On the television... and the radio

So, the news broke today that longtime NESN play-by-play man Don Orsillo, who grew up just down the road from where I live today, was not returning for the 2016 Red Sox season. This came as a shock to most of the people in New England.
When Orsillo came around 15 years ago, he stepped into the shoes of a beloved local figure in Sean McDonough. There was a period of adjustment for Red Sox fans, but Orsillo's easy-going nature and his great sense of humor, along with his skills as a play-by-play guy, won over fans pretty quickly. He bonded with Jerry Remy, the longtime NESN analyst and over the last 15 years they have developed a fantastic give and take that makes watching Red Sox games easy, even when the team is in the tank, which sadly over the last few years has been more often than not.
Additionally, Orsillo has adjusted pretty well to curveballs thrown his way over the course of the last few years. When Remy was dealing with illness, Orsillo worked with many different partners and handled it incredibly well. When Remy took time off to deal with his son's legal issues, Orsillo again handled it beautifully. This is a tribute to his professionalism and his ability.
The word around social media (which as we know, is never wrong), is that Dave O'Brien, one of the WEEI radio voices of the Red Sox for the last few years, will be taking Orsillo's spot in the NESN booth. O'Brien has a long history in television and in fact, misses all Monday Red Sox games to call television games for ESPN, among his other duties.
Because I spend lots of time in my car and in the office (where there is no television), I end up listening to a lot of games on the radio (or on my iPad on the SiriusXM app). Dave O'Brien is absolutely fantastic, one of the most incredible play-by-play guys I've had the pleasure of listening to. He gets the description right on the money seemingly every time. When he takes the day off, the broadcast suffers, despite the best work of the always-fantastic Joe Castiglione. Lou Merloni is a competent sub as an analyst, but frequent substitute analyst Rob Bradford can't string together three sentences that make sense.
I believe Dave O'Brien will do a fantastic job on television, if that is indeed how things are going to go. I love Don Orsillo and will miss him, but I also love Dave O'Brien and respect his work, so I don't expect a drop-off in the NESN broadcasts.
However, the second play-by-play seat in the WEEI booth is what I am worried about, being as I listen a lot. With Joe Castiglione getting up there (unfortunately he won't be in the booth forever), I think WEEI needs to make sure that the person they hire to replace O'Brien is a proven play-by-play guy, not just someone who can offer analysis. One of the best things about the current radio broadcasts is that O'Brien and Castiglione split the games up, with each taking a few innings at a time, giving listeners analysis when they aren't doing the play-by-play.
While I'm sure Merloni would be able to handle the job, I wonder if he's up for leaving the comfort of a daily radio gig. And while I've never heard Merloni do play-by-play, I think he might be able to do it. I have no confidence in Bradford at all and my sincere hope is that he isn't even remotely considered for this position. Dale Arnold would be a great choice (and he's already working on the network), but like Merloni, wonder if he'd be up for leaving the comfort of a daily radio gig.
This will be an interesting offseason as Red Sox fans look to see just how next year's team will take shape (that's a topic for another day), but it will also be interesting to see how the alleged vacant seat in the WEEI booth is filled.
As long as they don't bring back Glenn Geffner (the fact that he was part of the broadcast team that called a Sox World Series win still bugs me), who was by far the worst full-time broadcaster I've heard on WEEI's Sox broadcast, I think they'll be OK. Oh, and yes, no Bradford either.

After day one, everything's just peachy

I can't stress how happy I was to hear Joe Castiglione back on my radio and Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy back on my television yesterday. I was a bit disappointed that Dave O'Brien was away from the radio booth, but I was happy that the powers that be at WEEI put Lou Merloni on the broadcast with Joe instead of Rob Bradford. Bradford makes me want to turn the radio off. But that's a whole other story.
Here are a few observations from what is one of my favorite days of the year.
Hanley Ramirez will be the American League MVP. After that performance, nothing will go wrong for the rest of the year and he'll finish with 83 homers and 210 RBIs. He won't drop a single ball in left field and will learn to play the wall better than anyone since Yaz.
Dustin Pedroia will finish second in the AL MVP voting, falling short of his teammate by three votes. He will finish with only 78 homers and 190 RBIs and will beat himself up throughout the offseason for slacking off.
Clay Buchholz will win the American League Cy Young Award after going 34-1 and finishing with an ERA of 1.03. His one loss will come in a 1-0 defeat to the Toronto Blue Jays on Sept. 9 when John Farrell elects to sit Ramirez, David Ortiz and Pedroia in the series finale to get playing time for Daniel Nava, Brock Holt and Allen Craig, none of whom had been on the field since the end of April.
Pablo Sandoval will go through the entire month of April without a hit before coming alive in May and only striking out once in the entire month. However, he will be deemed expendable thanks to the impressive Garin Cecchini parade in AAA and will be traded right before the deadline for Jon Lester. Lester will take over the closer job for Koji Uehara, who admits that he's really 55 years old when his arm literally falls off his body in June. Koji vows to be back by the playoffs. Cecchini will take over at third base and never relinquish his hold, winning the AL Rookie of the Year Award.
Shane Victorino won't have a single hit for the entire season, but will be on base three times in every single game before himself being traded to the Phillies for Cole Hamels at the beginning of May. Hamels will come to Boston with his wife, Survivor Amazon contestant Heidi (Strobel) Hamels and become an immediate fan favorite when he drills Alex Rodriguez in the butt with a pitch in his first start for the Red Sox. Victorino's trade makes room for Rusney Castillo to enter the lineup and he becomes the second coming of Dwight Evans in right field. However, he ends up suffering an injury diving into the stands to rob Mike Trout of a game-winning homer in the first game after the All-Star break, opening the door for Jackie Bradley Jr., who goes on to win the Gold Glove in right field despite only playing half a season at the Major League level.
David Ortiz will not step out of the batter's box between pitches once the entire season, and thus the longest game of the season for the Red Sox clocks in at two hours and 23 minutes, against the Yankees on Sunday, May 3.
Ryan Hanigan will make people forget that Blake Swihart is in AAA, hitting an even .350 for the season and will allow only one passed ball. However, he will only have 12 RBIs for the season because the bases are almost never occupied when he comes up.
Mookie Betts will demolish Joe Dimaggio's hit streak record of 56 games by hitting safely in the first 160 games of the season. His streak will be stopped on the second to last day of the season when Cleveland's Michael Bourn tracks down a surefire double into the right-center field gap. The end of the streak will send him into a funk throughout the playoffs, as he only registers one hit in the entire postseason. However, that hit will be a 12th inning walk-off homer against the Cincinnati Reds in game six of the World Series. The ball will soar into the October night and carom off the Carlton Fisk foul pole as Betts waves it fair while dancing down the first base line, leading Peter Gammons to break out his famous, "Then all of a sudden the ball was suspended out there in the black of the morning like the Mystic River Bridge," line in a special piece for the Boston Globe celebrating the Red Sox World Series win.
And finally, hitting coach Chili Davis will come out of retirement for one day and rip a grand slam homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to lead the Red Sox past the Rays on Sept. 21. He will promptly retire the next day and go back to coaching hitting, saying he just wanted to show Pedroia that  anyone can hit homers.

Where were you 29 years ago?

Most of what I write about in my work days is sports related, but today I am taking a trip back in time, back 29 years ago to Jan. 28, 1986.
Back then, I was a kid, not the old man I have grown into now. I was a student at E.G. Sherburne School in Pelham, NH. A testament to how long ago that was is the simple fact that the school doesn't exist anymore. The building converted to other uses years ago.
Jan. 28, 1986 started out as a day for celebration, particularly for the state of New Hampshire. It was the day that New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe was boarding the space shuttle and heading into space. Much had been made of Christa winning the chance to become the first teacher in space and the buildup was fantastic across the state of New Hampshire. As home to the first American in space, Alan Shepard, New Hampshire had a pre-existing connection to the space program, but this was something new. This was a new generation of individuals getting inthralled at the idea of the space program and the possibilities that it presented.
As students in New Hampshire, we'd done numerous projects on Christa McAuliffe's exciting opportunity and Jan. 28, 1986 was the day that we were going to get to see this opportunity reach its zenith.
Nowadays, there are televisions in every classroom, or at least it seems that way. Movie presentations and the like are the norm. Back in 1986, this was not normal. Getting to watch television in school was a special treat.
The fourth grade at EG Sherburne School was in a pod sort of style. There was one big room divided into three rooms and then (for some reason) a fourth room that was separated by cement walls. The fourth graders all gathered in one of the "rooms"  (it wasn't my room) with the television at the front so that we could witness history. This was much the same for other grades (or at least I think it was, the details of that are a little fuzzy).
I remember the excitement leading up to the launch of the Challenger in Florida. The broadcast showed the faces of Christa McAuliffe's parents watching from a safe distance away. As the shuttle shot up into the bright blue sky, the plumes of smoke billowing from its tank, it seemed as if all was right with the world, as if everything was going as planned.
But obviously, we all know that things didn't go as planned. Christa McAuliffe never made it into space. The Challenger exploded in midair shortly after takeoff, as bystanders watched in horror and thousands of kids across the state (and the country) watched from their school desks, really unsure as to what happened when that one single plume of smoke changed to numerous plumes out of a large explosion in the sky.
I remember the teachers ushering us back to our respective classes, unsure themselves what they had just witnessed, but obviously well aware that it was not good. They did their best to not let on that maybe they were as worried as we were.
Quite often on Jan. 28 I recount this story. I've written about it in my weekly sports column in the newspaper and on Facebook. But for some reason, this is one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. It spawned a major science project for me the very next year and always creeps back into my mind at the end of January.
I remember the names of Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Dick Scobee, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair and Michael Smith almost from memory. And I remember watching President Reagan on television that night, giving what has been classified as one of the most significant speeches of the 20th Century, addressing America through the television in lieu of his scheduled State of the Union address. His closing line, borrowed from a poem High Flight, "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God.'"
Some memories never escape you. I won't forget just where I was and what I was doing, the last time I saw them.