I reckon there must be an appetite to just talk about good and bad commentators, and indeed specific commentary moments, in a dedicated thread here in the Media forum - no? Several people in the Braves-Brewers NLDS thread were talking about Orsillo's call of Freddie Freeman's homerun last night, so let me start by shining a spotlight on it here:
View: https://streamable.com/7wottr
I like a lot of what Orsillo brings to the table...but this is simply not a good call. If he shuts up right after "Freddie Freeman has left the yard and puts the Braves on top!" and lets the moment breathe, it's pretty decent - not upper echelon great, but memorable enough to fit the situation. But he keeps talking for another eight full seconds, until Freeman is rounding third base - not just not adding anything to the table, but taking stuff off the table with each successive phrase. To me, that betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes big commentary moments great: it's not simply a bad call, it's the sort of mistake that a great commentator would never make. Maybe he briefly blacked out and thought he was on radio?
View: https://streamable.com/7wottr
I like a lot of what Orsillo brings to the table...but this is simply not a good call. If he shuts up right after "Freddie Freeman has left the yard and puts the Braves on top!" and lets the moment breathe, it's pretty decent - not upper echelon great, but memorable enough to fit the situation. But he keeps talking for another eight full seconds, until Freeman is rounding third base - not just not adding anything to the table, but taking stuff off the table with each successive phrase. To me, that betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes big commentary moments great: it's not simply a bad call, it's the sort of mistake that a great commentator would never make. Maybe he briefly blacked out and thought he was on radio?