BALTIMORE — Last year, Jim Palmer sent Ben McDonald to his barber. Over a minute and a half, the Orioles pitchers-turned-broadcasters went back and forth about Dawn, her ownership of Shearz Inc. of Little Italy, her tattoos and the fact it had been more than a decade since she had given someone a flattop before McDonald walked through the door.
“These are the stories we can’t tell on TV anymore because it’s too fast,” McDonald quipped.
But beyond the occasional lost anecdote, the Orioles’ broadcasters say they haven’t felt a significant change in how they go about their jobs since MLB introduced a pitch clock among its rule changes for the 2023 season.
Through 12 games, Baltimore’s average time of game was about 2 hours and 46 minutes, down half an hour from the same period last year. With much of that cut from the deadtime between pitches, that’s meant 30 fewer minutes for insights and hijinks from the team’s Mid-Atlantic Sports Network and Orioles Radio Network crews, but the broadcasters say the adjustment has been minor.
“I think on the whole, they nailed it; Major League Baseball got it right,” MASN play-by-play broadcaster Kevin Brown said. “I’m glad they took their time with it in the minors. I genuinely do not notice it most of the time.”
During spring training, Chicago White Sox broadcaster Jason Benetti told Brown his first experience with the pitch clock felt as if he was calling a basketball game thanks to the increased pace, leaving Brown concerned despite his experience with that sport for ESPN. But he was comforted when, in the second game of the Orioles’ season at Fenway Park, he and Palmer had an aside about “Fever Pitch,” the 2005 Boston-based romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon.
“I thought, ‘All right, we’re fine. We’re good now,’ ” Brown said with a chuckle. “I was worried that we wouldn’t able to have as much fun on the air because what is a baseball broadcast if not informative, but also entertaining?”
Palmer needed no such moment to put his mind at ease, given the game moved at a pace similar to this during his two decades in the majors. Longtime Baltimore pitching coach and former manager Ray Miller’s mantra was “Work fast, change speeds, throw strikes,” and Palmer was effective at each aspect in his Hall of Fame career.
He’s heard from fans on social media who have watched rebroadcasts of his outings and noted how efficient he was between pitches, though he said hitters’ lack of batting gloves and associated mannerisms played a factor in that. But those player-to-player quirks are something McDonald said he worried fans might miss.
“I like the faster pace,” McDonald said, adding that broadcasting with a pitch clock is far preferred to doing so remotely. “[But] as a kid, I wanted to watch Nolan Ryan walk around the mound and pick up the bag and kick it off a little bit because the more I got to see my favorite dude, the happier I was watching TV. When Pete Rose stepped in the box, I wanted to watch Pete, how he had his shoes tied, how he had his socks. Everything about him, I wanted to see on TV.”
McDonald, who also serves as an analyst for the SEC Network, said he would like to see MLB adopt the timer format used by college baseball, where the clock has 20 seconds no matter the situation. In the majors, pitchers have 15 seconds to start their motion with no one on base and 20 seconds with any base runners; the clock’s expiration results in an automatic ball, while the batter must be ready to hit with 8 seconds on the clock or receive an automatic strike. He also bemoaned the two-disengagement limit now facing pitchers, with a third unsuccessful pickoff attempt during one plate appearance resulting in a balk. Palmer likewise noted that although hitters get one timeout per at-bat, there’s no way for pitchers to stop the clock with no one on base.
But both former pitchers welcome the improved pace, as do their counterparts. Listening back to an Orioles radio broadcast he did last season, Geoff Arnold mired through a half-inning against the Chicago Cubs that he said lasted about 20 minutes, at one point going more than 5 minutes between balls in play.
“That’s just a product that isn’t the best,” Arnold said. “This is the majors. The players have to adjust, and the broadcasters do, too.”
He and Brett Hollander, who primarily split play-by-play duties on the Orioles Radio Network, both noted the pitch clock presents a challenge for their broadcasts that doesn’t exist for MASN, with the requirement to detail each pitch without the backdrop of video should the conversation veer elsewhere.
Hollander said that’s led to occasionally fewer details on the background of opposing teams’ players, offering the example of an opponent’s fifth-best reliever working through a long at-bat in the middle innings.
“There were things you were delving into about his life in 2017 that maybe you’re not getting to right now,” Hollander said. “No one wants NASCAR baseball. No one, even fans who want a shorter game by a lot. There’s something that baseball brings, but I think it had to speed up, the pace had to get better. There had to be more action.”
But despite the changes, Hollander feels he and Arnold have kept up their “usual schtick,” believing the shortened games haven’t produced lesser broadcasts. Brown said he’s found himself calling some pitches quicker than he might have in the past, wanting to make sure Palmer and McDonald have space to flex their experiential knowledge.
“I’m happy to talk less,” Brown said. “I do not want to hog the broadcast. I do not want it to feel lopsided in my favor. Because number one, it shouldn’t generally, and number two, [Palmer’s] a Hall of Famer and [McDonald’s] a No. 1 pick, so I always want to hear from them.
“My worry was that there might not be enough time for them, but so far, it hasn’t felt that way.”
