Voices following Kalas still warming up

Something else died that afternoon, a year ago Tuesday, when Harry Kalas was fatally stricken in a Nationals Park TV booth.

The baseball vocabulary, the familiar rhythms, the comfortable atmosphere the smoky-voiced announcer had so carefully crafted in almost four decades of Phillies TV broadcasts also vanished.

Rather than try to re-create them by uncovering a would-be Kalas - if that's even possible - or radically transform them by importing an outspoken ex-Phillie like Mitch Williams or John Kruk, club executives decided to rely on their bullpen.

Chris Wheeler would still be the main color man. Gary Matthews would still get his three innings of quirky analysis. And Tom McCarthy, hired in 2008 to be Kalas' backup and likely successor, would abandon his roving-reporter duties and do all the play-by-play.

After a year, an insignificant span in the glacier-like movement of baseball broadcasting, it's still too early to say whether the Phillies' decision was off base.

While the reconstituted broadcast crew has its supporters and detractors, both ratings and ad revenue are up for cable and over-the-air TV - although that's more likely attributable to the ballclub's on-field success.

"As of now, we're fine," Dave Buck, the team's senior vice president for marketing and advertising sales, said Friday. "The team we have is good for the foreseeable future."

If that didn't sound like a ringing endorsement, remember that much of what makes broadcasters successful is longevity. McCarthy, Wheeler, and Matthews have been flying solo for only a year, and the Phillies aren't likely to ground them anytime soon.

"On radio, Scott [Franzke] is a phenomenal, phenomenal play-by-play guy," said Buck. "He and Larry [Andersen] play well off each other. On TV, it works well too, but it's got to develop. We're only a year out."

The Phillies were satisfied with that year and didn't move to alter the chemistry again in the off-season. About the only post-Kalas change on the horizon will come on radio later this spring. Flyers play-by-play man Jim Jackson, who already hosts the radio pre- and postgame shows, will call an inning or two for Franzke.

"Nine innings of play-by-play on radio," said Rob Brooks, the Phils' manager of broadcasting, "is quite a load."

On TV, because technology has so thoroughly altered the announcing paradigm, the pleasant and perpetually upbeat McCarthy, 41, may never achieve the iconic, larger-than-life status of radio-honed personalities like Kalas, Vin Scully, Ernie Harwell, and Harry Caray.

There are several reasons: McCarthy does only TV; because television is less intimate than radio, the connection between announcers and fans is harder to establish; today's broadcasters rarely mix mediums; and, in this post-John Madden world, the analyst is often the focus.

"It's different because of exposure," Buck said. "There's more exposure now but it's not so much one-person exposure."

As baseball revenues soar, many teams are moving away from the 20th-century model of lead broadcaster as epitomized by Kalas. Now, buttoned-down broadcasters are preferred to inconoclastic personalities.

"Baseball teams are looking for a different kind of salesman and evangelist," said Curt Smith, the former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush who has become the game's leading broadcast historian. "They don't want them to upset sponsors. They want them less confrontational, less flamboyant. They want a more homogenous, Broadcasting 101 kind of announcer.

"The silver lining is it's safe. But the bottom line is it's dull."

According to Smith, many teams now fall into that category, though he doesn't include the Phillies among them.

"I've listened to both Tom McCarthy and Scott Franzke," he said, "and I think they're quite good. They are technically proficient. They have a certain panache. But beyond Philadelphia, in many places it's a real problem."

That's not to suggest the Phillies' TV team is without its faults or critics. Some viewers were never going to accept anyone but Kalas, while others believe Wheeler is too didactic, Matthews too malaprop-prone, McCarthy too chatty and relentlessly sunny.

"I've gotten a lot of positive feedback," said McCarthy, a New Jersey native. "But like any broadcaster, I've also gotten negative feedback from fans because my style is so different from Harry's. . . . I probably talk more than Harry did. There's a very distinct difference in our voices, and to a certain extent, our energy levels.

"Harry had a very distinct style and an unbelievable set of pipes, and he knew how to handle big calls like nobody else ever has . . . or ever will."

Wheeler, now the longest-tenured of the Phils' announcers, said that because broadcasting is so subjective and Americans are so familiar with baseball, it's impossible to please an entire audience. Kalas, he said, urged him early on to find a style, and regardless of what the reaction might be, to stick with it.

"I don't think anybody is above criticism," Wheeler said. "But you have to be true to what you think is right. Sometimes people are just predisposed to hearing what they want to hear. So no matter what you do, they don't like you. Other times they're predisposed to like you, and they will overlook something that annoys them."

As for Matthews, Buck said: "Sarge is a personality in and of himself. And I think he's getting much better."

McCarthy did the Phillies' pregame and postgame shows for five seasons before leaving for a two-year stint as the Mets' play-by-play radio voice. As Kalas aged and his eyesight failed, the club sought a potential successor. After the 2007 season, it brought McCarthy back, signing him to a five-year contract as a roving reporter and backup play-by-play man.

Tragically, his succession came sooner than anyone had anticipated.

"Harry was going to be here as long as Harry wanted to be here," said Buck. "We hired Tom so that Harry or Scott could get a time-out. But we could see him being around a long time."

To gauge their broadcasters' appeal, the Phillies and their primary television outlet, Comcast SportsNet, conduct frequent viewership surveys, the results of which they don't reveal. Fan reaction, Buck said, is taken seriously, but it's not a popularity contest.

"You don't want to put something out there that people don't like, but you want to give it enough time to either succeed or fail on its own . . . Candidly, we knew [the new booth dynamics] could be an issue for some people to complain about. So we were like, 'Just give it a chance. Listen to Tom. He's not Harry, but we don't want him to be. There's never going to be another Harry. You got to give him a shot.'

"Forty years ago when Harry replaced Bill Campbell, people were saying, 'How can you replace Bill Campbell with this Harry Kalas guy?' Change is always tough on fans."

Smith, a Maryland resident whose 1998 book, Voices of the Game, outlined the history of the profession, said Philadelphia's baseball fans were luckier than most.

"I think the Phillies, particularly when compared to other major-league teams, are quite blessed on both radio and TV. Are they Harry Kalas? Of course not. God broke the mold with Harry."