I’ve neglected to take full advantage of MLB.TV’s slate of spring training contests and as such, missed out on what The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Jay Posner characterizes as a rather crass sales pitch by the Padres’ broadcast duo.
Producer Ed Barnes put together a pretty good spring-training telecast Wednesday night on Channel 4 San Diego, from in-booth interviews with three Padres executives to showing some great footage of Chris Young playing basketball at Princeton. Too bad he was ordered to go along with what I can only assume was a Padres request to turn the game into a bad version of a telethon.
I would never say having Mark Neely and Mark Grant announce when people had bought season tickets was bush league, because that would be an insult to bush leaguers everywhere.
And does anyone really think the Padres or Channel 4 would have asked Hall of Famer Dick Enberg to participate in anything that pathetic?
to be fair, they are employed by the team. the padres announcers have been exceptional homers but there’s no shortage of competition for their jobs. that hard sell was a bit aggravating but the broadcast was moderately more entertaining (like the SDUT said) than a padres spring training game should be. they had a couple high level front office guys during stop by, and at once point there was a promotion where the next season ticket buyer would get to watch a game from the GM’s office, with the gm/assistants there. a pretty bad ass promotion if you ask me. add to that the fact of how much harder it will be to sell season tickets when/if adrian gonzalez is traded… i am not surprised their intentions were so out in the open