Baseball’s Best Announcers

The time of year has come to dust off your glove and your love of 1 2/3 pound hamburgers.  It’s time to shell out $5 for a ticket in section 789 and then move down to row 3 of section 114.  Most importantly, it’s time to listen to soothing pipes of your favorite hometown announcer.  Some baseball fans are more blessed than others in that they a legendary announcer spinning yarns about their favorite ball club each spring.

I am certain this will lead to some anger and discussion on the part of the reader, but I will attempt to put together a top 10 list of baseball’s top announcers:

11. Ken “Hawk” Harrelson – For any out-of-towner, Harrelson is your classic homer. He’s unbelievably biased, which makes non-Chicagoans hate him, but only for a short time. After you watch a few games you come to appreciate how fantastic this guy is, mostly on account of his homerific way.

10. Bob Uecker – I’ve heard from people in Milwaukee that his shtick gets old real quick. Regardless, this man is a treasure for this work in Major League, Wrestle Mania, and this commercial:

9. Ron Santo - Santo is another huge homer, but who can blame him since he played 15 seasons with the Cubs.

8. Rod Allen - Tigers’ fans are consistently treated to Rod’s unbridaled exuberance. Despite his deficiencies at the plate, I wish that Craig Monroe was still a Detroit Tiger since Rod got more excited than Craig, whenever Craig got a base hit. “Craig did it again!!!” Oh, and how could you not respect a guy who did this in a Japanese baseball game:

7. Dan Schulman – He doesn’t get in the way, he doesn’t make it about himself, yet he still is one of the most enjoyable voices to listen to in baseball. To me, that’s the mark of a great announcer and play-by-play guy.

6. Dave Campbell – I’m not sure there is a better announcing combination than Dan Schulman and Dave Campbell on Sunday Night Baseball radio broadcasts. Shulman is nearly flawless on the play-by-play and Campbell provides an unmatched level of detail to the game.

5. Charlie Steiner – Steiner has worked for the Yankees and the Dodgers as a play-by-play man. His humor adds a lot of the broadcast while not detracting from it.

4. Bob Costas – Despite only standing 4′3″, Costas has the baritone of a grizzly bear and the vocabulary and grammatical perfection of a Nobel laureate. If his overall awesomeness didn’t preclude him doing baseball all the time, he would have probably been higher on this list.

3. Haray Kalas- I don’t think I will ever love a woman as much as I love this man’s voice:

2.Ernie Harwell - Ernie steps into the booth now and then and when he does, he’s still magical at age 140. Ernie was the voice of the Tigers for 50 years and his “Looooooonnnnnggg gone,” call elicits memories for any Detroit Tigers fan.

1. Vin Scully – Was there really any doubt that the legendary Dodgers’ announcer would be somewhere near the top of this list? I’m still not sure how he manages to do the entire game by himself when everyone else in world needs 2-7 people to complete a broadcast.

(7:00 mark)

Let me know where I went wrong in the comments.

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