In Quest for Color, Television Is Also Getting Off-Color

Last year, golfer Lori Garbacz yelled an obscenity at a TV cameraman during a tournament at Denver. She was fined $3,500 by the LPGA.

If baseball fined players for off-color language, many would soon be broke.

ABC’s field microphones have picked up several choice comments during the playoffs. Two expletives during Game 2 of the American League series stood out.

“It was one of those unfortunate things that happen sometimes,” ABC spokesman Irv Brodsky said. “We use those mikes on all our baseball games.”

The network will continue using them to pick up crowd noise and the flavor of the game, Brodsky said. With one microphone located behind home plate, one on the third-base camera and another above the first-base dugout, ABC has gotten more flavor than it bargained for.

Maybe ABC should be more judicious in its placement of field microphones.

The announcing on the playoffs, for the most part, has been outstanding. Both Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver are smooth and offer insightful and meaningful comments. It’s obvious they do their homework. And it’s obvious baseball is Al Michaels’ forte.

But Michaels stirred up Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda, for one, during Game 2. After Angel third base coach Moose Stubing’s foul-up, Michaels said Dodger third base coach Joe Amalfitano was wrongfully criticized by some people in Los Angeles for causing Pedro Guerrero’s injury in spring training.

Actually, Amalfitano was never criticized for Guerrero’s abortive slide into third. What he was criticized for was just standing by and not rushing to Guerrero’s aid. However, Amalfitano later explained that he purposely left Guerrero alone because he knew through a previous experience that moving Guerrero might cause further injury.

Michaels and Lasorda talked Thursday. “Nothing against Al,” Lasorda said, “I just didn’t want anyone thinking that Joey had in any way been accused of having anything to do with Guerrero’s injury. That was my only concern.”

Amalfitano missed Michaels’ comment because he was talking on the phone at the time. A relative called to ask him about what had just happened to Stubing.

ABC has taken quite a bit of heat for Game 2 of the American League series starting at 3:07 p.m., Boston time, when the sunlight played havoc.

TV’s control over the starting times of sporting events has become a way of life. That’s why Game 3 of the National League series will begin at 9:10 a.m. PDT Saturday.

But the control is most predominant in college football. Teams must continually change game times to accommodate television.

UCLA, for the second straight week, must play at 11:40 a.m. because of CBS, which is regionally televising Saturday’s game against Arizona at the Rose Bowl.

It was incorrectly reported in this space last week that UCLA turned down CBS’ request for an 11:40 start. What UCLA actually turned down was CBS’ request to extend the time limit for selecting the game.

UCLA is obliged by league stipulations to go along with TV requests since the rights money is shared by all schools in the Pacific 10.

A CBS spokeswoman said the network wants college football to be over by 6 p.m. EDT, so that affiliates in the East are able to televise local programming. Games televised only in the West, such as Saturday’s UCLA game, are affected because the network prefers a uniform time for college football throughout the nation.

Will someone please pull the plug on Al Trautwig, ABC’s sideline reporter on college football. Whether he’s ordering chicken-in-a-box while traveling the highway between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Ala., ordering takeout pizza at a game, or interviewing some fan, his bits are always meaningless, humorless and distracting.

And will someone tell NBC’s Bob Trumpy that the Raiders’ comeback victory over Kansas City last Sunday was not unbelievable, as he seemed to think.

ABC is televising two college football games regionally Saturday--Miami at West Virginia and Oklahoma vs. Texas. Most of the nation, including Los Angeles, will get Miami (Fla.)-West Virginia, even though West Virginia is 2-3 and coming off a 13-7 loss to Virginia Tech.

Oklahoma-Texas, a strong rivalry since 1929, would seem to be the more appealing game.

Making matters worse, Corey McPherrin, last seen in Los Angeles during an embarrassing performance on the UCLA-Oklahoma game Sept. 6, will handle the play-by-play on Miami-West Virginia. McPherrin drew the assignment because Keith Jackson is working the National League playoffs.

It’s unfortunate that ABC didn’t assign Don Drysdale, who has been doing baseball for ABC since 1978, to the National League series, freeing Jackson for football.

Lynn Swann is paired with McPherrin Saturday and will be back on the air Monday night, working the Cincinnati Bengals-Pittsburgh Steelers NFL game with Frank Gifford, who will switch from color to play-by-play for the second straight week.

Although O.J. Simpson is not as glib as, say, Jim Palmer, his work as commentator on last Monday night’s Seattle Seahawks-San Diego Chargers game was a welcome relief from Gifford’s constant soft-pedaling and apologizing.

Now that Channel 2 has a new general manager, Tom Van Amburg, sportscaster Jim Hill will be back on the air Sunday night, as host of “Sunday Sports Final.” Hill took an unplanned vacation Sept. 15 to protest the station’s new local news format that allowed little time for sports. Van Amburg told Hill Wednesday: “Let’s go back to work and have some fun.”

Said Hill: “That was good enough for me. I was ready to go to work right then.”

Broadcast Notes Announcers on the Arizona-UCLA game will be Verne Lundquist and Pat Haden. . . . Pro football Sunday: Rams at Atlanta on Channel 2 at 10 a.m., with Tom Brookshier and Dick Vermeil reporting, and Denver at San Diego on Channel 4 at 1 p.m., with Charlie Jones and Jimmy Cefalo reporting. . . . College football Oct. 18: Iowa-Michigan on CBS at 12:30 p.m., Tennessee-Alabama on ABC at 12:30 p.m., Ohio State-Purdue on WTBS at 4 p.m. and Air Force-Notre Dame on Channel 13 and WGN at a time to be announced. . . . ABC has hired announcer Becky Dixon full time. She’ll work college football, “Wide World of Sports” and the 1988 Winter Olympics. A former Tulsa news anchorwoman, she has worked sports part-time for ESPN, USA and Mizlou, as well as ABC. She has recently been doing ABC’s scholar-athlete segments. . . . ABC has reached a new three-year agreement with the New York Racing Assn. to televise the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park, the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct and the Travers Stakes at Saratoga, beginning next year. . . . Prime Ticket should re-run San Jose State’s 45-41 win over Fresno State last Saturday. The game was a classic. Fresno, trailing by 24 points, scored 31 straight points and then, with 1:15 left, led, 41-31. But San Jose scored two touchdowns in the final 42 seconds and won.

Boxing beat: A doubleheader with Thomas Hearns facing Doug DeWitt and Iran Barkley taking on James Kinchen will be televised by Showtime next Friday night at 6. . . . Mark Breland faces Ralph Twining on USA Wednesday night, delayed at 8. . . . ESPN will begin televising fights regularly from the Country Club in Reseda, beginning Nov. 21 with a bout involving unbeaten middleweight Michael Nunn. . . . ESPN will televise tonight’s Breeders’ Crown harness race at Los Alamitos. The live coverage begins at 9 p.m. . . . A one-hour Oak Tree special on Channel 56 tonight at 8 will preview Saturday’s Norfolk Stakes and Sunday’s Oak Tree Invitational. . . . Channel 52 will televise tonight’s Roosevelt-Garfield high school football game, delayed at 11:30 p.m. and again at 3 p.m. Saturday. Announcers Mario Solis and Efren Herrera will provide bilingual commentary. . . . Baseball is the theme of the Disney movie, “Tiger Town,” on ABC Sunday night. The movie, filmed at Tiger Stadium in Detroit, stars Roy Scheider and young Justin Henry. Tiger Manager Sparky Anderson appears as himself.