by Brian

**During one of my first ever Locker pieces, I talked about how, despite the enormous shoes he had to fill, Phils play-by-play announcer, Tom McCarthy, was dangerously close to being replaced by my iPod or the radio team of Scott Franzke and Larry Andersen. Now, a full year later, this completely vanilla robot has done nothing to change my mind. Now, I’ll admit to being partial to guys who actually played the game, but such logic doesn’t affect my appreciation for the other three major sports teams’ announcers—Merrill Reese (Eagles), Jim Jackson (Flyers), and Marc Zumoff (Sixers)—because they have some flair, some panache, some understanding of the tremendous job they have in bringing our city’s teams to our homes on a nightly basis.

While I watched yet another lackluster performance by the Phils during which they dropped three of four to those pesky Pirates, I couldn’t help but take mental notes of McCarthy’s performance.

"I have a microphone into which I speak about baseball!"

Exhibit A: He used the word towering four times during the telecast. Now, maybe we’re all a little spoiled by Doc Emrick’s ability to use approximately 4, 567 verbs during his call of any hockey game, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask for McCarthy to come up with just one more adjective for flyballs.

Exhibit B: I realize the phrase “Captain Obvious” gets bandied about regularly, and usually with at least mild audience chuckling, but McCarthy is doing everything he can to cement himself as the “Captain Obvious.” After the Phils coughed up a three-run lead in the bottom of the 7^th, he delivered this doozie: The complexion of this game really changed when it went from a one-run game to now a three-run deficit for the Phils. I don’t require my play-by-play guy to be a sabermetrics practitioner, but I also don’t need him to fill in elementary gaps like this one.

Exhibit C: His homerun calls absolutely stink. I’d rather pluck a drunken fraternity brother out of the stands and ask him to call, oh, let’s say, Jimmy Rollins’ walkoff last week instead of listening to McCarthy’s completely uninventive, He’s baaaaaaack, in reference to Rollins’ momentous return to the lineup.

**I had the misfortune of briefly flicking past the Competitive Eating Competition on ESPN, which got me thinking about our society. Let me get this straight—Americans can’t appreciate the FIFA World Cup, deemed a game for “foot fairies” by our most clever of wordsmiths, which has been nothing short of amazing for the better part of a month (if you missed the sick Paraguay-Spain quarterfinal because you were afraid you’d catch “footfairyitis” as a result, I’ll submit that it was the second best game of the tourney behind the US win in extra time against Algeria), but we can show up in droves to watch intestinal freaks of nature devour food quickly? And don’t think for a second that the arrival and “arrest” of former champ Kobayashi wasn’t staged for publicity.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than soccer. (By Theo Zierock, AFP/Getty Images)

As a result, I will not listen to those who suggest our country isn’t getting dumber. Or dumberer.

**Wait, Mike Vick didn’t see the light behind Tony Dungy’s shadow? It turns out he really isn’t a very good dude? The Eagles made a personnel mistake? The Wildcat Formation was effective for one year, four years ago? Now I’ve heard it all.