Nominations for best Boston area Play by Play and Color Commentators ALL TIME

Lose Remerswaal

Experiencing Furry Panic
Lifetime Member
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Make your nominations here. I expect we will do two polls, one for pbp, one for cc.


Limit of three of each. Identify if you are nominating for pbp or cc, and feel free to include supporting comments.

put names in BOLD , as the board doesn’t allow more than 10 options in a poll, names with the most nominations make the poll.
 
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RedOctober3829

Member
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Jul 19, 2005
55,298
deep inside Guido territory
PBP
Gorman
Socci


CC
Brickley--extremely knowledgeable and not a homer. He will criticize.
Eck/Remy--I consider them a team effort that works very well together. Separated, they aren't as good on their own but when they have each other to bounce off of they are awesome.
 

mikeford

woolwich!
SoSH Member
Aug 6, 2006
29,517
St John's, NL
Is this working now or ever?

If it's historically speaking

PBP: Most, Gil Santos
Color: Heinsohn, Gino Capelletti
 
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Sep 1, 2019
170
I definitely second Jim Woods. Breaking up the iconic Martin-Woods radio tandem was just one of so many bad decisions made by the Red Sox in the late 1970's.

I don't know exactly where he fits in, but I think Bob Neumeier should be mentioned. Not as an all-time great, but as an underrated Boston sports media member.
 

ColdSoxPack

Well-Known Member
Silver Supporter
Jul 14, 2005
2,352
Simi Valley, CA
My faves are McDonough PBP and Remy color

Runner up Stockton PBP and Hawk color.

They were entertaining and informative while playing it pretty straight.
 
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Mugsy's Jock

Eli apologist
Lifetime Member
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Dec 28, 2000
15,069
UWS, NYC
PBP: Santos (with love to Martin, Orsillo and Bob Wilson)
Color: Eck (with love to Heinsohn and Remy)

I’m not a huge hockey fan (see you in the Pron Stache in the playoffs), but I did call hockey for my college radio station...and got pretty good at it 100% because I listened and learned from Bob Wilson. Got to tell him that once and led to a memorable and warm conversation. RIP.
 
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Pablo's TB Lover

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Sep 10, 2017
5,959
PBP - Sean McDonough
CC - Remdawg (Jerry Remy)

Some bias as these guys were my primary team in teens into 20s during the height of my sports consumption. Didn't hear enough of Most, Santos and Gorman are definitely close for PBP.

On the CC side, Heinsohn is close. Cedric Maxwell is probably sneaky high on my list. There is a reason Remy got a cult following, opened restaurants, etc., although he became a caricature of himself for awhile.
 

Ale Xander

Hamilton
SoSH Member
Oct 31, 2013
72,441
PBP - Don Orsillo
honorable mention : Gil Santos,
Sean McDonough, Sean Grande

edit: adding Grande love since MCD has so many nominations

Analyst - Tom Heinsohn
honorable mention : Dennis Eckersley, Gino Capelletti
 
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McDrew

Set Adrift on Memory Bliss
SoSH Member
Apr 11, 2006
4,060
Portland, OR
PBP: Orsillo

Color: Really like Eck. Brickley is great.

Field-level: I know i'm going off-board here, but I miss Peter Gammons
 

wiffleballhero

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Mar 28, 2009
4,530
In the simulacrum
Joe Castiglione

It has been almost 40 years of Joe. He is permanently engrained as part of the sound and rhythm of summer. That is not nothing.

Brickley on hockey is really good.
 

YTF

Member
SoSH Member
I liked him a lot and while he didn't make my list, I'm pleasantly surprised by the Orsillo love that I'm seeing here. It wasn't so long ago that a fair amount of folks here were bashing him and Remy as a team. Perhaps a case of you don't know what you've got until it's gone.
 

ggreene

New Member
Jul 23, 2019
215
PBP: Most
Color: Tommy

I have to say for TV I really don't need a PBP guy. I just want an interesting back and forth between entertaining former players. Best combo for me was a short period where Tommy and Cousy were doing the away games together. It was awesome. Great stories back and forth. Pre game was great as well as both were not shy about what needed to be done. I can recall many times where Tommy would be doing his usual run, run, run, obsession and then Cousy would say no, slow it down. They then preceded to bicker about it in game. I miss that.

It will never happen but I would love to see Garnett and Perk.
 

snowmanny

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Dec 8, 2005
15,669
PBP Martin, McDonough, Orsillo
Color: Eckersley, Remy, Zolak


Very baseball biased since that’s to me most important. Those three pbp announcers were all tremendous. Remy has been up and down at times but overall for his career he is a big positive. Eck is a just a blast.

I think Zolak is extremely fun when I happen to listen, which is admittedly about 5% of the time, so throwing him one there. Could have put Max or Cousy just as easily. I sort of preferred Cousy to Heinsohn as pure color man but I love Heinsohn the man with a passion.

Ed: In the finals I am voting for Martin though my memory is of him is obviously not fresh and I have great respect for Orsillo and McDonough. I have a very vivid memory from when I was a kid of my oldest brother pointing out that outside of family members, the voice he had heard most in his life was Ned Martin's. It would be like voting against my grandfather or something.
 
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88 MVP

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Dec 25, 2007
534
WNY
PBP: Santos and Castiglione. The sound of their voices always went hand in hand with a fall afternoon working in the yard.

Color: Heinsohn. Honorable mention to Gino Capelletti
 

mauf

Anderson Cooper × Mr. Rogers
Moderator
SoSH Member
PBP: Don Orsillo

Color: Jerry Remy, Brian Scalabrine

I enjoyed listening to Tommy talk basketball, but he got too wrapped around the axle on officiating when he was calling the game.
 

mauf

Anderson Cooper × Mr. Rogers
Moderator
SoSH Member
Can't tell if this is serious
I think Scal is insightful.

Think about the color commentators on nationally televised NBA games. Or for that matter, college games. Is there anyone besides Doris Burke who you’d take over Scal?

It’s a much harder job than it seems to be, and much harder than being the commentators on a sport like baseball and football that offers natural breaks where you can expound at length on what just happened.
 

Ale Xander

Hamilton
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Oct 31, 2013
72,441
I think Scal is insightful.

Think about the color commentators on nationally televised NBA games. Or for that matter, college games. Is there anyone besides Doris Burke who you’d take over Scal?

It’s a much harder job than it seems to be, and much harder than being the commentators on a sport like baseball and football that offers natural breaks where you can expound at length on what just happened.
He's way too goofy and loud for me. But even just sticking to Celtics color, I'd take Maxwell over Scal 8 days out of 7 (twice on Sundays) and he doesn't even have the benefit of having the fans seeing a screen.

There's a lot of NBA people I'd take over him, I'm sure, just don't see them enough.
 

mwonow

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Sep 4, 2005
7,095
For PBP, Joe Castiglione is excellent, but Most is kind of in his own class. We used to listen to the radio while watching the Cs on TV because of Johnny. I still use "Justice" (followed missed free throws by opponents when an 'unfair' foul was called against the Celts) at random moments in life, even today.

For me, color guys are mostly about individual memorable moments, rather than overall presence. Like when Cooz told Rick Robey in the preseason, "you can never bulk up too much," and then in the playoffs, Robey ended up locked up with Darryl Dawkins. Or Don Cherry saying between periods of a Bs game (they were losing to the Habs in the playoffs), "it's not what you make, it's what you leave" (followed by a very 'heavy' period from the Bs). Or for pure entertainment value, a game involving no Boston teams where Lemaire's team (I forget if he was coaching NJ or Mtl) got called for too many men on the ice, and the camera cut to Lemaire, and Cherry exploded: "Sure! Sure! Show the coach! Sure! Jacques sent that guy out there! Sure!"
 

Cellar-Door

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Aug 1, 2006
34,460
They've already been nominated but I'd go Gorman and Tommy.

Most was a great announcer, but... he was a kind of terrible PBP guy considering what he described was not necessarily what was actually happening.
 

Diamond Don Aase

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Jan 16, 2001
1,069
Merrimack Valley
PBP: Don Orsillo

Color: Jerry Remy, Brian Scalabrine

I enjoyed listening to Tommy talk basketball, but he got too wrapped around the axle on officiating when he was calling the game.
This is heresy. Tommy telling the audience that “We all know what the F. stands for” during a game officiated by Eddie F. Rush was the greatest moment in broadcasting since Marconi.

Dave Goucher deserves mention among PBP broadcasters. Goucher was the best Bruins’ PBP broadcaster since Fred Cusick and that seems unlikely to change anytime soon.
 

bankshot1

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Feb 12, 2003
24,652
where I was last at
Despite my being out of market for close to 40 years, through the miracle of the internet, I've heard most of these guys. And cant' quibble with a one of them. Taste is taste.

I nominated Most and Ned Martin upthread (and Jim Woods, but it was mostly a Martin nomination) . Most may not have been the greatest PbP guy ever, but for a product that was seldom on TV, he painted vivid pictures that our old 1960s B&W Zenith would never have captured. And his rampant over the top homerism, particularly for the teen-age boy listening in the 60s, fit my rabid devotion to the Celts. I loved those teams. And as I recall Most worked solo in those days (I beleive he eventually picked up a partner much later as his voice started to go). Most in essence did PbP and color, even if that color was almost always a brilliant emerald.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Jan 23, 2009
20,676
Maine
Have to say I'm shocked the thread's gone this far without a single nomination for Ken Coleman, so I'm going to add his name. There were so many nights when I was a kid where I fell asleep with a transistor radio under my pillow listening to Coleman and Castig (then Castig and Bob Starr).

And since I'm on the subject of the Red Sox when I was a kid, Bob Montgomery deserves some love on the color side.