Thursday, February 14, 2019

WEEI Moves To A Red Sox Broadcast Booth With All Known Available Humans

In a ridiculous move that smacks of all-out panic, the "flagship" station of Red Sox radio broadcasts (WEEI) is enlisting a strategy that throws a boatload of voices against the wall to see what sticks. The station announced that, in 2019, long-time play-by-play guy Joe Castiglione will be joined (at various points in time) by: Sean McDonough, Chris Berman, Dave O’Brien, Lou Merloni, Dale Arnold, Tom Caron, Josh Lewin, and Mario Impemba (who?). The bottom-line out of all of this is mass listener confusion. One of the cool aspects of baseball on the radio is hearing a familiar voice recount the fortunes of your favorite team. Castiglione, for all of his flaws, at least meets this minimum qualification. But all of these new voices will result in a mindless cacophony. A wiser move would have been to assign one person—like the estimable (and familiar) McDonough—as "second-person in". But, for some odd reason, WEEI has chosen this clown-car version.