Len Kasper rules

February 28th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Baseball announcers are a fact of life. For example, if you’re a White Sox fan, and you really really want to watch the White Sox every night, you’re stuck with Hawk Harrelson. You might like Hawk. You might despise Hawk. But for better or worse, if you want to enjoy the crack of the bat and all the other sounds of baseball, you have to listen to Hawk’s twang and Darrin Jackson’s mumbles to do so.

So it goes for the Cubs. Fortunately, the Cubs have one of the cooler, hipper, more listenable, not-a-dinosaur baseball men in the business, one Len Kasper. A day after Sam Zell threatened to destroy all that is good and holy about free Wrigley Gum advertising space, it’s refreshing to be reminded of something the Cubs are doing right. Kasper is all of the following: a self-confessed “fringe sabermetrician,” a guitarist, and an indie rock enthusiast:

Beyond baseball, Kasper and Brenly discovered another mutual love: music. They’ve met up at Lollapalooza. The two would make mix tapes for each other. Kasper introduced Brenly to the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Son Volt; Brenly got Kasper into Ryan Adams, The Black Keys and Cold War Kids.

“You’ve got 2 1/2 hours of airtime and a lot of games during the course of a season,” Brenly said. “We both appreciate it can’t be baseball all the time.”

And now, the two have taken their music appreciation on stage. For the last two years, The Len & Bob Band has performed at the House of Blues for charity. Clips of the show circulate on YouTube, including a punk version of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” and “Love Stinks” by the J. Geils Band.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “E, I don’t give a shit if this guy likes The Black Keys. Can he broadcast?” And the answer is yes, he can. But in a world where Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver are considered by most average fans to be the foremost authorities on baseball talk, isn’t it refreshing to have someone who’s even tangentially down with the kids? Even if his voice is nasally from time to time?

I say yes. If you disagree, go listen to the Hawkmeister. He’s got this great Conway Twitty album he’s been meaning to suggest to you …

We’re not listed because we received Honorable Honorable Mention … or, maybe not

December 27th, 2006 | Posted by PostmanE

SI.com columnist Richard Deitsch has released, to great howling and gnashing of teeth, his 2006 Media Awards. Most of the selections are completely agreeable. For example, Chris Fowler and James Brown took home Person(s) of the Year, Troy Aikman won best football analyst, Dan Shulman won best play-by-play, John Harkes best newcomer, and so on and so forth. A totally reasonable batch of names, if you ask me.

Unfortunately, Deitsch takes all of this reasoned argument, all this accurate observation, and tosses it out the window by including one name:

BEST ANALYST: Troy Aikman, Fox Sports…

Honorable mention: Jaworksi (ESPN), Tim McCarver (Fox)

Yes, the italics are mine. Tim McCarver!? Really? Let’s let FireJoeMorgan handle that one, huh?

Hey, speaking of FireJoeMorgan, guess who won the award for best noncorporate web site? That’s right; those sardonic, hilarious, intelligent gents tore it up this year, much of their ire directed toward their namesake, Mike Celizic of MSNBC.com, and … Tim McCarver. The fact that they were honored by a sportswriter … in a subjective column … alongside TIM MCCARVER has to be absolutely eating them up. Anyway, congratulations are due. Bastards.

(Also, congrats are due to our buddies over at The Big Lead for an honorable mention. Those guys seduced sportswriter after sportswriter into insightful interview after insightful interview, including Jason Whitlock, and, well, you all know how that went.)

We’re, um, nowhere near this list, we assume. Which is OK, because R and I can continue to use the us-against-the-world angle to motivate us to really hit the keyboards hard in the coming year. 2007 awards - here we come!