Jim Edmonds churned the waters with his biting comments about the Cardinals and their local television partner in a long radio interview Monday. But one of his less-stinging comments drew a comical response from his now former TV partner.
Edmonds had been on the crew at what now is FanDuel Sports Network for the past 12 seasons, including often appearing as game analyst over the last 10 of those years in addition to his studio-commentary role. But he and FDSN are parting ways, .
One of the observations he made in his was that the introduction of a pitch clock two seasons ago into MLB games has so deeply cut into the time the analyst has to make a point that play-by-play broadcaster Chip Caray might be able to work solo:
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“The game is so fast now, it’s almost like Chip could do the game by himself,” which happened once when Edmonds had to leave because of a family emergency.
Whoa. Hold on, Caray says.
“Hasn’t America suffered enough?” he asked, chuckling.
Caray, turning serious, emphasized he doesn’t want to work alone.
“I’m no Vin Scully,” he said, a reference to the legendary Dodgers announcer who worked by himself. “My ego is such that I don’t need that kind of attention.”
Edmonds elaborated on his view.
“The game is so fast now you don’t have time to talk. They don’t need two people in the booth — it’s just commercial after commercial after commercial,” he said. “It’s not the same anymore; it definitely took a toll on the fun part of it.”
Caray, whose primary broadcast partner is Brad Thompson, agrees to an extent.
“My job is to say, ‘ground ball to second.’ It’s Brad or whoever’s job to say why,” he said. “So I do feel for the analysts now. In the past, we had a chance to tell stories, to talk about their experiences on the field. We just don’t have that time now because of the pitch clock. The pitch clock in my opinion is maybe the best thing that’s happened to the game in a long, long time. But those nuances to a color analyst’s perspective, it makes their job a lot more difficult.
“It is a storytelling game and people tune in to hear what Brad and Jim’s experiences were and they have to really work hard to condense those into 10- or 15-second sound bites and night after night it’s a real challenge not just for them but for me to set them up and get out of the way. As you know I like to talk, so that’s a challenge.”
Caray enjoys bantering with the analyst.
“I’d much rather sit there and talk with a dear friend about something we both love (baseball), and to get to do that most of the time with Brad is a real treat for me,” he said. “He’s excellent at what he does.”
He said he’ll miss Edmonds.
“Jim’s a great partner, a great friend — I loved working with him,” Caray said. “I learned a lot from him. He had a great run. I’m happy that he’s happy. I’m really, really proud of the work that we did together and wish him nothing but happiness with his wife and kids.”
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