MASN is calling it the "Battle of the Beltway." But you don't have to - you can just watch the unique presentation MASN is giving this weekend's Orioles-Washington Nationals series.
Combining the announcing teams for the two clubs it carries, MASN will serve up a three-man booth with alternating play-by-play men. Orioles analyst Jim Palmer and Nationals analyst Don Sutton - that's 592 major league victories between them - will comment during the whole game, while the Orioles' Gary Thorne works the first three innings and the last 2 1/2 and the Nats' Bob Carpenter calls the fourth through the top of the seventh.
Orioles sideline reporter Amber Theoharis will be joined by the Nationals' Debbi Taylor to report on their respective teams throughout the game. During the seventh-inning stretch, the two will engage in a mixed martial arts match just behind the mound. The loser has to wax the winner's car.
Yes, I made that up. I mean, you can only take unique so far.
The replacement for Bryant Gumbel won't be Al Michaels. The NFL Network offered the Thursday night play-by-play job to Michaels, but he decided to stick with just his NBC Sunday night schedule, The New York Times reported. "NBC was open to it, but it didn't work out from Al's point of view," Steve Bornstein, president of the NFL Network, told the Times. "We never got to the specifics."
As previously stated, the choice here to replace Gumbel is the guy in town for the Preakness, NBC's Tom Hammond.
Live, from Bristol, it's weekday mornings!
That's not how ESPN made its announcement this week of the change coming Aug. 11, but it could have. (ESPN also could have gone Chevy Chase old school and had Bob Ley fall down before shouting out the words.) No more morning reruns of the last SportsCenter from the night before. From 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., each hour will bring a live SportsCenter.
And welcome aboard, Hannah Storm. She'll be one of the anchors from 9 a.m. to noon. Did she have a catchphrase back on CBS' Early Show? Maybe her old pal Albert Belle could suggest some.
(For those who don't recall: Belle, then with the Cleveland Indians, unleashed a profanity-laced tirade at Storm in the dugout during the 1995 World Series, when she worked for NBC.)
Not that anyone at ESPN checked with me - maybe it's those things I say about Chris Berman - but this is a solid move that should especially benefit viewers who don't have ESPNews but want to see updated information during the day.
Nice get by HBO in snagging famed former New England Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh for Real Sports tonight at 8. Through the transcript of Andrea Kremer's interview released by HBO, Walsh's tale of life with Bill Belichick already is generating headlines.
Walsh doesn't let Belichick off the hook for the way he tried to brush off Spygate.
"Coach Belichick's explanation for having misinterpreted the rules, to me, that really didn't sound like taking responsibility for what we had done," Walsh told Kremer, "especially considering the great lengths that we had gone through to hide what we were doing."
ray.frager@baltsun.com
