Commentary : Jim Palmer to Try Hand at Play-by-Play

In a way, the selection of Jim Palmer as play-by-play man for the Baltimore Orioles’ telecasts here is quite fitting.

This year’s Orioles are going to be short on experience. And when it comes to play-by-play, Palmer is the greenest of rookies.

Although Palmer started working for ABC even before his pitching days ended in 1984, it has been exclusively as an analyst. What little play-by-play he has done has come for Home Team Sports -- just a handful of games.

Still, as with those guys in Orioles camp wearing the high numbers, the club must be banking on Palmer’s potential -- unless it just wanted to pair Palmer and Brooks Robinson in the broadcast booth as a tangible reminder of the team’s glory days.

Palmer’s work with ABC has been generally top-flight, although he sometimes displays a tendency to leave too little room for comments from colleagues. This trait--and his play-by-play work on HTS showed it indeed may be ingrained in his announcing--would ill serve him on Orioles games.

Robinson is not as polished as Palmer’s ABC colleague Tim McCarver, but Robinson has much to add to a broadcast -- if his partner allows him the time. Trying to fit Robinson’s homespun delivery into the space reserved for pithy commentary would be like asking Boog Powell to squeeze into Tippy Martinez’s uniform pants.

Palmer’s voice does not have the resonance of a Chuck Thompson or even of the man Palmer is replacing, Jim Simpson. And during Palmer’s spring-training play-by-play stints last year, ears accustomed to smoother voices first reacted solely to hearing Palmer’s tones too much, regardless of what he was saying.

Of course, it’s practically a cliche to complain that a television sportscaster talks too much, and Palmer should carry plenty of good will from Orioles fans into the booth. Besides, given that the other main candidates for job apparently were Simpson, whose performance last season threatened to eclipse the memory of all those fine years announcing baseball for NBC, and Jim Karvellas, a basketball announcer who has been away from baseball even longer than Simpson had, Palmer was the best choice.

With any luck, Palmer will compensate for his lack of play-by-play experience with his baseball expertise.

Hey, maybe he’ll even be play-by-play rookie of the year.

After Palmer’s hiring was announced, Simpson was very gracious, although he certainly could have complained about being left hanging for a long time. But Simpson even indicated he knew he wasn’t up to speed last season.

“When I came back, people said, ‘Welcome back to baseball,’ ” Simpson said Wednesday. “But I said, ‘No, I’m not back in baseball yet.’ It took all summer to get back to even approach where I was before.”

Simpson said he had been working on preparing for this season, and would have given an improved performance.

“I am better prepared to do baseball than any time since I left NBC,” he said. “In my mind, my regaining of the feeling of what baseball is would have been much better.”

The best part of ABC’s coverage last weekend of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Baltimore may have been the commentary from Dick Button and Peggy Fleming. It wasn’t so much what they said, but how they said it. Button and Fleming must have looked at more Axels than an auto mechanic sees in a lifetime, but they still can show delight in a well-done performance.

Another mark of the commentary was the appropriate lack of it during a performance. This was particularly true during the Kristi Yamaguchi-Rudi Galindo long program, when ABC let viewers enjoy their skating, unadorned by anything but music.

However, a feature on Yamaguchi once again pointed up the problem of trying to profile a 17-year-old whose life is almost completely taken up by a sport. ABC showed her shopping, which it seems we’ve seen before. The profile also spoke of her “certain serenity” that was “perhaps a product of her Oriental background.” If ABC was going to deal in stereotypes, why not just call her inscrutable and be done with it?

And then there is the matter of David Santee. Even Barbara Walters would be hard-pressed to get insightful comments from teen-age skaters immediately after they left the ice, so what chance does Santee have?

Donna de Varona was supposed to fill that role, but she took ill. At least her replacement didn’t show the insensitivity he displayed in speaking to Brian Orser at the Calgary Olympics.

Just once, though, it would be great to hear an interesting exchange between skater and interviewer. Something like this:

Interviewer: On the last part of the program, you seemed to have problems executing a lift. What went wrong?

Male pairs skater: Why don’t you ask El Blimpo over there? If that fat cow didn’t have to eat all those ice cream sundaes this week, maybe I could get her up in the air.

Female pairs skater: And maybe if you spent more time practicing and less time worrying about gluing extra sequins on your outfit, we might have won a trip to Paris.

Male: Paris? Why, so you could have inhaled some French food? They never would let us go up the Eiffel Tower -- you’d probably make it collapse.

Female: Ah, go blow-dry your hair some more, you twit.

Now, that would be great television.

Whatever factors have kept the National Hockey League from staying on a major television network, this much is clear: Dan Kelly was not one of them. Kelly, the St. Louis Blues announcer who died of cancer last week, called NHL games for CBS, spreading his trademark “He shoots . . . he scores,” beyond St. Louis and “Hockey Night in Canada.”

If hockey ever breaks back out of cable television, it’s a shame Kelly won’t be around to bring it to us.

NBC is patting itself on the back for not presenting today’s Michael Moorer-Frankie Swindell bout as a title fight, even though the fledgling World Boxing Organization says Moorer is its light heavyweight champ. That’s fine, but shouldn’t the network have taken a stand about two boxing federations ago?

NBC also has Maryland-North Carolina basketball today.

Later, CBS has a match-up you may have seen before--the Lakers-Boston Celtics.

On Monday, CBS has the Cleveland Cavaliers-Houston Rockets, offering an alternative to soap operas for those who have Presidents’ Day off.

Former Utah Jazz Coach Frank Layden has approached CBS about a commentator’s job, not just for basketball, according to USA Today.