in recent years. To Michael Kay, it was something more, it was an attack on New York, an attack on America by foreigners in a time of war.
Being anti-Yankee was suddenly anti-American. This was the perfect example of everything that is wrong with Michael Kay.
For a long time Kay was an informative, authoritative voice on the Yankees, the Knicks and college basketball, but that was long before the YES Network. On the Boss' shiny new network, Kay's cheesy, radio-friendly describing the teams' uniforms shtick, and his blatantly Yankee-centric view of all things baseball, have become an annoyance.
Kay's background is primarily as a reporter, and his play by play experience had been limited mostly to radio before the coming of YES. Now, with long-time Yankee boothman Bobby Murcer involved in a reduced role at the network, Kay is Jim Kaat's new sideman for most Yankees broadcasts. He's relatively new at television play by play, and it shows.
Wrought with over-description and cheesy little bits like that uniform business, Kay doesn't seem to grasp the idea of television as a visual medium. In radio it is important to not only project what is happening, but to provide the sense of vision to an eyeless crowd. Television needs little of this, and the very best of television announcers let the game tell its own story visually as much as possible, and serve largely as mediators between that visual image and the audience.
This is not a knock on Kay as a person or as a commentator, but he simply is a better radio man than a TV man. Do you need an example of Kay's radio-centric game-calling?
Well, have you ever noticed how many balls are hit DEEP to left field and DEEP to centerfield that barely clear the half-way point of the outfield? I bet if you sit and count how many DEEP fly balls are hit during a Yankees game, especially when the Yanks are batting, you'll be shocked and overwhelmed by the result.