The job of a sports play-by-play announcer is part rewarding, part thankless, part influential.
Play-by-play announcers are the eyes and ears for fans of teams who live far away or for whatever reason aren’t able to go see their favorite team in person. So there is a tremendous responsibility there, one which many announcers recognize and work hard every day to fulfill. But when their employers decide that simply stating facts or telling the truth is too much, it leaves one to wonder what the profession really is supposed to be about.
It is in that vein that we take you to Baltimore, MD, and talk about a controversy that has erupted in Major League Baseball concerning the reported suspension of one of the Orioles’ announcers over exactly this. The website Awful Announcing broke news yesterday that the team had suspended their television play-by-play man, Kevin Brown, one of a solid crop of young announcers that has come into the sport in recent years, following him pointing out the team’s struggles against a top divisional opponent, the Tampa Bay Rays, in recent seasons, during a recent broadcast.
It should be noted that as part of that point, there was a graphic that went along with it, so this discussion was pre-planned as part of the broadcast, and it seemed so innocuous. But this whole thing seems so on brand for team ownership. The Angelos family has owned the ballclub for over 30 years now, and has been loathed by fans for that entire time, and also has been a pain in the backside of Major League Baseball, as they fought hard to prevent the sport from relocating a team to Washington, DC. While they lost that fight – MLB relocated the Montreal Expos to the nation’s capital, where they are now called the Nationals, the effects of that battle still resonate to this day, in the form of continuing legal tangling between that team and the Orioles-owned MASN sports cable network, which broadcasts the Nationals’ games, and where these comments by Brown were broadcast.
This is not the first time this ownership group has been in the news for the wrong reasons surrounding their broadcasters – the team over the years has let go a pair of legendary voices in Jon Miller and Gary Thorne, Brown having replaced Thorne after the former announcer and the team could not agree on a new contract. And Miller’s dismissal by the Orioles was not lost on longtime New York Mets television announcer Gary Cohen, who made reference to it during a discussion about this subject on that team’s TV broadcast last night:
🎙Gary Cohen #Mets #KevinBrown #Orioles #MLB pic.twitter.com/Pyc1LXBBK8
— Announcer Schedules (@announcerskeds) August 8, 2023
In addition to Cohen, announcers for several other teams also, via social media or on their TV broadcasts of their games last night, called attention to this and strongly criticized the move.
One can only hope that all of the unwanted attention will force the Orioles to relent and put Brown back on the air, but knowing the Angelos’s and their history, that may not be in the cards. And even if they did put him back on the air, one wonders if Brown, who has an extensive resume already in his young career calling multiple sports both at the local and national (ESPN) level, will be willing to take them up on that opportunity.
What this whole controversy threatens to do is make this Oriole team, which has been one of the bright stories in the game this summer with their successful season, perhaps one of the more hated ones if they make the playoffs. This whole matter seems so unnecessary, and yet, because of who it is that owns this team, seems not to be so surprising.
