GQ has put together a nice top 5 / bottom 5 list of baseball broadcast booths in the country. As Mets fans, we have felt since Gary, Keith and Ron made one of the best booths in the business but it always actually means something when an independent source confirms our notions. GQ was a fan the mixture of the personality between the three, the even play by play calling by Gary, the pitching knowledge that Darling brings and the hitting insight of Keith. Their criticism of the booth was how during boring games they can get really off topic, but that is one of my favorite aspects of trio.
I had the same reaction that I think many fans did reading this article. “Hey! Why are they not ranked number 1?” Then I clicked the button to see who was number 1. It was, of course, Vin Scully. I was immiediatley content with the Mets team being behind the announcer great. Scully does one of the hardest things in sports being the only person in teh Dodgers booth and everything about him screams baseball. He truley deserves to be named the best booth of the game.
Now I'm not going to go in-depth with the bottom 5, but I was so happy to see the Nationals be on that list. Look, Washington has some big names. They have Bob Carpenter doing the play by play and their before and after game team (not considered part of the booth) contains local celebrity and voice of gold Johnny Holiday (voice of the Terps!) and Mets fan favorite Ray Knight. What drags the Nationals down to the bottom of the league is their color announcer, Rob Dibble. Dibble just bumbles around up there. He's not very insightful and he is really, really disrespectful to the other team. If I wanted to hear someone be disrespectful about baseball players on the other team, I would go to a hometown bar to hear intoxicated people do it better, and more coherently than Rob. The article points how if the opposite team makes an amazing play Rob's reaction is usually “UGHDHSJFISIE WE GOT ROBBEDDKDNHFIDKDI!” I'm forced to listen to this booth, living in DC, when the Mets come to town and the game is blacked out on MLB.tv (and the radio audio isn't syncing well with the MASN broadcast here). Many times, I have resorted to watching the game on mute.
