E-Mail This Article to a Friend The Red Sox’ broadcast blunder BY RYAN STEWART

I’ll just come out and say it: the Red Sox have made one of the worst personnel moves in their long and storied history.

I’m not talking about letting Pedro and Lowe walk, even if their three replacements are one old guy (the already injured David Wells), one head case (Matt Clement, a guy everyone talks about like he’s Rick Vaughn or something), and one rehabbing "upside" guy (Wade Miller). I’m not talking about the replacement of Orlando Cabrera with Edgar Renteria ("Edgah" will yet be a star in this town, mark my words). I’m not even talking about the retaining of third-base coach Dale Sveum, who made Wendell Kim look like Casey Stengel while sending a couple of guys to the DL and messing up Ortiz’s shoulder.

No, the Sox made a much worse move than all those questionable ones, a move that hasn’t received nearly enough attention.

They removed play-by-play broadcaster Sean McDonough — the voice many Sox fans grew up with back when NESN was a premium channel — from their Friday-night broadcasts and handed the keys to the broadcast booth to Don Orsillo full-time.

Ever since the new owners took over, this has been coming. The new owners purchased a stake in NESN when they got the team, and as such, they’ve been trying to raise the (now basic) cable network’s profile. Orsillo came with that package. When the Red Sox’ broadcast contract with Fox expired before the 2003 season, the owners negotiated a deal by which UPN38 would carry Friday and select Sunday games. McDonough, who had been the local-network-affiliate voice of the Sox since 1989, did not come with that package. He briefly entertained a deal with the Mets that would have paid him a ridiculous amount, but he declined when the Red Sox offered him a comparable salary for one year to do only the Friday and select Sunday games (25 games, according to what he told the Boston Globe at the time). This year, his contract was neither renewed nor renegotiated.

Now, Orsillo is younger than McDonough, and he doesn’t have commitments to covering other sports for other networks (in the past, McDonough has also done NFL, NHL, NCAA football, and NCAA basketball games for CBS and ABC/ESPN). Various published reports have also indicated that Orsillo receives less per game than McDonough did back in his heyday.

All that aside, however, McDonough was the better play-by-play man. He described each play in simple, easy-to-understand terms that didn’t sound condescending and weren’t canned stock phrases. Orsillo, on the other hand, has a most unfortunate penchant for the latter. Batters who strike out "go down by way of the K." If a batter checks his swing, he "offered" at it (or did not offer at it). Foul balls are "carved foul." Orsillo slavishly sticks to these expressions as though his use of them is tied to his salary, correcting himself if he doesn’t mention them the first time.

McDonough also had a very loose on-air persona. He sounded like he would describe the game the same way whether he were sitting in the broadcast booth or watching from a stool at J.J. Foley’s, particularly when it came to his busting on color commentator Jerry Remy. He got audibly excited with each dramatic win, and he wouldn’t hesitate to call out players who weren’t pulling their weight, whether it was Manny Ramirez or Jose Offerman. That extended to the front office, too — he had no trouble questioning trades, signings, or managerial moves within the game (though I don’t know how even the most reserved company man could have held his tongue during the Dan Duquette/Jimy Williams era). Poor umpiring really sent him over the edge: he criticized officials worse than Earl Weaver did in his prime. Conversely, Orsillo seems like a nice enough guy, but it’s hard to imagine what he’s like outside the booth. His on-air persona sounds as if it’s constructed to be nondescript. Internet hacks commonly refer to him as "Mr. Bland." Plus, his chemistry with "The Remdawg" (a nickname McDonough coined) just isn’t what it could be.

But above all else, McDonough, who opened each Fenway broadcast by calling Boston "the greatest city in the world," was the ultimate Red Sox fan. I’m not questioning Orsillo’s qualifications as a Red Sox fan (particularly in this post–Word Series era of fan one-upmanship), but I don’t think anyone could top the obvious delight McDonough took in simply being around the team. He once said he wanted to broadcast Red Sox games because those were the only ones he cared about the final score of, and it came through in his work. Of course, it helps that his father, the late sportswriter Will McDonough, was a legend in this town. Would the Cardinals fire Joe Buck, son of their late broadcaster Jack Buck? Probably not. Would the Yankees relieve the overzealous Michael Kay of his duties with the YES network? Again, it’s doubtful.

Don Orsillo isn’t exactly what I’d call terrible — his even keel is occasionally welcome in this city of over-analysis and panic-button pushing. But he’s no McDonough. And while McDonough may receive greater national duties as a result, baseball in Boston is worse off for the switch.

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