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Jones: Fox Sports Sun shows depth in Rays coverage

 
Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longoria (3) makes a run home for a score in the in the final game of a three-game series between the Tampa Bay Rays and AL East rival the Baltimore Orioles at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. on Sunday, June 25, 2017.
Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longoria (3) makes a run home for a score in the in the final game of a three-game series between the Tampa Bay Rays and AL East rival the Baltimore Orioles at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. on Sunday, June 25, 2017.
Published June 26, 2017

tom jones' two cents

Tampa Bay Times columnist Tom Jones looks back at the best and worst from a weekend of televised sports.

Best coverage

Fun weekend to watch the Rays on Fox Sports Sun though the broadcast was missing its MVP: analyst Brian Anderson.

Anderson has been on vacation for the past week, but the broadcast team carried on without him, and carried on well. Orestes Destradre and Doug Waechter did admirable jobs filling in. Destrade has been on the Rays broadcasts for several years and does a good job on the pregame and postgame shows. Waechter has a bright future in the booth.

Waechter, a St. Petersburg native and former Rays pitcher, is relaxed and knowledgeable while analyzing a game, and strikes a solid balance of neither talking above or below the viewers. Sometimes it's easy to sound like a know-it-all when you're a former player and relatively new to the booth, which can be insulting to the viewers who do know the game. But Waechter's comfortable delivery makes it feel as if he is sitting in your living room watching a game with you.

Anderson is missed, no question. But it's nice to know that when he can't be there, the Rays have capable replacements.

Meantime, the Rays did a neat thing Saturday with pregame host Rich Hollenberg taking viewers through how to score a game. Even those who know how to do it learned a few things, such as who invented the system used to score a game and why, for example, the letter K is used for strikeout.

It never hurts a broadcast when the Rays are entertaining. And the Rays, win or lose, are entertaining.

So-so coverage

ESPN is getting mixed reviews for its coverage of the NBA draft on Thursday. But the ratings were up 13 percent over a year ago. The biggest complaint was that if you followed the draft on social media, you learned the picks well ahead of their announcements on ESPN. In some cases, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports' NBA blog the Vertical — he's the best hoops reporter on the planet — was 10 minutes ahead. Fox's Bruce Feldman had the tweet of the night when he wrote on Twitter, " 'Woj' so far ahead of the TV coverage he's gonna reveal the Kentucky players going Top 10 of the 2018 NBA draft before their show wraps tonite."

Just a thought, but after Lonzo Ball was taken with the second pick by the Lakers, was the draft interesting at all?

Biggest vote

The Hockey Hall of Fame class of 2017 will be announced today. It's a downright crime that former Lightning captain Dave Andreychuk still isn't in, and his chances today are iffy with those in the first year of eligibility including Daniel Alfredsson and Teemu Selanne. Others still waiting to get in include Jeremy Roenick, Mark Recchi, Alexander Mogilny, Paul Kariya and Theo Fleury. The maximum number of male players that can get in is four.

Andreychuk is 14th on the all-time goals list with 614. And every player who has scored 600 goals, with exceptions of Jaromir Jagr and Jarome Iginla, are in the Hall. And the only reason Jagr and Iginla aren't in is because they are still playing.

Many argue that Andreychuk scored that many goals only because he played so long. (He's seventh all time with 1,639 games.) But shouldn't we applaud longevity instead of penalizing it? It just shows he was effective enough to play that many games.

The Hall's selection committee is made up of 19 members who are either in the media or former players or league executives. They all are respected names, but it's time the committee makes its voting public. Also, it needs to include women, who are woefully under-represented in the Hall.

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Best soccer coverage

Fox deserves big-time pats on the back for its coverage of the FIFA Confederations Cup (below). Game coverage is excellent, but it's the studio show that really rocks, especially if you follow international soccer closely. There's a lot of "inside soccer'' here, but that's exactly what it should be. Those watching pregames for such matches are diehards. You cater to them and let the novices, who probably aren't watching anyway, catch up.

Rob Stone plays anchor to a who's who of international commentators, including Americans Alexi Lalas and Aly Wagner, Germany's Arne Friedrich and Mexico's Mariano Trujillo and Fernando Fiore. I'm captivated by anything Lalas says, but the entire panel is top-notch.

Best feature

The best sports feature I've seen in the past week is a piece that HBO's Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel did on triathlete Jeff Glasbrenner. What makes Glasbrenner's story so compelling is that he lost a leg in a farming accident when he was 8 years old. Besides competing in triathlons, Glasbrenner also became the first American amputee to scale Mount Everest.

But there is so much more to the story, such as his relationship with a daughter who is going through heartbreaking medical issues.

Keep tabs on HBO, which is always re-airing reruns of the most recent episodes.

Media tidbits

Who is going to replace Mike Francesa, the legendary New York radio host who is supposed to step down at the end of the year? One name being considered is former Bucs quarterback Chris Simms.

ESPN announced that Baseball Tonight host Karl Ravech will host the network's coverage of MLB's Home Run Derby during the All-Star festivities.

No surprise here: Sports Business Daily is reporting that NBC and Fox already are talking to Dale Earnhardt Jr. about joining their NASCAR broadcasts next year after he retires from racing.

Former Ravens linebacker and ESPN analyst Ray Lewis is joining Fox and Fox Sports 1 as an NFL analyst. Don't be surprised if he shows up on other FS1 debate shows.

Interesting and surprising: ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball ratings are up. Just under 2 million are tuning in each week.

Three things that popped into my head

1. Lightning GM Steve Yzerman still has work to do. Unless Slater Koekkoek and Andrej Sustr take their games to whole other levels, the current defensive corps is not where it needs to be if the Bolts are going to be legitimate Cup contenders.

2. Win a couple, lose a couple. Win one, lose two. Win three, lose two. I'll keep saying it: This is who the Rays are, and this is who they will be when they finish the year right around .500.

3. Do you notice that media outlets doing most of the complaining about the outrageous talk of LaVar Ball (father of NBA No. 2 draft pick Lonzo Ball) are from networks that give Loudmouth LaVar the most air time? Yes, I'm talking to you, ESPN and Fox Sports 1.