Is there any announcer in all of baseball worse than Ken “Hawk” Harrelson of the Chicago White Sox?

Handed what is every baseball announcer’s dream - the chance to call a walkoff home run (albiet for the other team), Harrelson was only able to barely muster up this putrid call…

I’d file this under quick laughs, except that it’s just so sad and pathetic.

I’m watching the White Sox-Tigers game, a great duel so far between two of baseball’s best pitchers - young gun Justin Verlander and cagey Cuban vet Jose Contreras. But the awful announcing is really turning my stomach.

Is it just me, or are Chicago White Sox’ television announcers among the worst in baseball?  Certainly they have a lot of stiff competition around the game, with so many horrible broadcasters around these days (everyone who broadcasts for the Padres comes to mind), but Ken Harrelson and Darrin Jackson certainly have all their bad broadcasting bases covered, what with their blatant homer-ism (”At the end of two and a half, it’s Bad Guys 1, White Sox nothing”), their ridiculously inane comments (”The Detroit Tigers have a dangerous lineup. And those kind of lineups can be dangerous to pitch to - the lineups with a lot of guys who give themselves a chance to be dangerous.”), and Harrelson’s insistence upon using one of the lamer signiture home run calls ever invented (”You can put it on the boooooard…YES!”) on every single White Sox homer, whether important to the game or not.

It seems to me that that in this day an age of satellite TV and world-wide internet broadcasts, some of these broadcasters should consider setting aside the blatant rooting for the home team and think about cultivating a sort of professionalism that might appeal to the majority of baseball fandom beyond just the fans of the local team who don’t know any better and are already pre-disposed to love them.