The Atlanta Braves have announced that with the purchase of the Turner South sports network by Fox, that all games previously scheduled to be shown on Turner South will be announced by the illustrious team of Bob Rathbrun and Jeff Torborg. The usual Braves gang of Skip Caray, Chip Caray, Pete Van Wieren, Don Sutton and Joe Simpson will only be heard on the radio or on TBS.
TBS will broadcast just 58 more Braves games this year. TBS is contracted for 75 Braves game next year, but just 45 per year from 2008 through 2012.
The Braves seven different announcers still pales in comparison to the mighty army of the YES network. The linked page lists people who are just in the studio or work basketball, but it also doesn't include Al Leiter and John Flaherty who joined up with YES this year. And also omits Suzyn Waldman.
Some are also football folks, but the Yanks use 12 announcers for baseball: Sterling and Waldman on the radio, Jones in the locker room/dugout, Lorenz in the studio, and Kay, Kaat, Singleton, Murcer, Lieter, O'Neill, Justice and Flaherty for color and play-by-play, of the seven former players, only Singleton, a New Yorker and ex-Met, never played for the Yankees. If you ask me the best booth is Singleton, Kaat and Leiter, a delightful Kay-free line-up that they used for the Devil Rays series this past week.
Also worth noting that YES has also employed David Cone and Joe Girardi in the past (Cone's Mets comeback dashed his YES career). Also, of the five Yankees who retired after last season, three became announcers (Leiter, Flaherty and Tino Martinez, who is on Baseball Tonight--the two others being Kevin Brown and Rey Sanchez).
Suzyn Waldman is on Yankees.com however.
Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.