Final grades for Baltimore Orioles telecasts on MASN [Pictures]
With the end of the regular season, it's time to ask what kind of job MASN, the team's cable channel, did for its TV fans this year. Was Mike Bordick a welcome addition in the broadcast booth or a minor league coach playing a major-league sportscaster? Was there enough Jim Palmer for your taste? Did the postgame team of Jim Hunter and Rick Dempsey ever say anything that wasn't super-positive? With the magical season the baseball team has enjoyed, there is a tendency to love all things Orioles right now, but I won't let that stop me from giving the MASN crew the grades it deserves. I love TV baseball. When it's done skillfully, it is one of the great joys of my adult life. At the end of a long day, it's like a perfect glass of chilled wine or a meditation session that takes me to another place. That's when it's done right. When it's wrong ...
-- David Zurawik, The Baltimore Sun
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Gary Thorne: B-
Gary Thorne is a solid play-by-play announcer -- a very solid play-by-play announcer. And he can adjust depending on who's in the booth with him. He was a guide and mentor to Mike Bordick this season. With Jim Palmer, he is smart enough to give the Hall of Fame pitcher and superb analyst all the room he wants to verbally roam. Thorne is at his worst when he gets giddy as he did Sunday talking about first baseman Mark Reynolds as "The Toe," because of the infielder's ability to make contact with the bag no matter how far he has to stretch to catch a throw. Maybe that's a New England sense of humor, but I don't think so. But he is a smart and solid announcer, and he gets extra points for doing his job and half of Bordick's at the start of the year.
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